The Leigh Creek Railway is owned by the South Australian Government and was leased to Flinders Power in 2000 when Flinders was privatised.
On 31 July 2017, the Leigh Creek Railway was handed back to its owner, the South Australian Government’s Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI).
The railway line extends a length of 250km and consists of approximately 400,000 predominately timber sleepers and continually welded 47kg rail.
The first rail operations can be dated back to the early 1950’s, to provide a fuel supply for Playford Power Station. The final coal train operated by Pacific National arrived at the Augusta Power Stations on 27 April 2016.
While coal was being hauled:
- All the rolling stock (locomotives and wagons) was owned and operated by Pacific National
- The maximum loaded speed was 70 km per hour
- The average length train was 2.950km, consisting of 3 locomotives, 168 coal wagons and 1 compressor wagon
- Each wagon carried a maximum payload of 71 tonnes
- The total maximum train coal capacity was 11,928 tonnes
- Since Flinders was privatised in 2000, an average of 3 million tonnes of coal was hauled per annum with maximum of 4.1million tonnes hauled in 2007.
