Katarina Lundström is a determined lady, controlling 300 tons of two back-to-back locomotives. These are the world’s most powerful electrical locomotives, capable of a total output of 10,800 kW. By pushing a small joystick on the control panel, she indicates to the locomotives how much power she wants for the total of 24 wheels to move 52 iron-pellet-filled cars each carrying 80 tons of iron ore.
No engine sound is heard, but a total of 4,500 tons starts to move from Kiruna in Sweden in the direction of Narvik, Norway. The trip takes about four hours, depending a bit on traffic and how many times the locomotive has to stop on the single track to allow other trains to pass.
“Quite often we see brown bears,” she tells us as a flock of reindeer successfully cross the track in front of us. She is a second-generation locomotive engineer; her father also worked as an engineer. The train leaves the Swedish-Norwegian border and moves down the hillside with a spectacular view of Narvik.
“The snow can at times be so dense coming down that I drive the train solely using instruments – the Automatic Traffic Control (ATC) system. And there is no snow that can stop this train,” says Katarina Lundström, “as the pure weight of this will go through any snow. The locomotives of the lightweight passenger trains, however, can eventually be stopped by the snow if there is too much of it.”
We make it safely to Narvik, where the train is emptied of cargo in 25 minutes. Twelve fully loaded trains make the Kiruna–Narvik trip every day, carrying a total of some 50,400 tons of iron ore pellets. There are also trains travelling from Kiruna to Luleå, carrying cargo going to countries around the Baltic, such as Finland.
“Narvik is an excellent port,” says LKAB’s head of terminal, Svein Ivar Sivertsen. “Open all year in a sheltered fjord, where there is no swell to talk about and with a port depth of 27 metres, we can handle up to 350,000 dwt bulk carriers. The port capacity is 25 million tons of iron ore per annum, and normally some 220 to 250 vessels call into the port each year,” says Sivertsen. There are three tugs in the port to assist the vessels in berthing safely.
The first iron ore was shipped from Narvik in 1901; the port has been widened and rebuilt many times. “Narvik and the port were heavily bombed, first by the Germans and later by Allied forces during the Second World War.
“Now we have new plans again,” says Sivertsen. “We intend to blast out huge silos under today’s railroad tracks to expand capacity and become more environmentally friendly. After all, the terminal is located more or less in the city centre of Narvik, and this would greatly reduce noise and dust from the terminal.”
A 150,000 dwt bulk carrier is loaded up with iron ore before heading into the rain and mist of a low depression system in the North Atlantic. The ship leaves port loaded to less than half its capacity due to depth restrictions at the discharge port in Germany. Most of the iron ore from LKAB goes to customers in Germany, the Middle East and North Africa.
Date: 08 February 2008