I'd be surprised if he can tell you that!

By the way, here is an interesting website: http://majesticrail.com/products/new-and-relay-rails/

That outfit sell both new and used rails. Unfortunately, the smallest they have is 60 lbs. - kinda heavy for a really small mine. Some small mines in the past have used 20 or 30 lbs.

Regards,
Fred M. Cain

yea, i can tell you where it came from. we got about 100 feet from a scrap yard when we got our mine cars. they gave it to us with the cars. we got about 500 feet from a slate quarry out in eastern pa that was being scrapped. they were going to charge us scrap price but when they found out all the work we were doing restoring the mine cars and equipment they gave us that also, we had to go rip it out of the ground and cut it up into 20 foot lengths to get it out though. tough work. set the field on fire twice with the cutting torches and chop saw. and we got the rest as a trade from the no.9 mine tour. we traded a mantrip car that was donated to us that they needed for the tour. so we took about 200 feet of rail in return. we have mainly 25-30 lb rail and a few pieces of 40.

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Excellent question Fred. It would be great to see this miner utilize rail haulage especially since he has already invested in a rail-based mucker. Installing trackage may well be worth the expense in the long run, rather than expending the time and effort to push an unwieldy ore car around on rubber tires. If he does plan to install a motor as Chris mentioned, he should assess whether this method really is much cheaper and efficient than installing trackage and hand tramming. Another concern would be whether his motor generates toxic fumes in the confined corridors of an underground mine. In the old days, miners used wheelbarrows in tunnels where it was not feasible or economical to install track. I've personally seen wheelbarrows still in use at smaller mines today.

Regarding your original question, I would only advocate purchasing rail already for sale, that would otherwise be sold as scrap, or from a mine that was threatened with permanent closure. If these conditions are not met, I cannot rationalize disturbing any historical site. Rail that could be put to good use should be, but not at the cost of destroying industrial archeology.

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

Did mines use the different sizes of rails like railroads do? What I mean is, did the mines use the heavier rail for the "main line(s)" and the lighter rail for the "sidings" where the coal was loaded into the cars (that is what I call them ,because they make a train, so why not?) for the trip to the surface?

yes

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Harmer Steel in Portland sell 12lb and 20lb new and relay rail as well. Roll Models in Fresno sell 8lb and 12lb new rail as well. Check their respective websites for details. 1.5 ton Mancha mine Motors run on 8 lb and down to 8ft radius curves. A one ton minecar such as one of these 18 inch gauge cars I measured at Leadville can run on steel strap c/s screwed down to 4x4 lengthwise timbers in place of steel rails.

Chris
in New Zealand

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Mike,

I agree with that statement 100%. We definitely need to stop the wanton destruction of these historic sites. But we also need to help out the small miner in need. How? Scrap yards might be one way to go but if too many people do that, will it encourage scrap dealers to plunder historic mining sites to get scrap rails? I honestly don't know what the answer is.

Today everything and anything that has steel in it is expensive it seems. Back when I was a kid you could go in a supermarket and all the products were in steel cans. Now they're all plastic. Probably gonna give us all cancer too!

Similarly, the cost of rails has probably gone ballistic. Can't use plastic rails, though. For some tasks you HAVE to have steel.

Regards,
Fred M. Cain

if you needed, couldn't you use strap rail? (like the early rail, steel strips over wood.

The guy told me that there are already strap rails in the mine but the wooden stringers are so badly rotted that they are unusable. I would like to see him get some good 20lb steel rails if he can find them at a price he can afford!

By the way, if anybody is on the Mojave Underground forum,

http://mojaveunderground.com/forum/foru ... p/35-Mines , I also have a "Mines with tracks" thread going on there and a couple of people have posted a couple of really nice pictures showing western hard rock mines with tracks. Check it out! I actually learned about our forum here from the Mojave Underground which I'd found first.

Regards,
Fred M. Cain

why not just replace the wood stringers and reuse the steel parts?

Hi Fred,

Actually i doubt if anyone that owns mines but doesn't work them would be willing to sell the tracks. The reasons for this would be, #1: If they was to sell the rail then more than likely they'd just sell them for scrap and nothing more and #2: if they were to sell the rail, then later on if they decided they wanted to reopen their mine then they'd find themselves needing to replace the rail they just sold. I believe i am with the others here, id say try your local scrapyard as they could probably make you (or him) quite a deal on used track with pricing being a little above the 'spot price' of steel or iron. Ive got quite the bargain on a few steel and iron items i needed for the mine im working on now from the local scrapyards here with one i got quite lucky on since i was buddies with the former foreman and that just carried on to the takeovers of the new crews and foreman.

As for the batteries in my trammers, those originally, i believe, was 6V industrial or forklift type batteries, since i don't believe back when they was operating the mine that actual 12V propers was in use yet. As for me, i just replaced the old batteries that was in the trammers( they was totally deteriorated) and replaced them with 4 of the 6V solar type deep cycle batteries which i think fairly soon ill be replacing those with forklift batteries.

As for my rail, they originally had it two different sized rails inside of one another, meaning, the smaller rail directly inside the bigger rail, however, the rail sizes are 8 and 12 pound respectively.

Dawna

Actually if im not running the trammers when im working the mine, ill just throw a charge into the batteries to keep them topped off. If im using them at the time then ill just recharge them for a few hours after im finished running them. Runtime, id say, is around 6 or 8 hours, depending on the loads i put onto them. Should i need to recharge them in the middle of the day (which, so far ive not had to), then ive got plenty of other things that we need to do in and around the mine.
However, i have let the trammers just sit for days (not running of course) and they would still start up and run.

They originally was 6V industrial, i think, but when i pulled them(when i was redoing the trammers) they was so deteriorated it was really hard to tell but i replaced them with the 6V deep cycle solar type batteries.

Dawna

Actually its quite interesting how i was able to pull off the refining. The immediate refining that i can do right at the mine involves a small iron ball rock crusher and a small heap leach and barrel operation. The heap leach i have fixed on 10Mil construction plastic laid out on a 5 foot by 5 foot pond with the 'catch' pond being a plastic barrel below the leach pond with a PVC pipe with screens on the ends running between the pond and the barrel. I have the ability to 'neutralize' the acid i use(after the leaching) so any environmental hazards are eliminated but the method i use more is with my oven. I DO have my leach pad well protected from animals and whatnot that might want to wander around there also. Anything larger than that operation then is sent to a nearby mine that processes copper and i have agreements with them to process the "harder to process" stuff since they have the proper means to do it. Sometime ago, they sent surveyors out around the outskirts of thier mine to find any mines that wasnt in operation or wasnt under claim or ownership in an attempt to find a good source of zinc that they use at thier mine to process copper. Those same surveyors dropped by my mine and was telling me about how the mine they was working for mine was looking for a source of zinc and since my mines are full of zinc and the one im working on now is full of zinc, i decided to go have a talk with them and make some sort of agreement: all the zinc they could pull out of my ore for free in exchange for processing my ore. The agreement was made so once every couple of weeks some ore is shipped over there with one of their smaller trucks(small dump truck).

Dawna

Fred,
Try here on Discover Live Steam rail for sale, 12lb comes up regularly and there is a listing for a heap of 16lb in Arizona now.
http://www.discoverlivesteam.com/discov ... dex.htm#16


Chris
in New Zealand

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and pray tell, what do you use your oven for? I found your explanation confusing because Mine (possessive) and mine (the in the ground one) are spelled the same. Could you please explain that with punctuation? I had a hard time following. If you could, please explain like you would to a visitor to the mine.