Sishen–Saldanha railway line
railway line in South Africa
The Sishen–Saldanha railway line, also known as the Ore Export Line (OREX), is an 861-kilometre-long (535 mi) heavy-haul railway line in South Africa. It connects iron ore mines near Sishen in the Northern Cape with the port at Saldanha Bay in the Western Cape. It is used primarily to transport iron ore (60 million tonnes per year) and does not carry passenger traffic.
The Sishen–Saldanha line was built by Iscor, the then iron and steel parastatal, opening in 1976.
In 1977 the line was transferred to Transnet Freight Rail, then known as South African Railways & Harbours, and was electrified. A voltage of 50 kV AC was chosen instead of the usual 25 kV to haul heavier loads and allow greater distance between transformers.
A single-track line with 10 crossing loops to allow trains travelling in opposite directions to pass was constructed. The number of crossing loops has increased to 19 to increase line capacity.
From an altitude of 1,295 metres (4,249 ft) at Sishen, the line climbs for 42 kilometres (26 mi) before descending to cross the Orange River about 10 kilometres (6 mi) downstream of Groblershoop. For the next 300 kilometres (190 mi), the line rises and falls before descending towards the Atlantic coast.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sishen–Saldanha railway line” as railway line in South Africa. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7530796. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sishen–Saldanha railway line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.