# WHAT ELSE IS MINED BESIDES COAL, GOLD, SILVER?



## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

What kind of ore is mined? Other than Gold, silver and Coal?....

I have a good spot on my layout wihere I could put a mine. I could use my old coal tipple as a ore tipple.

Got any suggestions?


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## bottino (Feb 7, 2008)

Remember that layout in Tucson that has an open pit copper mine.


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## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

whatelse gets mined? - well, marble, lime, diamonds, uranium, bauxit...


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## Ron Senek (Jan 2, 2008)

Molybdeum used for harding steel also iron ore


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

The CMBY RY serviced the "Dissizz Mine", "Dats Mine" and "Whuts Yorezizz Mine", as well as the "Taint Mine", "Nofaulta Mine" and "Nauchors Ore Mine". All of which were small claims in the vast deposits of Unobtainium below the Westend Loopback. Unfortunately, the entire deposit was contanimated by "Uselessium" which rendered the ore totally useless. So the miners just enjoyed watching the train haul empty hoppers in and out all day.


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## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

Gilsonite.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Salt and Borax and phosphate


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## Richard Smith (Jan 2, 2008)

Uranium. Colo. ng RR's hauled it during WWII. There was a toxic cleanup at a mine just adjacent to Durango, Colorado in the 1980s (?). The tailings from the mine were a common sight there for years. Also I believe the C&S hauled some as well.


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

The real answer is everything you use that isn't grown. Copper, lead, zinc, and all the elements that make up the screen of your TV to give all the colors to name a few. Everything we come in contact with is ether grown or mined. 

Other things are limestone for cement, quartz sand for glass, clay for ceramics. Gem stones are mined. Perhaps a diamond mine would be a spectacular addition to a railroad. 


Chuck N


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## George Schreyer (Jan 16, 2009)

We create nothing ourselves. We either grow it from the ground, dig it from the ground, pump it from the ground, collect it from the surface or filter it from the air. Look around you. EVERYTHING came to us in one of these forms


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

There were a lot of tungsten mines in Nevada and the Mojave desert, often near the same areas where silver or gold was mined.


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## xo18thfa (Jan 2, 2008)

I have never seen anyone model an oil field. Is oil mined?


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## Dave F (Jan 2, 2008)

~ Iron Ore (whic is processed and shipped as taconite) 
~ Bauxite (aluminum ore) 
~ copper 
~ tin 
~ lead 
~ zinc 
~ magnesium 
~ silica 
~ boron 
~ gypsum 
~ dolomite 
~ sulphur 
~ manganeese 
~ molybdynum 
~ chromium 
~ tar 
~ titanium 
~ uranium


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## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

Posted By xo18thfa on 01 May 2010 07:18 PM 
I have never seen anyone model an oil field. Is oil mined? 

Del Oro Pacific has an oil field.









Del Oro Oil Field


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

I was using mining in the generic term as coming from the earth, regardless of whether it is solid, liquid, or a gas. To be more precise, if we use it and it isn't grown it comes from the earth, whether it is pumped, mined, or inhaled.

Chuck 


Most of the railroads that we model owed their existence to mining. The narrow gauge railroads of Colorado were build to service the mines of that state: lead, zinc, silver, gold, and later coal, molybdenum and uranium. Many of the eastern railroads got their start moving coal. Things from the earth whether agricultural products or geological materials were the root cause for many if not all of our railroads.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

JJ 
One of the most over looked mineral... er many pick it up, but when they ask are told it's; Leverite....yep... leave 'er right there! 

Why not look at mines in your area, and there are many and see what tickles yer fancy? 

http://www.mindat.org/ This site is a little awkward to navigate, but type in your county in the search and you should get a list of mines by district. 

Explore and open up all the links, I get lost in there usually in the topos.... 

John


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## Spule 4 (Jan 2, 2008)

There was a NG line in the UK that was a lead hauler, cannot remember the name now?
Asbestos, it is mined. 

Also Treacle.


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

John:

If you are modeling a mine you really have only two things to consider. Is it going to be an open pit (including strip mines and quarries) or an underground mine? You can't tell by looking whether an underground mine is for diamonds, copper, lead, zinc, silver, gold or any other commodity. The external appearance is pretty much the same. There will be a head frame if the ore body is below the surface or an adit (a tunnel with one opening) if the ore is straight into the side of the hill. There will be some buildings around either of those structures and a loading dock of some form. 


The open pit or strip mine also moves the material being mined to a plant of some sort and then to a loading dock. Mines are designed to move the ore or commodity from the ground to a customer. The commodity really doesn't matter. The process is pretty similar in all mines.


