{"id":369797,"date":"2026-02-16T11:20:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T01:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=369797"},"modified":"2026-02-16T11:20:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T01:20:35","slug":"fortescue-moves-to-ditch-diesel-on-pilbara-rail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=369797","title":{"rendered":"Fortescue moves to ditch diesel on Pilbara rail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fortescue (ASX: FMG) has commenced commissioning of two new battery electric locomotives on its rail network as it moves to decarbonise its Pilbara iron ore operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After years of delays, the rail routes of Western Australia&#8217;s resource-rich Pilbara are starting to whirr with the sound of battery-electric power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Billionaire Andrew Forrest&#8217;s mining giant is the second of the region&#8217;s major companies, and among its largest carbon emitters, to test the technology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BHP began its own Pilbara trials of battery-electric trains in November.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We&#8217;ll test them with our conventional fleet and we want to understand exactly [their] performance \u2026 then we&#8217;ll pull the trigger on a fully decarbonised solution for rail,&#8221; said Fortescue chief executive Dino Otranto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rarely caught short\u00a0on spectacle the first of the blue-and-white locomotives pulled into Port Hedland&#8217;s Thomas Rail Yard to rock band Wolfmother&#8217;s 2005 hit, Joker &amp; the Thief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BHP began its own Pilbara trials of battery-electric trains in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":369801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,47],"tags":[19592,268,4553],"class_list":["post-369797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-rail-news","tag-fortescue","tag-pilbara","tag-western-australia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=369797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369802,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369797\/revisions\/369802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/369801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=369797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=369797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=369797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}