D&M Rail laying tracks for development
Done through innovation
D&M Rail Construction reiterated that its joint venture contract with TransNamib for the rehabilitation and upgrade of the Kranzberg to Tsumeb line is not open ended, and will be terminated once the project is completed.
The timeline of the contract, however, is defined by the availability of funding, and with cuts in government spending the uncertainty about funding has compounded the issue.
Dawie Moller, managing director of D&M Rail, said the company would only get an indication of the available budget by March next year while there was not much available in the 2016/17 financial year.
The contract can similarly be nullified if substandard work is done.
The company made these remarks during a site tour on Friday where the media were introduced to the labour-intensive, gruelling work being done along the railway line.
Work on the line starts at first daylight when mostly young Namibians, male and female, alongside experienced hands, lift and heave, in teams on the line, multiple tons of concrete and steel - in searing hot and choking dusty conditions.
Tackling faults
D&M Rail, which is the only wholly Namibian-owned railway construction and maintenance company, was first commissioned by the Ministry of Works and Transport on 17 December 2012 to execute emergency repairs over a four-month period after a series of derailments due to track defects.
The company said the situation subsequently stabilised with no further track-related derailments since these interventions, but due to limited funds, work on the project had to be stopped completely that year.
It was subsequently contracted to rehabilitate the 392-kilometre Kranzberg to Tsumeb line to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) standard of 18.5 ton axle load.
It entered into a joint venture arrangement on this project with TransNamib in 2014 through the formation of the Namibia Rail Construction company. To date, 13.2 kilometres of rail along the Kranzberg to Tsumeb line has been fully rehabilitated, 114.1 kilometres have been partially upgraded and 183.4 kilometres have been rehabilitated as a temporary
solution.
Work on the line is executed only during five-hour track occupation in between train traffic that continues.
Along the way tracks not under rehabilitation or upgrading are kept operationally safe at all hours.
On this project, Namibia Rail Construction has introduced pioneering innovations alongside subcontracting small and medium enterprises. A first in the industry is the 30kg rails that have been reworked and converted to hundreds of kilometres of continuous welded rail (CWR), which is executed by Morris Ndjaba’s Moka Engineering SME which does the surface and exothermic welding on the lines.
Capacity picking up
Similarly, for the first time ever in the world 30kg rails were fitted to P2 concrete sleepers.
The safety of the railway line has drastically been improved as is evidenced by dramatically reduced speed restrictions, which opens the opportunity for a reintroduction of tourist trains.
Acid transportation on rail from the Dundee Precious Metal smelter at Tsumeb to Walvis Bay was also given the green light and commenced in 2015 with one full train per week consisting of one locomotive pulling 27 wagons.
“Soon there will be five trains per week transporting acid to Walvis Bay,” said the managing director of TransNamib, Hippy Tjivikua.
“There is a countrywide effort to get freight back on rail and large trucks off our national roads,” commented Leon Steyn, D&M Rail’s site agent at Otjiwarongo.
D&M Rail is doing ongoing civil construction work on the third phase of the Northern Railway Line Extension project, which links Ondangwa and Oshakati, which is expected to be completed by next year.
Six-thousand tons of rail will be used on the extension between Ondangwa and Oshakati, which should last 100 years.
This railway line will eventually connect Namibia to Angola and it is expected to stimulate economic growth for the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in the northern regions.
The timeline of the contract, however, is defined by the availability of funding, and with cuts in government spending the uncertainty about funding has compounded the issue.
Dawie Moller, managing director of D&M Rail, said the company would only get an indication of the available budget by March next year while there was not much available in the 2016/17 financial year.
The contract can similarly be nullified if substandard work is done.
The company made these remarks during a site tour on Friday where the media were introduced to the labour-intensive, gruelling work being done along the railway line.
Work on the line starts at first daylight when mostly young Namibians, male and female, alongside experienced hands, lift and heave, in teams on the line, multiple tons of concrete and steel - in searing hot and choking dusty conditions.
Tackling faults
D&M Rail, which is the only wholly Namibian-owned railway construction and maintenance company, was first commissioned by the Ministry of Works and Transport on 17 December 2012 to execute emergency repairs over a four-month period after a series of derailments due to track defects.
The company said the situation subsequently stabilised with no further track-related derailments since these interventions, but due to limited funds, work on the project had to be stopped completely that year.
It was subsequently contracted to rehabilitate the 392-kilometre Kranzberg to Tsumeb line to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) standard of 18.5 ton axle load.
It entered into a joint venture arrangement on this project with TransNamib in 2014 through the formation of the Namibia Rail Construction company. To date, 13.2 kilometres of rail along the Kranzberg to Tsumeb line has been fully rehabilitated, 114.1 kilometres have been partially upgraded and 183.4 kilometres have been rehabilitated as a temporary
solution.
Work on the line is executed only during five-hour track occupation in between train traffic that continues.
Along the way tracks not under rehabilitation or upgrading are kept operationally safe at all hours.
On this project, Namibia Rail Construction has introduced pioneering innovations alongside subcontracting small and medium enterprises. A first in the industry is the 30kg rails that have been reworked and converted to hundreds of kilometres of continuous welded rail (CWR), which is executed by Morris Ndjaba’s Moka Engineering SME which does the surface and exothermic welding on the lines.
Capacity picking up
Similarly, for the first time ever in the world 30kg rails were fitted to P2 concrete sleepers.
The safety of the railway line has drastically been improved as is evidenced by dramatically reduced speed restrictions, which opens the opportunity for a reintroduction of tourist trains.
Acid transportation on rail from the Dundee Precious Metal smelter at Tsumeb to Walvis Bay was also given the green light and commenced in 2015 with one full train per week consisting of one locomotive pulling 27 wagons.
“Soon there will be five trains per week transporting acid to Walvis Bay,” said the managing director of TransNamib, Hippy Tjivikua.
“There is a countrywide effort to get freight back on rail and large trucks off our national roads,” commented Leon Steyn, D&M Rail’s site agent at Otjiwarongo.
D&M Rail is doing ongoing civil construction work on the third phase of the Northern Railway Line Extension project, which links Ondangwa and Oshakati, which is expected to be completed by next year.
Six-thousand tons of rail will be used on the extension between Ondangwa and Oshakati, which should last 100 years.
This railway line will eventually connect Namibia to Angola and it is expected to stimulate economic growth for the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in the northern regions.
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