Queue management in mining transport systems.
Anyone who has traveled from a busy international airport will appreciate the necessity for queue management. Aircraft are stacked in the air to circle until it is safe to land,passengers are sent along parallel taped off corridors before they get to passport control. Queue management prevents chaotic congestion at loading and delivery points.
Before the coming of the modern road and rail systems many mining and quarrying products were delivered to processing works by pack animal. Queue management will have been useful at offloading stations. There is a situation on Dartmoor which may have been designed for queue management of pack animals.
The Kings Oven area is at the centre of one of the largest tin deposits in Europe. Pack animals
must surely have been used to transport the heavy ore. Tin ore from deep mines and stream works needed to be transported from source to hard track and on to the processors, tin and bronze smiths.
The logistics of the Dartmoor tin trade may not yet be fully understood, but is is probable that there was some kind of system. Hard tracks needed to be laid for wheeled transport. Prepared raised tracks for pack animals would avoid bogging down, and manpower sledges may have been used to get the precious ore to the waiting pack animals. Evidence of all three modes of transport can be found on Dartmoor.
The pack animal traffic into Kings Oven may have reached congestion levels at certain times of day. Rerouting for queue management would have been useful. An elevated embankment coming in from the North walla Brook and Upper Bovey river goes straight to Kings Oven, or traffic could have been rerouted on a half mile detour around a large embanked enclosure to arrive eventually,at the same place. It may be that a route outside the embankment would have been used in dry weather, but if conditions were wet and boggy, the pack animals could take advantage of of the dryer going on top of the bank or causeway.
The enclosure in question is clearly visible on Google or Bing maps (SX 674 811), but it is unlike any other field or enclosure on Dartmoor. In fact its shape makes little sense as a field or enclosure, but the embankment makes good sense as a queue management system.
There must be many such queue management systems in Britain. Is there anyone out there who can suggest a similar situation.
Roger Hutchins.
P.S. I have an old photo of mule trains queuing at a mine in Colorado, and have prepared a highlighted map of the Kings Oven layout if anyone is interested.
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