page_title: History of rail transport in Australia
section_title: Mining railways
hierarchical_section_title: History of rail transport in Australia / Private railways / Mining railways
caption_attribution_description: BHPIO iron ore train arriving at Port Hedland, Western Australia. The lead engine is a 1994 rebuilt Alco Century 636 originally built 1972 by A. E. Goodwin in Australia. The rebuild was done by Goninan and used the GE Dash 8 power train. Currently (2015) the locomotive is stored.
context_page_description: Australians generally assumed in the 1850s that railways would be built by the private sector. Private companies built railways in the then colonies of Victoria, opened in 1854, and New South Wales, where the company was taken over by the government before completion in 1855, due to bankruptcy. South Australia's railways were government owned from the beginning, including a horse-drawn line opened in 1854 and a steam-powered line opened in 1856. In Victoria, the private railways were soon found not to be financially viable, and existing rail networks and their expansion was taken over by the colony. Government ownership also enabled railways to be built to promote development, even if not apparently viable in strictly financial terms. The railway systems spread from the colonial capitals, except in cases where geography dictated a choice of an alternate port.
  Railways in Australia date from the 10 December 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway, located at the intersection of Brown and Church Streets, Newcastle, New South Wales.
context_section_description: Starting in the 1960s, four heavy duty railways were developed in the Pilbara region of the far north of Western Australia for the haulage of iron ore from several mines to the nearest ports.  These railways are isolated from  each other and from the national system, carrying no other traffic.
  The very heavy traffic on these lines, up to 100 million tonnes per year, push wheel/rail technology to its limits, and has resulted in considerable research and development that has been of value to railways worldwide.
  These iron ore railways are all 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in) gauge, and started off using American standards for track, locomotives and wagons.
  In 2008, the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) commenced operating a fifth iron ore railway in the Pilbara.
  The railway lines are:
  Hamersley & Robe River railway (Rio Tinto)
  Mount Newman railway (BHP)
  Goldsworthy railway (BHP)
  Fortescue railway (FMG)
caption: A train transporting iron ore on the Mount Newman railway in 2003
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