I am wanting to add a mine to my layout and have been looking for suitable buildings and how the operation worked. I found some old pictures of the gold mining operation in Bralorne, BC showing a boxcar being load by shovel from a dump truck. I also found some drawings of a stamp mill with from Pat Harriman who did the book of wood frame buildings and it shows a rail spur at the top of the mill (for off-loading ore?) and a rail at the bottom of the structure with sliding doors. Am I to assume the processed ore was bagged and loaded in boxcars?
I am trying to figure out how ore gets moved. Hoppers or gondolas would make sense to me but seeing these other two methods makes me wonder. Does anyone have any input?
Thanks,
Dave
It depends on the cargo. Gold ore was valuable (or presumed to be valuable) enough that it was shipped in boxcars to avoid pilferage. Other less vaulable ores would have been shipped in open top cars.
From what I understand, refined gold (if going by rail) was normally shipped in Express/Baggage/Mail cars, with a messenger standing guard inside the car - shipping gold by boxcar would be easy pickings for robbers, although I won't dismiss out of hand a small lot going by unguarded boxcar since "There's a prototype for everything" (it just may not be a smart one).NOT what you're looking for, but interesting nonetheless - shipping Gold Bullion from the NY Fed reserve to Fort Knox by train.There was a small thread years ago about this topic.
Shovelling the ore into a boxcar seems to be a poor way of shipping it. Is it reasonable to assume that it would get bagged and stacked in a boxcar that way? Why else would there be doors at the bottom of a stamp mill that would appear to be for loading a boxcar? What else might they be for?
This is the picture I found.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loading_D%26RGW_boxcar_with_gold_ore_from_truck.jpg
I seriously doubt any of it is bagged, they do just like they do with other bulk commodities from grain to sugar, they just pile it on the floor of the boxcar.
I would also bet the "railroad" at the top of the mine is a narrow guage tram for push carts of raw ore.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusman I seriously doubt any of it is bagged, they do just like they do with other bulk commodities from grain to sugar, they just pile it on the floor of the boxcar
I seriously doubt any of it is bagged, they do just like they do with other bulk commodities from grain to sugar, they just pile it on the floor of the boxcar
You have to remember that many mines and stamp mills were built and in operation well before railroads arrived. The lumber and equipment was hauled in by pack mule, and bagged concentrate was shipped out by pack mule.
The arrival of railroads allowed lower grade ores to be shipped, usually by gondola, from ore bins rather than stamp mills. If it was a rail served stamp mill, the concentrate was still likely bagged in box cars for transport to the smelter. The refined gold or silver bars from the smelters were the protected express shipments.
Multi-metallic ores were most commonly shipped in gondolas to smelters capable of properly processing the ore. This is still practiced today. I'm currently working on a project for the ASARCO Ray copper mine SE of Superior, AZ. The higher grade ore from the Ray open pit mine is shipped by rail to the smelter in Hayden, AZ. One of the other hobby magazines recently had an article about the specific dedicated gondolas used in this service. The lower grade ore is acid heap leached and the pregnant solution (copper bearing drainage from the heap leach) is electro-whinned (refined) on site.
Interestingly, the new Resolution copper mine, at Superior, AZ, is planning to transport their ore via a slurry pipeline. I'm also working on a proposal for a similar system for a new iron mine in NW Australia. Roughly 180 kilometers from the interior mine to the coast. We'll pump seawater inland to the mine and ore slurry back to the port.
Ray
Hello all,
Here in Colorado most of the gold and silver producing mines ceased operation by the 1920's. By the 1960's most mines had closed with a few exceptions.
Pre-Civil War the "raw" ore was transported from the mines via wagons or aerial tramways to structures that resembled wooden coaling stations. It was hauled out of the mining districts by wagon to the nearest railroad to be shipped east.
This ore would have most likely been bagged or put in barrels then loaded onto freight cars.
This "raw" ore was then transported to the ports of Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York or as far as Boston.
It was then loaded onto ships as ballast and transported to the smelters in Swansea, Wales.
After final processing it was either sold in the markets abroad or shipped back to the U.S. Surprisingly enough for a profit!
Post Civil War, was the heyday of mining in Colorado; 1860's-'70's.
Along with the mines came the processing facilities; stamp mills, sluices, leaching vats and smelters. All of these were established close to the mines. This meant that train shipments out of the Gold producing districts were primarily ingots, not ore, even back then.
The earliest railroads in Colorado were established in the 1860's. These were often narrow gauge and short lines within the mining districts.
The Denver & Rio Grande was established in 1870. The DRGW provided vital link from the mining districts to Denver and points east.
In the time frame you are talking about; 1940's-'50's I suspect that gondolas or hopper cars would have been used from the mines to the refineries.
Beyond the production facility the ingots would have been transported by freight or mail cars.
