Coal Age

MAR 2013

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One of the locomotives Schalke supplied to Codelco in Chile. Schalker Eisenhütte: Mining Locomotive Leader With seven decades of experience, Schalker Eisenhütte Maschinenfabrik GmbH designs and manufactures tailor-made rail vehicles to individual customer requirements. The company says its locomotives have proved their worth all over the world under the most demanding conditions in the underground and opencast mining industry, or as special vehicles on public rail networks. Schalker Eisenhütte's rolling-stock range comprises diesel, traction-battery and trolley-wire locomotives up to 130 mt in weight for mining and tunnelling, and service locos for narrow gauge, tramway, metro and urban railway networks, as well as freight trams, railgrinding machines and dual-power locomotives. Headquartered in Gelsenkirchen, and today part of the Eickhoff group, the company was established in 1872. Its initial focus was on machinery for coke plants and coal mining, with the production of coke-plant machinery—now fully automated—still one of its business sectors. Schalke entered the mining loco business in 1937 with the production of 70-mt trolley-wire locomotives for the opencast browncoal mines in the Rhine area. Between then and 1954, it delivered 34 of these locomotives. This business sector grew successfully after that, and loco sizes and weights increased, with Schalke not only manufacturing locos for underground coal mining, but also for the copper and iron ore industries. Today, Schalke claims to be the market leader for heavy mining locomotives. Mining companies such as Codelco in Chile and LKAB in Sweden have ordered their locomotives from the company, with Schalke having delivered the first three of nine 108-mt trolleywire/battery locomotives to LKAB that can be used under fullyautomated operation. These production locomotives are 11.3 m long, 3 m wide and 3.6 m high, and have a tractive effort of 256 kN. Their top speed capability is 25 km/h, pulling a 1,600 mt train. Among other mining locomotives that Schalke has delivered are 130 mt trolley-wire locos that are now in use by Codelco. These run on standard-gauge track (1,435 mm), and are 16 m long, 2.9 m wide and 4 m high. Powered by a 1,600 kW motor with PLC control, they have a top speed of 60 km/h (40 mph) and can handle a 2,400 mt train. Codelco also uses some 105 mt diesel-electric locos from Schalke. The company is currently working on an order from Freeport Copper & Gold for 40 mt production locos for its operations in Indonesia. These will draw power from trolley wires, traction batteries or diesel-powerpacks, and will be able to haul a 700 mt train at up to 25 km/h. 2013 • VDMA MINING SUPPLEMENT VDMA 31

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