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The Backside of Yuejin Coal Mine |
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Although we had visited what we supposed to be the only (and limited) 600mm gauge surface workings of the main coal mine of the Shibanxi system at Yuejin, quite by chance we discovered they also have a much larger spoil tip system operated mainly by battery electric locomotives which we were given permission to visit and these are a few stills from our video record. Since we haven't started editing yet, I can't say how many of these scenes will make the final cut of our Shibanxi Heaven DVD. Spoil wagons are hauled by cable through a 500 metre long tunnel, on exit they are picked up by a battery powered locomotive.
The winding house is well kept:
The larger rocks are hauled up to a rock crusher:
The fairly standard Chinese tippler is used and the stones fed into the actual crusher, the dust emerging lower down where it is reloaded for tipping.:
By the time all the stone has been crushed, visibility is reduced to a couple of metres:
Most of the spoil is propelled directly to the tipping point:
The broad gauge line carries the tipper which is pushed/pulled into a new position when required using the skip gripper to connect it to the train:
During our visit there were two in use, one was perched above a lower level where the coal vultures waited:
The other one unloaded directly to a flooded canyon, the tip blocking it from discharging the water. In the background is another spoil tip used by small scale mines in the area....
Click below for other parts of our June 2007 report: |
our Shibanxi Heaven DVD our Shibanxi Heaven DVD |