Modern mining transports the ore from the mines to the refineries via conveyor belts. The output is still ingots or Bullions rather than raw ore.
Low grade ores like copper, lead, zinc and molybdenum are still transported by hopper cars to the refineries today.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
DeeCee Shovelling the ore into a boxcar seems to be a poor way of shipping it. Is it reasonable to assume that it would get bagged and stacked in a boxcar that way? Why else would there be doors at the bottom of a stamp mill that would appear to be for loading a boxcar? What else might they be for? This is the picture I found. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loading_D%26RGW_boxcar_with_gold_ore_from_truck.jpg
That pic is one I was thinking of as I was reading through this. Sounds like the operation in BC was very similar to how ore was handled in Colorado's San Juan mining districts. Generally no bags, with the ore being heaped in two piles inside the boxcar, one over each truck.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
mlehman DeeCee Shovelling the ore into a boxcar seems to be a poor way of shipping it. Is it reasonable to assume that it would get bagged and stacked in a boxcar that way? Why else would there be doors at the bottom of a stamp mill that would appear to be for loading a boxcar? What else might they be for? This is the picture I found. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Loading_D%26RGW_boxcar_with_gold_ore_from_truck.jpg That pic is one I was thinking of as I was reading through this. Sounds like the operation in BC was very similar to how ore was handled in Colorado's San Juan mining districts. Generally no bags, with the ore being heaped in two piles inside the boxcar, one over each truck.
I'd doubt that photo is of a regular operation. More likely a "one-off" operation by a very small minimg outfit. As JJ noted, a full fledged mine would use ore bins if shipping raw ore. Anything coming out of a stamp mill is going to be ore concentrate in bags or, again as JJ noted, barrels. Ore concentrate is too valuable to put in an open gondola. Ingots wouldn't be shipped from a stamp mill. Prior to today's modern mills, ingots would only be shipped from the smelter/refinery.
Many modern mines combine the mine and processing mill into one site. Conveyors may be used from the mine's crushers to the mill at underground mines. One of the longest conveyors was from the Henderson Molybdenum mine near Empire, CO across/under the continental divide to the Mill in Summit County, CO. Unfortunately, Freeport MacMoRan just recently announced that the mine is closing. Shorter conveyors are used from the underground mine at Barrick's Cortez Hills gold mine to the processing mill at their Pipeline open pit mine. You generally won't see conveyor systems as often at open pit mines since once they have the ore in the up to 400 ton haul trucks, it's just as easy to have the haul truck feed the crushers at the mill.
Ray,
I suspect that if the mining industry had boomed in the San Juans after WWII, yes, things would've been more mechanized. However, from what I know about what actually happened and what equipment was available, ore shipment in boxcars remained the primary means of moving it. It was archaic, but it worked. Most of the operations were small and their operation intemittent, because the price of metals variaed enough that it was sometimes simply unprofitable to work the mines.
In the case of mines around Ouray, most did not have direct rail service. Thus the need to bring the ore down to the RR by truck. It was a similar situation in Silverton, given the demise of the Mears lines that earlier directly served many mines.
There is a very similar pic in Robert Grandt's Narrow Gauge Pictorial, V. III, on page 108. An even older truck is shown loading ore into boxcar #3052 in 1934. Pages 128-129 show an accident involving #3339 at Ouray that tore the boxcar open, revealing the piling of ore in a heap over the trucks.
Page 149 is another shot of the same scene cited in the previous LOC pic, but closer. The wheelbarrow used to move the ore to the heaps over the trucks is more clearly visible.
Thanks for all your input. I think, in this age of automation, it's hard to wrap one's head around how much manpower was involved in getting things done in "the old days". I was struggling with the inefficiency of the whole operation, including using a whole boxcar to heap ore onto the floor. I guess, since I don't have a prototype that I'm replicating, I can use anything from conveyors to a tipple, or dump trucks to a team track to get my ore out. Although, since it is a model railroad, it woud be more fun to use railcars!
DeeCeeI guess, since I don't have a prototype that I'm replicating, I can use anything from conveyors to a tipple, or dump trucks to a team track to get my ore out.
DeeCee,
That's all perfectly OK to use in my book. I was just being clear about what was done vs what might be done. I actually have a lot of what might have been done on my layout. It assumes continuation of more intensive mining around Silverton and some limited modernization.
This is a pic of my Gold Prince Mill, where the track had a pretty standard loading dock, but ore was generally still shipped in the boxcars.
This pic look down from the tramway that serves the Haymarket tramway at the bottom of these lines.
The Haymarket was kitbashed from 3 of the Grandt Line Silverton Ore Bin kits. It loads "special ore" for the AEC into gons and hoppers via hoppers.
Close up of the bins.
My dump truck that serves the team track customers