Spoornet

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TRANSNET FREIGHT RAIL

Type	Railway Operator, commercialised organisation with the State as its sole shareholder
Founded	1910
Headquarters	Johannesburg
Key people	Mr Siyabonga Gama, CEO Mr Peter Fearnhead, Chief Operations Officer, Mr. Nick Thomson, Chief Financial Officer, Mr Percival Mosweu, General Manager - Technical Department
Industry	Train transport
Products	Freight transport service
Revenue	~ R14 bn 2006
Employees	~ 25,000
Website	http://www.spoornet.co.za/

Transnet Freight Rail
Locale	Southern Africa
Dates of operation	1910–present
Track gauge	1067 mm
Headquarters	Johannesburg

Among Transnet's railway service divisions are: Protekon, a transport infrastructure design company; Transnet Rail Engineering (formerly Transwerk, which provides railway engineering services; and Transnet Freight Rail, formerly called Spoornet. Formerly part of South African Railways and Harbours, Transnet Freight Rail is the South African railway system. This state-controlled organisation employed hundreds of thousands of people for decades from the first half of the 20th century and was widely referred to by the initials SAR&H (its English form, while the Afrikaans equivalent was SAS&H).

1 Operations
2 Links to neighboring countries
3 Ongoing projects
4 External links

[edit] Operations

Transnet Freight Rail is a freight logistics and passenger transport railway. It is the largest freight hauler in Africa. The company is comprised of several different businesses:

General Freight Bus - Spoornet's largest division; handles over 50% of its freight;
COAL Export Line, also known as "Black Gold", serving coal customers on the Mpumalanga - Richards Bay line; second largest coal railway in the world;
Ore Export Line - dedicated to iron ore transport on the Sishen to Saldanha line;
Luxrail - The operation of the Blue Train, which is designed as a five-star hotel on wheels;

[edit] Links to neighboring countries

Spoornet is well linked to the neighboring countries, namely

at Ressano Garcia with Mozambique,
at Golela to Swazi Rail of Swaziland
at Musina/Beitbridge to the National Railways of Zimbabwe, and the Beitbridge Bulawayo Railway (BBR),
at Ottoshoop to the Botswana Railways
near Upington to TransNamib of Namibia

There is also a link to Maseru in Lesotho.

[edit] Ongoing projects

Maputo Corridor Transnet Freight Rail is developing a plan with the IDC to transport magnetite from Phalaborwa to Maputo as feedstock for a proposed steel plant in Maputo.