It can get a little hairy if you want to model the inside of a mill where they process the ore. In that case every mine is different.

Chuck 


You can always create a mine that produces: boron, uranium, nitrogen and potassium. Those of you who know your elements can figure out the ore being processed in this mine. My late father, a chemistry professor, used to use this compound in an exam. He said that it is a future fuel that will solve all of our energy problems.


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

I will post a picture tomorrow of the area. Then You will see what I got.


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Why not mine Unobtanium, that magical metal that makes cars drive faster planes fly higher and always adds a few zeroes to any price tag


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## Dave F (Jan 2, 2008)

I though that was only mined on the planet Pandora...


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## vsmith (Jan 2, 2008)

Unobtainium is a term I've heard since at least the 1980's refering to very expensive and hard to find materials used to build mountain bike frames and those guys got it from the aerospace guys going back to the 1950's. best to my knowledge it refers to when titanium was very much in demand to build air and space vehicles but the most common source for it was then behind the iron curtain, and the Soviets didnt play well with others so gettin ahold of titanium was extremly difficult, very expensive and utilized a bit of clandestine business dealings, as a result you never got what to needed hence the term Unobtainium, at least until new sources were found in the 60's and 70's, at least thats the story i got.


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

Upsidasium.


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## Pete Chimney (Jan 12, 2008)

If one is modeling a NG line in Ireland or Wales or Scotland one could realistically include a peat mine. Peat is used for fuel, albeit a low quality fuel. 

But if that is what is available, then one uses what is at hand.


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## Richard Smith (Jan 2, 2008)

Even ice was "mined" at one time. Cut in blocks from lakes and streams it was transported to ice houses for use through the summer by wagon or sleigh and even railcar although the trip from source to destination would be relatively short.


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By xo18thfa on 01 May 2010 07:18 PM 
I have never seen anyone model an oil field....



Just give me time. I had a single well w/ pumpjack on the old layout. 











Plans on the new one call for 3 or so derricks, yet. Part of the 'problem' is that a 72 foot derrick is 3 feet tall in 1:24, and the engine house, etc is about 2' long. Basswood is kind of expensive, comes in 2' pieces, and I don't have a table saw to rip my own, yet.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

You could always employ selective compression and use a slightly smaller base and 2' tall would still be impressive.... from the where's there's a will dept.


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Oh, they WILL be built, and at least 2 as UNcompressed as I can manage. I've actually considered using 3/8" steel angle and 1/4" flat bar to build the derricks.... But it would take a LOT of drilling and #3 screws that way. 

One of the truly interesting part to build will be the crown blocks... with derricks 3' tall they will be pretty much staring you in the face... so do you stay simple, or go hog wild?


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## cape cod Todd (Jan 3, 2008)

My wife and I while in Ireland one time took a ride on the offalay bog train in the center of the country. They still harvest\mine peat and haul it via a narrow gauge train to a peat fired electric plant. They had lots of cool specialized equipment. These peat fields where open mined nearly as far as the eye could see. The tour guide said it could be seen from space. I was going to set a peat field up on my layout but to do it right you would need alot of space and damp black mud\soil. I have seen some neat photos of industrial sites on layouts that have sprawled and taken over just like they did in the old days. The late Peter Jones had some great factories and such. 
Another mineral for mining, I can't remember the name of it but Wolverine of the Xmen comics has it in him...... Adaminium ??


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## xo18thfa (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Mik on 02 May 2010 01:13 PM 
Posted By xo18thfa on 01 May 2010 07:18 PM 
I have never seen anyone model an oil field....



Just give me time. I had a single well w/ pumpjack on the old layout. 




Plans on the new one call for 3 or so derricks, yet. Part of the 'problem' is that a 72 foot derrick is 3 feet tall in 1:24, and the engine house, etc is about 2' long. Basswood is kind of expensive, comes in 2' pieces, and I don't have a table saw to rip my own, yet.


































Hi Mik. You must have found that website on Pennsylvania oil fields. The guy that runs that website is Mr Sam Pees, super nice guy. He sent me a better copy of the Jarecki wood derrick. They had a 60 foot version too.

Pennsylvania Oil Fields


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## Spule 4 (Jan 2, 2008)

Oil modelling? Some in Lego- 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9wyKVDJt0&feature=related


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Sorry, I just have to point this out...

The bigger scales (1:24, 1:29) sure do "POP" visually... but when you go to model something "real" you find it to be more of a "KABOOM" size-wise...

