This is an education in itself!!! Thanks...
Bob
Certainly mining supplies and miners came in as the original roads were all built mostly for the sake of the gold and silver rushes, (1870's-1900), but in the time span that many modelers model 1900 - 1960 the roads hauled rarer, specialty ore out often to concentrators in Durango and Montrose,etc. This was not an eastern standard gauge road hauling 100 car trains of ore or coal.
They hauled small amounts (tens of tons). Some ore trains could make real money for the road that were only 6, 36 foot gondolas in length. This was especially true of uranium and vanadium ore during the 1939-1955 time frame. WWII saw a whole new mineral group run on the D&RGW and RGS. Coal and limestone were the most heavy of materials and quantities moved for sure, but uranium/vanadium ore traveled on both roads from about 1905 until the 1960's maybe only one or two gons per train, but the payoff for the miners was more than a 10 car train of coal! The stuff was usually hauled down grade from the higher mines west of Durango where the uranium and vanadium was found in the Morrison and Chenley rock strata layers. Lead and zinc ore and later, potash were also hauled. You never hear about these, but they were there. By the mid 1960's almost all the uranium and vanadium ore mining in Colrado ended as the ore was now rather poor and Utah and North Western New Mexico were the uranium/vanadium capitals with ore of a richness never seen in the U.S. Trucking moved virtually 100% of this later ore product.
Gold and silver died as a big Colorado mining industry after 1940. The good ore just played out. With gold forever fixed by the government at $32.00/ounce and several tons of the weaker ores producing only a couple of ounces, all but the best grade ore mines closed real quick after 1932. Silver became a joke after the panic of '93. when one ounce of silver fell to only 40 cents, making that big old 1894 U.S. silver dollar worth 36 cents in silver content! It never came back to even 50 cents per ounce before no one even bothered with silver anymore. The classic photographic images are found in the book "The Denver and South Park Line" where after the panic of '93 huge stacks of 100lb ingots of silver were left on station platforms unguarded! If it wasn't in the form of coin, it wasn't worth stealing.
The narrow gauge was there to haul whatever showed up and in whatever quantity was presented, regardless of percent grade whether it meant double or triple heading or shorter trains with more trips. In their position of ever dwindling traffic and improved roads and trucking they refused nothing. Regardless of why the raods were built, they morphed and changed with the times and the materials going in and out of the region.
As noted before chose, your era of modeling, choose your mineral based on that era and build your mine and buildings in relation to what might have actually existed. then. Some research is usually demanded if one is to model somewhat prototypically. Just remember, no one has a gun to your head demanding purity. The object is to have fun and enjoy the MR experience.
Side note: I have seen a ton of mines on hundreds of pikes, but I never seem to see a tailings pile, which in real life represented 99 % of every thing that was ever removed from the mine. The same is true for any mineral mining operation. The bigger mines that concetrated and refined, especially gold and silver would have vast piles of rock debris near the mine.
Richard
If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed
The narrow gauge was built into the mining areas to bring supplies in, not to carry the product out. If you want proof, just check the grades on the Cumbres and Toltec segment of the Grande. In toward Durango and Silverton, 1.5%. Out from Silverton to the rest of the world - 4%!
Then agricultural and oil products started moving east...
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Mines and their operations are a varied as can possibly be imagined. Most mineral mines in the US in the 1800's and even into the early 1900's were small single owner affairs or maybe two or three partner operations and just mined ore and nothing else. These small ore mines usually hauled or shipped their ore to larger mines or "concentrators" where the lower grade ore was reduced to a concentrated product and then shipped to a separate refiner in a second trip or haulage.
Only the largest operations, owned by big firms, had stamp mills or concentrator facilities. These were the folks who made all the money as they usually crushed their own ore and concentrated it. In only very few cases was the ore also refined at the mine. In such cases, these facilites took in and refined other small mine's products which were shipped or hauled in via rail. Thus, these big operations often incurred zero shipping costs, especially if they refined too. The latter all-in-one facilities were very rare, but also very big operations. (50 acres or more.)
