"Tony.Brewis" wrote:
>
> Railways and mines have long been interdependent, as was noted in the title
> of Mining Journal, which for years was called "Mining Journal, Railway and
> Commercial Gazette".
>
> Many large open-pit copper mines, such as Bingham Canyon, owed their
> existence to the large scale methods allowed by the use of railways in the
> mine. Big haul trucks are a comparatively recent phenomenon. When I went to
> Cuajone copper mine, Peru, one of Asarco's operations, in 1981, the
> majority of the ore and waste was still being hauled out of the mine by
> rail.
>
> The Kiruna iron ore mine in Sweden (capacity 25 million tonnes a year) owes
> its existence to the railway.
> ...
The same is true for the huge opencast brown-coal mines in Germany
(the triangle between Cologne - Aachen - Duesseldorf)
As far as I know, railway systems are no longer used to transport
the coal out of the pit, but there is still an important railway-link
between the northern and the southern part of the coal-field
(the 'Nord-Sued-Bahn') operated by the coal company (RBW).
A few years ago, you could still see narrow gauge trains with
electric locomotives hauling coal directly from the excavators
to the power-plant in Berrenrath (close to Cologne).
Greetings
Harald
--
Harald Finster
-
an oxymoron: "This system runs under NT"
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