Ministerial Statement: New recruits driving towards the future

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Minister for Transport, Trade, Employment and Industrial Relations
The Honourable John Mickel
10/04/2008

New recruits driving towards the future

The next generation of train drivers will be officially welcomed by Transport Minister John Mickel today during his visit to QR's Rockhampton operations.

The three women and nine men were chosen from a field of hundreds who answered the call of a national recruitment drive.

Mr Mickel said the Queensland Government fully supports QR's program to boost its coal network capacity across the state and attract more locomotive drivers.

"QR has new locomotives and wagons progressively coming on-line to help meet the growing demand to move coal and these trainee drivers will become part of the new generation who will support that boom," he said.

QR's General Manager Coal South, Geoff Featherstone said the company's commitment to the coal industry had never been stronger.

"We are actively investing in new trains, new tracks and new people,'' he said.

"This group of trainees will go through a 28 week program before being deployed to work throughout the Blackwater system.

"They'll be looking at everything from safety awareness to train handling, signalling, scheduling, loco equipment knowledge, route familarisation and shunting.

"We are currently delivering more than 45 million tonnes of coal to port and domestic users from the Blackwater system and this is growing, so it's vital we have the human resource capability to meet that."

April 10, 2008

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