Copper mine

[Anonymous]

The copper mines in Butte had vertical shafts most nearly 5000' deep. They went to open pit mining in the 50's but the underground workings stayed open in the mid 80's. The ore was hauled to the surface and sent to a crusher, then to the concentrating process(turning the ore to a slurry mixture, then hauled 26 miles to the west to be smelted. After that it was hauled in ingot form 100 miles to the north to be refined.

The ore here was mostly a grayish color, with lesser copper being reddish/orange and the higher grade ore almost a deep aqua green. They also mined gold, silver, platinum, magneseum and molybdenum here. Butte is called the "Richest Hill on Earth" because it was the biggest copper mining center in the US.

John

[roadrat]

I tried google and found some really great web sites and pictures
thanks for the tip aardvarknaw.


bill

[Anonymous]

If you use the Google or Altavista search engines, select images and search on the topic. You'll get pictures of ore, pit mines, structures such as crushers, and vehicles. Many are actual mining sites. Should give you a good idea of the colors, etc. By refining your search criteria you can narrow down to specific areas.

[cwclark]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole


Another interesting sidelight about the copper smelter was that there is a Pearlite plant nearby. Perlite is a volcanic a***hat has a lot of moisture in it, and when it is heated it puffs up and turns white, something like popcorn. Perlite is the white specks you see in potting soil. It is also used in concrete and asphalt, and is very lightweight. I bought a large bag of Perlite thinking I could use it as ballast on a G-scale outdoor layout, and it all blew away the first night.

I work at a cryogenic plant (extremely cold temperatures -190 to -330) that takes air and gets it so cold that it liquifies into oxygen, nitrogen, and argon which we sell..we use perlite in the "cold boxes" as our insulation medium..it as cacole says is extremely light and will blow away .....we had some get blown from the the cold box one time and it was everywhere...(it even got into my old motorcycle's clutch cable..I pulled the cable back and it sounded like rice krispies when the milk gets poured on) not a good thing to model in it's pure form..you may want to use a white sand in it's place to simulate the perlite if you plan to model it...Chuck

[roadrat]

The area I'm modeling is Ashland , Maine. I'm building a fictional(freelanced) short line that serves a Copper mine and a logyard about 10 miles west of the town, back in town the RR serves a Lumber mill, Copper smelter, paper mill and also will have an interchange with the Bangor & Aroostook RR.
Now I know that there are no real copper mines in Maine, but there are rich veins of both Zinc and copper ,Unfortunatly Maine's enviromental laws are too strict and mining never got a start here although if you go to the Ashland, ME. website you'll see that they are hoping to change that.
My Shortline will be based in the late 60's to mid 70's and will assume that the mine was started just after WW2.
The Mine will be named Jamison Mining LTD ( Jamison is my 2 1/2 year old sons middle name).

bill

[jhugart]

Did you want Western mines or Michigan mines?

From the mid-1800s to the 1920s was a boom in copper mining in Michigan's upper peninsula; specifically, the Keweenaw (the little spur that sticks out into Lake Superior). There's several veins of copper following the axis of the Keweenaw peninsula of the UP, that angle down and westward, passing under Lake Superior.

The poor rock in the region is bluish-gray. There was a lot of mass copper, that just had to be smashed free from the rock. One lake, Torch Lake, got its shoreline radically altered by the dumping of the wastes from the stamp mills.

The surface working of the mines -- for they were all shaft mines on an incline -- had pretty much the same layout across the lifetime of the mines, with size and functionality increasing over time. Atop each shaft was a shaft house. This is where the tracks for the cars came out, continuing the angle of the load. At the top were a couple of pulleys, directing the cable out of the shafthouse, over the ground (on more pulleys on wooden towers), and into a hoist house. Adjacent to the hoist house would be the boiler house, where coal was brought for the furnaces.

Over time, the shaft houses also became rock houses, where some intial sorting and storing could occur. A noteworthy example that still stands is the #2 Shaft-Rockhouse of the Quincy Mine near Hancock, Michigan. This was the deepest shaft in the region, something like two miles long, at an angle around 54 degrees. It also had the world's largest steam hoist.

This shaft rockhouse had crushers for some preliminary breakup, different bins for sorting the poor rock and the ore of different sizes, and a few railway lines from the Quincy's own Quincy & Torch Lake RR (dual-guage) to help get the material to the stamp mills.

A lot of information on the buildings and layout of the surface can be found in the book _Old Reliable_, which was the nickname for the Quincy Mining company because it was good at paying dividends. You can also do google searches online to find references in some engineering archives to drawings and photographs. For railroading in the area, a big railroad that swallowed a lot of stuff (before getting eaten by the Soo in turn) was the Duluth, South Shore, and Atlantic, which consumer the Q&TL, the Mineral Range, and the Copper Range. There are some good web sites with photos and such of these roads.

Good luck!

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole

One other thing I forgot to mention about the raw ore -- I live within 30 miles of the Lavender Pit, a one-mile deep hole in the ground at Bisbee, Arizona, that was mined by Phelps Dodge and is now a tourist attraction. The ore and rock color varied at different levels, everywhere from a dark red to a light, almost white, tan, depending on the richness of the ore vein; so the color of your talus would also depend on the locale of your mine and the richness of the ore, so unless you think a copper miner is likely to see your layout, I wouldn't be too concerned about the color.

