Interesting industrial operation. Does this still exist? There is snow on the ground in May...so it must be Colorado!
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What is the history of this operation? One (or two) of you have recently shared photos of this operation and it peaked my curiosity. I found little except to indicate that the former railway has been converted into a conveyer belt. As sad as this seems, the unknown questions are .. when was it closed? When did it open? What was used for power over the years, and any other notable points? This is an obviously underdocumented railroad.. thank you very much for sharing.
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| Posted by EINovoa on January 4, 2009 | |
These motors all worked for the Henderson Molybenum Mine in Colorado. The rail haulage system has been completely replaced by a belt system. When it was working the trains ran robotically except when in the loading drifts where a miner would run the train and his helper would load it from the raise above the track. There is a DVD out about the railroad which was shot soon before the haulage belt was put into operation.
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| Posted by Mark on September 24, 2011 | |
Henderson Mine began production in 1974 and is still operating today under the management Freemont McMoran. The mine is located on the eastern side of the divide and the mill site is on the westrn side of the divide; they are connected by a 15 mile rail system (initialy now conveyors). The mill has 4 primary grinding mills and a flotation system for extracting the Moly Dissulfied. It has always been a primary molybdenum Mine. The haulage system of trains ran untill about 2000, when the new conveyor system dubbed Henderson 2000 was instaled and replaced the haulage system. I was a Loci Electrician, Trainer and supervisor during my time in the locomotive shop. I also became the electrical supervisor over the Henderson 2000 project and commisioning. We had alot of fine techs that worked on these trains and kept them running alot longer than they were projected too; so kudo's goes out to the techs and mechanics that worked on them. The locis were ASEA class 40 locomotives that ran on 1400vdc/600vdc overhead cantenary system. They had regenerative brakeing that used dc choppers to put power back into the trolley system when the trains were going down the 3% grade to the mine.How they did this was flipping the fields on the dc traction motors thus making them generators and then feeding the power from these motors to the regen chopper and back into the trolley. We had done alot of mods on these trains to convert them to american made parts instead of the european parts they had this lowered cost and improved quality. They were switched from relay control to plc control and solid state electronic control. They were fully atogenist in the end with no drivers but all controlled by radio frequency. The reason why the trains were done away with was not because they were not useable anymore it was because a new orebody was found deeper in the mountain and the rail system could not be used to retrieve the ore there, so conveyor belts were the transpotation of choice. The PC2 conveyor which follows the old railroad track is the worlds longest continuous conveyor it is 10 miles long from the east side of the divide to the west side of the divide.It takes 4= 2750hp motors to turn the PC2 conveyor, so it is quite impressive as well. There are only 2 locomotives left from the haulage fleet, one is located at the entrance into the millsite in the Williams Fork valley and the second one loci 17 is located at the Minning and Railroad Museum in Colorado Springs Colorado. I had the privelage of supervising the move and installation of this loci and 2 orecars at the museum. If you are near colorado springs take the time and visit the museum. I hope this answere some of the questions that were asked in this comment site.
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