The Driverless Iron Ore Trains Of Rio Tinto Australia

As someone who lives in the U.S. it is weird to the point of creepy seeing the locomotives with the windshield blanked out and no one on board. It’s almost as if the locomotives are coming to life.

On a ton per mile bases, the drivers income would be so minimal per ton because of the huge productivity of these huge trains, yet we do away with the driver. We are all doing what we are doing on our amazing planet so that people have work, to feed families and live a reasonable life, but huge corporates do have no regard for that, they say they do, but its just BS. Why not do away with top end executives on huge incomes, and keep the frontline team employed and everyone benefits along the way.

Very nice to see the trains running perfectly synchronized as far as the eye can see.

Funny what pops up in my feed.... right now Im typing this at Tea tree camp on the Rio Rail mainline at 176kp. I am part of the construction crew currently replacing turn outs and replacing whole sections of rail and formation arounf the floodway bridges etc. Some of this line is untouched since when it was laid around 40 something years ago so its a "little overdue" for a refit. We work up to 3 meteres from any live track and having these things coming past at up to 80kph was super intimidating at first! Each train is carrying ore worth around 4 million Australian dollars and we see around 30 something a day pass by heading to the port. Great video Ive captured loads of footage myself and will put something together for the huge amounts of people commenting positively on this video. Cheers

"Río Tinto" ("Red River") is a company that was born in Spain (specifically, in the province of Huelva, in western Andalusia), since the river of said name ("Tinto") carries the colored waters red, due to the copper that is in the place where it is born, and that was exploited by said company until 1954.

These precision side by side shots are amazing. What a unique operation. Thanks for sharing and glad to stumble upon this video.

Thanks John, Excellent footage - loved the parallel running too.

It's mind blowing how far technology has come, I asked about Autonomous Trains no-less than 4 years ago during an imaginative stupor while writing, I was told by a few people that it was either stupid, impossible, unsafe, and completely unnecessary, while others said it'd be for special types of trains, or for Japan's High-Speed network, yet, here we are automating Iron, in Australia of all places.

Thanks for the upload, it brings back lots of memorys of when i was machining ore car wheels at Port Hedland for Mt Newman mining in the lathe pit, very enjoyable times.

I know a driver up ther who got a six month contract to drive ten years ago "while they did the transition" to remote operation. He is still there driving locos there ten years later. I would like to point out that BHP had a runaway train a few years back which had no driver. The accident cost the better part of a billion dollars what with destroyed track, wrecked wagons and locos and most expensive of all a few weeks lost production of iron ore while the line was closed. Still all that aside a great video and stunning scenery. These places are really remote and a permit is needed to drive there, truck tyres being essential.

Thank you for sharing this video, it is good to see some green foliage in the landscape as well. I do enjoy the drone footage.

This level of Tech can now been seen in the ELK Valley in British Columbia, thanks to CP Rail cutting jobs while increasing the hazards to the general public. The sensors may give the remote operator all of the real time data about the train's operation, but not the forest and grass fires that are started by the trains, something that a pair of mark 1 eyes balls do from the cab.

One of only a few countries where this is possible because of the unihabited open vastness!!

I watched many train videos for entertainment and to learn about freight trains and railroading in general. I've watched lots and lots of them. I vote the shot from 10:51 to 13:04 the best shot I have ever seen!

"driverless trains are not so friendly" :'))

Thankyou mr. John Phillips videos. Very different views of passing of two trains running through two railway tracks into one direction in parallel as twins single lines. Thankyou for this very good surprise. Carry-on your greate efforts.

One bucked rail will suprise that robot! 😮😅

Pretty mind-blowing to see autonomous freight trains in Australia! The locomotives look and sound a lot like the ones seen in my home country, the USA. Great catches! Greetings from the United States!

Great video John and with all the money they save not paying drivers they could spend some refreshing the paint on their locos as they look appalling. Thanks again for the nice video.

I'd be interested to find out how the automated system works and how it avoids failures, collisions etc?