South Africa $18 Billion Rail Plan Lifts Mining Exports
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In more than 40 years driving trains in South Africa, Jacobus Cornelius van der Merwe has never seen anything like the Shongololo.
The train, whose name means millipede in Zulu, carries 200 coal wagons, is as long as eight Eiffel Towers laid end-to-end and can haul 16,800 metric tons of coal at 80 kilometers (50 miles) an hour non-stop to the country’s main export port.