What sort of cars were and maybe still are used to haul bauxite from mines in the US? Just curious because I know there were some loaders on a section of Central of Georgia in south Alabama that were for bauxite. I just have never seen any mention of the type of rolling stock used to transport this material. I do know most of it was used in refractory brick making operations and not aluminum production. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
now i must step into the wayback machine. in the late 60’s the PC got solid trains of the stuff off the mopac via the a&s at E. St. Louis. it came out of Bauxite Arkansas from Reynolds Aluminum in privately owned covered hoppers. it went to northern New York, I think the destination was Watertown up on the St Lawrence river where cheap hydro-electric power was available to run the smelters.
grizlump
upon further thought, i remember the product we hauled was called alumina. it is processed from bauxite. sort of a concentration if you know what i mean.
grizlump
I did some quick research via Wiki & Google - the United States apparently never had much in the way of Bauxite mining, and has very little now (some mining in Arkansas and Texas was mentioned) - several different graphs of World Bauxite production didn’t even list the United States. Apparently the US imports (and has done so in the past) most of it’s Bauxite from Austrailia, the Caribbean and South America
I think this is why I can find very little on the subject when I search. However, I grew up in an area of SE Alabama that did have active bauxite mining and a section of the CofG (later Southern RY) did service some loaders. There was also limited iron ore mining and loading along this line at one time I but can find no info on how this stuff was transported. I may have to ask around the CofG or Southern Historical groups. Thanks for the help.
Most bauxite used in North America come from Brazil and other south american countries. Most aluminium plants are located were cheap electricity is available, habitually hydroelectricity. As grizlump pointed out, historically it’s the reason why many of them are located in Quebec, Canada. Roberval Saguenay is a private railway that mainly move bauxite from Port-Alfred to Alcan facilities in Saguenay (now Rio Tinto Alcan, an australian owned company). I remember to have seem a lot of ribbed 50’ covered hoppers lettered for Alcan few years ago).
Here’s an interesting little video about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC2qHtLV7yo
According to the video, alumine is ship in cylindrical hoppers.
Matt
Interesting video, the RS Gray & Yellow scheme was new to me & I like it. The loads & cars are unique as well. Thanks for sharing it!