You've relieved my concerns Charles. My next set of Tichy cars are going to be for the Brunel Coal Mine, so what colour to use will be easier to decide ( hmmm, thinks-lignite brownish, bituminous dull black, anthracite shiny black or --??) Ah, how we modellers do try ourselves!

[tomwatkins]

Sulphuric acid is one of the major byproducts of the smelting process. The copper mines at Copper Hill Tn. ( Southeast Tn., right by the Ga.- NC. border) shipped many many trainloads of acid out in tank cars.
Have Fun,
Tom Watkins

[cacole]

One other thing I forgot to mention about the raw ore -- I live within 30 miles of the Lavender Pit, a one-mile deep hole in the ground at Bisbee, Arizona, that was mined by Phelps Dodge and is now a tourist attraction. The ore and rock color varied at different levels, everywhere from a dark red to a light, almost white, tan, depending on the richness of the ore vein; so the color of your talus would also depend on the locale of your mine and the richness of the ore, so unless you think a copper miner is likely to see your layout, I wouldn't be too concerned about the color.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole

Raw copper ore in Arizona is a yellowish brown color. Smelted copper will oxidize and turn green, but the ore does not. That ore in Wales must have been much purer if it had oxidized. Out here in Arizona they have to process something like 100 tons of ore to get 100 pounds of copper.

Something else that was in the Pentrex video referenced above that I had never heard before is that some type of acid is a by-product of the copper smelting process, perhaps sulphuric acid, and the smelter at San Manuel seems to produces more tank cars of acid per day than it does copper ingots.

Another interesting sidelight about the copper smelter was that there is a Pearlite plant nearby. Perlite is a volcanic a***hat has a lot of moisture in it, and when it is heated it puffs up and turns white, something like popcorn. Perlite is the white specks you see in potting soil. It is also used in concrete and asphalt, and is very lightweight. I bought a large bag of Perlite thinking I could use it as ballast on a G-scale outdoor layout, and it all blew away the first night.

Thanks for the perles of wisdom! Looks as if I'll have to retint the talus, ore come across information suggesting that all ores are not equal. Any mining engineers out there?

[cacole]

Raw copper ore in Arizona is a yellowish brown color. Smelted copper will oxidize and turn green, but the ore does not. That ore in Wales must have been much purer if it had oxidized. Out here in Arizona they have to process something like 100 tons of ore to get 100 pounds of copper.

Something else that was in the Pentrex video referenced above that I had never heard before is that some type of acid is a by-product of the copper smelting process, perhaps sulphuric acid, and the smelter at San Manuel seems to produces more tank cars of acid per day than it does copper ingots.

Another interesting sidelight about the copper smelter was that there is a Pearlite plant nearby. Perlite is a volcanic a***hat has a lot of moisture in it, and when it is heated it puffs up and turns white, something like popcorn. Perlite is the white specks you see in potting soil. It is also used in concrete and asphalt, and is very lightweight. I bought a large bag of Perlite thinking I could use it as ballast on a G-scale outdoor layout, and it all blew away the first night.

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole


Other copper mines are featured in this video, and I would suggest that you purchase a copy from Pentrex.

I've modelled uncrushed copper ore loads in my Tichy ore cars using Woodland Products Talus. I tinted some of the talus with a wash of Polyscale grey and olive to give what I hope is an oxidized copper look and poured the mix of tinted and untinted talus on top of lead slug weights in the car and secured the "ore" with diluted white glue.

I suspect the grey/green colour I've got is a bit too bright, unless it's from a very rich copper lode at the Kingdom Copper Mines.

Does anyone have photos that would show typical uncrushed copper ore? My original reference was a photo of an exposed copper bearing rock surface in Wales.

[roadrat]

Thank you very much for the info this is exactly what I was looking for.

bill

[cacole]

Based on information in a Pentrex video entitled "Arizona's Shortline Railroads" there's a copper mine at San Manuel, Arizona, that has both open pit and shaft mines. A train of ore cars shuttles continually between the shaft mine and smelter, a distance of approximately nine miles. The ore cars are special built for hauling extremely heavy loads, and the rear car has a crew cab and horn on it because the train runs backwards when empty and the crewman in the rear cab blows the horn for road crossings. The ore coming out of the shaft mine is crushed into a powder. The above-ground portion of the mine looks exactly like a coal mine hoist. At the time this video was made, the train was pulled by Alco and Baldwin road switchers.

Two other trains, pulled by GPs, called the Ore Drag and Ore Dumper, haul ore from the open pit mine. This ore is not crushed, and sometimes contains very large boulders. The Ore Drag is powered by two locomotives and hauls approximately 20 cars from the pit to a point midway between the mine and smelter, where it exchanges loads for empties with the Ore Dumper, which is pulled by three GPs, because it has to pull up a much steeper grade.

Other copper mines are featured in this video, and I would suggest that you purchase a copy from Pentrex.

[roadrat]

Can someone tell me how to model a shaft type copper mine ?
is the ore loaded in open hoppers or closed, How fine is the ore and relatively how many cars a day are filled.
any info would be helpful.


bill[:D]