We went and saw the remains of the Belmont Mill.
On site, there was some sort of support building. Nobody knows what this building used to be.
Same with the remnants of this wooden structure:
Due to vandalism and age, there were pieces from the mill all over the site:
Inside the mill, however, was a steam-driven wheel that controlled and powered some of the processing.
On the Society of Industrial Archeology Fall Tour (2007), we had the opportunity to tour the Belmont Mill. I believe I have posted about the mill in the past.
Strewn about the mill’s property were several cars from the 1960’s. Each of them was flipped upside down and had been shot repeatedly. It was a shame to see, but it was interesting that the same pieces were stripped from each car (like the drive shaft).
These cars may have served some other purpose, perhaps holding something down or as markers of some sort. Each one was in a similar orientation, and minus the bullet holes, were in decent shape. Each car had been placed on its roof, rather than rolled over by some obnoxious teenagers.
I don’t know the story of these cars, but I took their photos anyway.
Thank you for reading my post!
I was able to attend the Society for Industrial Archeology’s 2007 Fall Tour to Ely, NV. Part of this tour was exploring the Nevada Northern Railway, which was being restored for a tourist destination.
I have posted several times about the Nevada Northern Railway. This time I will post a few photos from inside the blacksmith shop.
No blacksmith shop would be complete without an anvil. Who knew anvils were used for more than dropping on the foes of Bugs Bunny?
There was a fume hood to keep the smoke and fumes away from the blacksmiths. By burning coal, this room would quickly fill up with black, sooty smoke without it!
There were several furnaces. Furnaces would be used for heating parts so that they could be shaped, and also for heat treating finished parts.
Finally, the highlight of the tour was the steam powered forge. Steam would increase the pressure until a mechanical hammer was propelled outwards to contact the material to be forged. Likely, this material was hot-worked (meaning the metal was above its recrystallization temperature), which explains its location in the blacksmith shop instead of the locomotive shop.
I hope you enjoyed this post!!
As part of the Society for Industrial Archeology Fall Tour 2007, we traveled to see the Ruth Mine.
I had to do some digging on this topic to figure out my own notes. I had listed that the Ruth Mine was being torn down. This is partially true- the Ruth Mine Headframe was being torn down. The land belongs to Robinson Copper, and they are expanding their facility adjacent to the old Ruth Mine headframe, and thus, it is being torn down.
Here are some photos of the headframe in 2007. It’s a shame to see such an elegant structure come down, but it belongs to Robinson, and they can do what they want.
Next to the headframe was a storage tank of some sort. I don’t know exactly what this did, but it likely held the ore until it could be moved by the Nevada Northern Railroad. The first few pictures aren’t that impressive- but then when you see the people standing next to the tank, you’ll see that this was an exceptionally large structure.
Also, there was a large shed on site. It is unclear what part of the mining operation occurred in this shed.
I hope you enjoyed my post!
As part of the Society for Industrial Archeology Fall Tour (2007), we toured the Nevada Northern Railroad, including their railyard. I’ve posted several times about some of the neat things we saw, but here are some projects that were in the works while we were visiting.
There was a crane bucket for repairing areas along the track:
There were three diesel locomotives that were on track to be restored. I only got the tag from one of them (I didn’t know much about locomotives back then)- Southern Pacific 4303.
There was also a water tower. I can’t remember, but this might have been in use (already restored).
I hope you enjoyed my post!
As part of the Society for Industrial Archeology’s 2007 Fall Tour, we were able to tour the Robinson Copper Mine near Ely, NV. As part of the tour, we got to climb up and look at a mining haul truck. This is a medium sized haul truck- it would fit in the bed of the larger ones.
…and a fail for scale:
Here is a saturated photo of the instrument panel. It looks like that of a regular truck, so I can drive it, right?
Oh yeah, there’s some hydraulics too. I’d have to figure out which buttons controlled those:
My partner up on the haul truck. It was an exceptionally cold day, and so were were bundled up tight. We even stopped and bought more coats it was so cold.
A few more SIA members on the truck:
I hope you enjoyed my post!
As part of the Society for Industrial Archeology Fall Tour 2007, we got to see the guts of a sanding tower as used in the railroad industry. This sanding tower was a work in progress, and was being restored by the Nevada Northern Railroad in Ely, NV.
Sanding towers were used to dispense sand to locomotives. The sand was poured into the locomotive and then dispensed on the railroad track just in front of the wheels should the locomotive have to climb a steep grade.
This sanding tower used steam power to turn a winch that moved sand upwards.
The sand dumped into a chute that led to the locomotive.
Inside the sanding tower, you can see the winch and the lift buckets for moving sand.
The winch is shown here:
I hope you enjoyed my post. I have some neat stuff to post over the next few days, and I hope you’ll check back often!
Experience Your World
