The terminal is situated at Excel Coal’s Wambo colliery near Singleton in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley. It includes a 15km rail spur, rail loop, coal reclaim area and associated coal bins and conveyors.
The loading terminal, and associated rail spur off the existing Mt Thorley branch line, will take more than 300,000 truck movements per year off the roads between Wambo and United and the Mt Thorley line.
Rail construction began in January 2005, with the first test train loaded on April 24, 2006 and signalling commissioning completed May 29, 2006. Involved in the construction was clean coal handling facility design and construct contractor Kinmont Engineers, rail spur designers GHD and rail spur construction contractor Barclay Mowlem.
“The completion of the rail link and loading terminal has been an important milestone in the development of Wambo Coal,” Excel Coal managing director Tony Haggarty said today.
The Wambo train loading bin is the first one in Australia to use a three batch system for loading trains instead of single batch or flood loading, and is nominally rated at 4500 tonnes per hour.
Wambo is currently Excel's largest operating mine with tenements covering more than 5300 hectares with in-situ coal resources in the Whybrow, Wambo, Redbank Creek, Whynot, Arrowfield and Bowfield seams of 690 million tonnes.
Coal is railed 85km to Port Waratah Coal Services (PWCS) at Newcastle for shipping to overseas customers.
The opencut mine produces about 5.3Mtpa ROM coal, with operations contracted out to Roche Mining.
Coal mining operations involve the extraction of nine coal plies within four seam groups (Whybrow, Redbank Creek, Wambo and Whynot seams). The mine is currently operating at an overburden ratio of around 5.6:1bcm/ROM tonne.
Wambo’s current expansion includes increasing opencut production to 7.5Mtpa ROM; successive development of longwall mining operations in the Wambo, Whybrow, Arrowfield and Bowfield seams; and increasing the capacity of the coal handling and preparation plant to meet the increased requirements.
Excel Coal operates three coal mines and has major interests in three development projects in Australia and overseas.