The type of ore determined the process. Gold and silver, mercury, lead, zinc and such could often be concentrated and even refined at the mine rather inexpensively. Other ores might allow for only concentration. Uranium, vandadium, tantalum and zirconium were the types that could never be refined to the metal at any mine. These latter ores all went to concentrators from the mines so that all that raw ore rock debris could be left as waste in the state that mined the ore. Concentrates were then often shipped a thousand or more miles to the refiners.
Most narrow gaugers are dealing with gold and silver mines, especially if modeling in the late 1800's. This means smallish mines worked in the wild with a maybe a single concentrator/refiner facility within 100 miles of the mines. Later, the narrow gauges roads hauled coal and more exotic mineral ores. These exotic ores were often shipped at least 100 miles to a concetrator and then shipped out to far away refiners.
The steps in Colorado in the early 1900's when radium brought 100,000 1910 gold dollars per gram was as follows. The Uranium ore was mined, on average about 20 miles from the nearest narrow gauge railhead. Pack mules or oxen pulled wagons carried the ore to the railhead. The railroad carried the ore to a concentrator that reduced the ore by weight to about 100th the weight. (1ton of ore = 20lbs of concentrate). The bagged concentrate was invariably sent to Standard Chemical in Pennsylvania where 5 tons of concetrate was converted to 1 gram of radium and 1 ton of uranium oxide for the chemical, photographic, glass and pottery industry. (colorant).
Zirconium, tungsten, tantalum, vanadium and molybdenum were all equally hard to refine to their metals, but the ore was usually of a much higher yield per unit weight than uranium or the ultra rare radium.
Figure out what you are going to mine and haul. A large gold or silver mine with a stamping mill and refining capability usually has no need for a large capability railroad spur. They are shipping ounces!
Some mined product is good to go, as mined. It is shipped ready for use with zero refining. Coal, limestone and granite are prime examples.
Looks like I'm gonna' need a lot more Box cars!!!
Thanks again, Mike... Bob
Bob,
Doubt that the Rio Grande ever shipped sand in the drop bottoms. There wouldn't be half the load left when it arrived as leaky as they often were for coal.
Somewhat surprisingly, I can confirm that boxcars used in sand service. IIRC correctly, some of the tackboards supplied with Blackstone boxcars may have one to designate it for sand service.
That reminds me...I need to get out those things and start putting them on boxcars now that I have some circulating in dedicated services like ore, household goods, sand, etc. They're small, but they help make each boxcar stand out as used for specific traffic.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Thanks, Mike... that's the information I needed. 'Looks like I'll be buying more boxcars, as well as a few more drop bottom's for coal and sand.
For this specific mine, the National Belle, like for many of the operations around Silverton, boxcars were typically used to transport ore. The car would be loaded with wheelbarrows, with a pile deposited over each truck.The ore was often wet when brought up from the mine, so putting in a boxcar helped hold the heat in it a little better. It would still sometimes freeze, but there wouldn't be any additional moisture from rain or snow. And high grade ore was somewhat protected from pilferage.
In many cases, the cars were overloaded, based on a collection of waybills for the Silverton RR that are in the hands of collectors. I have a spreadsheet of these that is in the Files area of the Silverton Yahoo group. The agent documenting the load would write in an estimate on the waybill, then that number would be adjusted and noted on the waybill once the car reached a scale, most likely the one in Silverton or otherwise in Durango. The rate charged would then be adjusted similarly to take account of the discrepancy.
Gondolas were usually used to bring in coal and timber, like mine props. Low grade ore would sometimes be shipped in a highside gon, but this was more trouble for the mill to unload, because this generally wasn't a mechanized operation and the contents would have to be lifted over the side of the car.
On the Rio Grande, the drop bottom gons were generally restricted to coal service. Many were committed to company service, bringing coal that could easily be dumped at coaling towers, thus saving labor costs, while justifying the extra expense of maintenance versus the high side gons. They also tended to leak, not too big a problem with coal in company service, but a big deal for those shipping valuable ore.
So, odd as it may seem, most ore in the Silverton area and other areas the Rio Grande NG served went to the mill in boxcars, so you really do need lots of 3000 series boxcars. It is easier to model loaded cars with boxcars, as all you have to do is note that it's loaded on the waybill, where with open cars, you actually need to simulate the load with something to be plausible.
