They can put covers on the cars to reduce the dust, but 60km/hr speed would be fast enough, i.e. 5 hours to get the ore out of the RoF would be acceptable, considering each train could have some 100 hopper cars to carry the ore, say 100 x 100 tonnes per car = 10000 tonnes ore per train (equivalent to ~150 monster truck loads, which would be a lot more expensive than hauling by train). NOT plans to ship 150,000 tonnes of concetrate/year, by train it would take 150,000/10,000 = 15 times (of 100 hopper cars)/year, or 30 times of 50 hopper car/year, etc...depending on the production schedule. They can attach as many hoppers they would need to the train that is hauling something else (e.g. chromite).

By trucks, they would need 150,000 tonnes/50 tonnes = 3000 truck loads/year, or ~10 trucks/day. This is doable, but NOT has indicated that if the RR is available they would switch from trucking to rail to save money. 50 tonne trucks was assumed considering that a lot more maintenance that would be required for using monster trucks (~70 tonnes), in addition to the safety concerns for mixing a large number of monster trucks to passenger car circulation in a all-season road from Pickle Lake to the RoF, especially in severe weather conditions.

Initially, trucking would be fine to start the Ni operation. But, eventually if the RR is available then transportation cost woud be significantly reduced to switch to rail hauling, especially for chromite in which NOT is certainly has some keen interest. NOT has chromite at BB, and Alan Coutts has been talking about possible offer for CLF chromite assets for his longer-term planning for NOT. Hence, chromite has to be considered in NOT basket. May be, this is a lucrative business.

goldhunter