I have been going through some old negatives and found a shot I took as a kid, sometime between 1960 and 1963, of a long conveyer belt along a CN rail line in northern British Columbia.
I had a model railroad then and was snapping interesting rail line shots whenever I could. I am not sure if it was near my home in Kitimat or taken somewhere else during a vacation.
I remember wandering what the conveyer was used for then and I am even more curious now. Thought then ( when I didn’t have the skils) and now (when I am not modelling northern BC) that it would make a neat trackside model.
Was it anywhere near a quarry or a mine? It seems odd to have to convey ore right alongside a much cheaper process, but…maybe that’s what this is all about. The conveyor was pre-existing, and became too expensive and unreliable, so it appears to have been broken into sections, as we can see in the distance, and the newer rail line was produced. I have heard of conveyor systems that go on for several km, and they must be a bee you gee gee eee are to keep operational during the winter.
If it was in or around Kitimat, which I suspect, the rail line and the conveyer belt were likely contemporaries, since the line was built in the early 50s to serve the town and the aluminum plant as they were being built. The bauxite ore came in by ship from Jamaica.
There was a small “sandhill” in town which served a small cement plant but as far as I can remember more than 40 years later, (we moved to Ontario in late '65) there would have been no need for a conveyer there because the line to the aluminum plant went past the area where the cement plant was.
It does seem to be in disrepair and that deepens the mystery.
Maybe it was there before the train line went in and has nothing to do with the railroad?
If it ran perpendicular to the track, I could see it having a train use, but not parrellel.
Definetly a mystery.[%-)]
Because of the cover over it, it must have been for something dry that had to be protected from the elements, such as cement. Gravel would not have needed a cover. I’ve seen a picture of a very similar conveyor somewhere else on this forum a couple of years ago, or maybe in a magazine, but don’t remember for what they said it was used other than a dry product that had to be protected from the weather.
It could be that the conveyor terminated at a hopper facility adjacent to the track somewhere nearby. If the material was to be shipped any distance, then any amount of moisture is a loss in terms of revenue, and most contracts for either concentrate or ore stipulate a maximum and minimum bound for % of H20 content. So, the cover would be an absolute must if the operation had already incurred the cost to regulate the moisture content.
It does look like it was built there, not prefab(not in those days…) otherwise it might have been brought in in pieces to be installed in its intended location later, and was just left on the side for storage.
A possible on the conveyor – aluminium plant is the clue
Aluminium is made by electrolsis and requires bunchs of electricity. The Alcoa plant near me uses a similar conveyor to move lignite coal from the stip mine to the boilers for the generators.
The conveyor is several miles long as they are currently mining about 15 -20 miles from the electric generator.
