The Piawaning to Miling section of the Toodyay West to Miling line has reopened to freight traffic, after repairs were completed to return the line to working condition.
The section of line, north-east of Perth, is used by growers to transport grain to ports such as Fremantle and Kwinana. Arc Infrastructure manages the network and carried out the work to repair the line.
This particular section of track was damaged in September 2019 when a CBH grain train derailed. Six wagons on the Watco-operated train derailed and no injuries occurred. The derailment was the second in the same area that year.
After the derailment, the line was closed to traffic but suffered significant damage in subsequent storms during the summer.
To get the line back into service work teams have re-railed almost 7.5km of track and replaced 2,500 sleepers.
Arc Infrastructure general manager commercial and development Nathan Speed said the credit should go to the teams involved.
“This is a great result for the teams who worked to complete this key maintenance task safely, enabling us to re-open this section of the line on schedule for the benefit of CBH and local grain farmers.”
Arc’s Mobile Maintenance Team and Central Team 3 completed the repairs, while ensuring that environmentally sensitive areas were not disturbed, said head of maintenance delivery Dan Ellis.
“These works were completed incident free by the Mobile Maintenance Team and Central Team 3 in 35 days which is a fantastic effort, especially considering they had to deal with washaways and changes arising from COVID-19.”
Ellis said the work required experience from many areas.
“This is a great example of major works completed with input from across the business, including but not limited to; Engineering, Network Strategy, Plant Department, Flashbutt Team, Planning Team, NIS, Central Teams, Commercial, Operations and Stakeholder Engagement.”
The line was reopened to traffic in May.