Quick question.... if the mill did not have "stamp" and "separation" equipment, what was the most likely mode of transport from the mine to a stamp mill/concentrator? (Drop bottom gondola's; High side Gon's; or special "Side Drop" cars???)
I probably will not have room to include a stamp mill section to my mine operation, so I better stick with Plan A. Thanks again everyone...
I want to note that the picture cited above is a very early one. I'm not certain about the presence of stamps later on, but it does look like there may a spot for them in the raised portion of the downslope structure.
Due to fire, reconstruction, whatever, this structure below the mine changed quite a bit over the years. There were also, I think, originally drifts that went into the side of "The Knob" as it was called, in addition to the shaft served by the hoist, but these quickly played out.
The Campbell kit is very adaptable to different situations on the layout. A trestle to a waste/slack pile is only one option and with a little imagination can run different directions from the mine to suit your needs. Here's a pic of mine:
Another thing to note is that plants that process ore are usually referred to as a "mill." Sometimes these are co-located, as they are at several sites around Silverton and sometimes the mill is at the railhead, with an aerial tramway connecting it to the mine up on the mountain. The mill will then receive supplies and ship them up to it via the tramway. Some studies indicate that 2 or 3 cars of supplies were sometimes needed for every car of concentrate (the partially refined ore from a mill) shipped, so don't forget the all important inbound traffic, too.
wp8thsub Here's a photo of how the prototype for the kit looked. It sat quite a ways above the tracks and didn't load directly into rail cars from the structure you have. http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/mining/silverto.html
Here's a photo of how the prototype for the kit looked. It sat quite a ways above the tracks and didn't load directly into rail cars from the structure you have.
http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/mining/silverto.html
Thanks for the link, Rob. It shows what I suspected. The building down-slope from the hoist house is a stamp mill. The uppermost level would have housed crushers to break the big lumps of ore down to smaller lumps. The second step would have been the location of the actual stamp mills, which would have crushed the ore down to powder. The last slope, down to track level, would have housed the separation tables where as much base rock as possible would have been removed from the high grade concentrate. That concentrate probably left in bags in a box car for a smelter elsewhere.
Most of us think of mines as producers of trainloads of product. A precious metal mine's output was measured in ounces. (Troy ounces, granted - but still ounces.)
Rob Spangler
Thanks, Guys... that was all welcome information!
There are a couple photos of the model on the Cambell website:
http://www.campbellscalemodelsonline.com/
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
What he said. I believe the ore would be hauled away in either gons (low grade ore) or box cars sometimes with guards for high grade ore. One of the mining experts can jump in, but I think from here it would go to a stamp mill and then to a smelter, though I think there were integrated mill/smelter operations and some integrated mine/mill operations. Somewhere I think I have a picture of a large mine that milled it's own ore, but also received ore from other mines to process. So ore was going in and out so to speak. What was interesting about is that it was served by a couple of competing railroads on different levels of track.
Ah, the red mountain mine. I built this one years ago. The tall portion in the middle is the hoist house, where everything went down into or up out of the mine. The sloping roof to the right is where the hoist machinery would be. The kit is designed to be elevated above the track. The square door to the left of the hoist house is where a small trestle for ore cars to come out of the mine and dump into rail cars. There is a small shed and receiving dock that would be for supplies, that would be at the left of the ore dump facing the track. At the very left end wall is another door like the ore opening, with another small trestle for tailings to dump. This is how I built mine, except I raised the long sloping roof to the same height as the hoist house. I have built many of Campbells kits. For me they have the clearest instructions of any kits I have built. As for the rest of the inner workings I am not sure, but it is modeled after the National Belle Mine on Red Mountain in Colorado. Nice looking model.
Phil, CEO, Eastern Sierra Pacific Railroad. We know where you are going, before you do!
I need a little information about a mine operation building like thsi one (a Campbell kit) so it will look half-way prototypical. Does the ore arrive at this structure by ore carts directly from the mine, etc.? After the ore arrives, is the elevated part of the building a 'stamp mill', or what function does it serve?
Would ore coming from this mine facility be processed in any way, after arriving at this building?
Thanks for any pointers you can give... Bob