I want to model a 3/4 roundhouse (48 stalls... yeah a BIG one!) for my 1:32 scale RR and started to draw plans... lets see... 3-ft turntable, 3-ft apron (between the TT and the doors to the stalls) and each stall would be 3-ft long... Hmmmm.... ended up with a 15-FOOT diameter building. OUCH! I am too intimidated to attempt to build something that size! In 1:24 scale it would be 20-ft diameter!

"Large scale" is a whole lot bigger than one realizes when just looking at the track and a toy train. Adding "industry", even a mine... can require major real estate!


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

My (very) small mine complex is about 30 square feet (5 x 6).... It fills most of the bottom loop. I have to do some creative landscaping to keep it from overpowering the rest of the layout

http://www.mylargescale.com/Communi...fault.aspx


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## Gary Woolard (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Mik on 02 May 2010 05:13 PM
My (very) small mine complex is about 30 square feet (5 x 6).... It fills most of the bottom loop. I have to do some creative landscaping to keep it from overpowering the rest of the layout

http://www.mylargescale.com/Communi...fault.aspx 


Sorry Mik, I keep coming up with "page not found."


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

Me too


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

If this doesn't work, you'll have to go to the buildings forum on your own.....
mine!


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## dana (Jan 7, 2008)

Jade usually found in old mine workings


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Posted By George Schreyer on 01 May 2010 06:18 PM 
We create nothing ourselves. We either grow it from the ground, dig it from the ground, pump it from the ground, collect it from the surface or filter it from the air. Look around you. EVERYTHING came to us in one of these forms 
I'm sitting here with my daughter on my lap thinking you're wrong about this George


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

I agree 

Enjoy your family. The trains are just an accessory.


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## Paradise (Jan 9, 2008)

Truffles.









The French use pigs to haul little mining trucks to fill up the hoppers pulled by Corpet Louvet locomotives.
They fetch quite a lot by the ton.

True ;-) 

Andrew


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## silverstatespecialties (Jan 2, 2008)

You can sometimes guess what was mined by looking at the color of the tailings, especially those treated with cyanide to extract gold (will usually be yellowish-colored tailings). Across the desert Southwest, copper mines will have greenish-tinged tailings; lead & zinc mines have dark-grayish tailings, sometimes just gray in color; gypsum mines in Southern Nevada frequently are accompanied by reddish soft rock, sort of like a carrier for the gypsum minerals that are white. 

Some hard-rock mines (especially those that did not treat their ore on-site) will feature LOTS of broken rock as tailings, and sometimes you can see the quartz remnants in them to indicate that the miners were after gold. However, many mines also removed various other ores as byproducts that also tallied towards their profits (if any), such as lead, zinc, copper, silver, etc... 

I've seen a couple of Dolomite mines that had light-colored rock & dirt as tailings. 

Turquoise mines are scattered throughout the desert Southwest as well, and I've seen various-colored tailings, depending upon the surrounding geology, but typically lighter-colored rock (including some near-white colored rocks, like at the Himalaya Mine near Halloran Springs), but also sprinkled through with some reddish-colored rocks. 

You could get some small samples of landscape rock from your local hardware store, and crush them with a large hammer to grind them into smaller pieces to resemble tailings rock from a hard-rock mine that used blasting powder/dynamite.


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## silverstatespecialties (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Totalwrecker on 01 May 2010 07:50 PM 
JJ 
One of the most over looked mineral... er many pick it up, but when they ask are told it's; Leverite....yep... leave 'er right there! 

Why not look at mines in your area, and there are many and see what tickles yer fancy? 

http://www.mindat.org/ This site is a little awkward to navigate, but type in your county in the search and you should get a list of mines by district. 

Explore and open up all the links, I get lost in there usually in the topos.... 

John 

This is an OUTSTANDING resource site, I've also spent hundreds of hours scouring this website for specific info! It has great photos not found anywhere else, not only of the mines themselves but specifically of the minerals mined. Fantastic site!

John, since Copper tends to be KING in Arizona, keep in mind that most of those large open-pit operations actually started out as "traditional" small-scale operations, involving adits (horizontal openings commonly referred to as "tunnels") and shafts (the vertical holes in the ground), as well as the occaisional incline shaft (as it says, an incline that involved a skip car on rails to haul miners in & ore out).

Arizona is a mecca of sorts for mineral miners, as remnants of mining are all around you in your beautiful state! Prescott & Jerome are two obvious reference sources, as well as Magma and all the other large copper operations, which were ALL served by significant railroad operations. David F. Myrick has published a series of books that are fascinating and a wealth of resources titled "Railroads of Arizona." He also published "Railroads of Nevada & Eastern California" that have significant references & photos of mining railroads, and how most southwestern railroads were built to service mines.

Another good resource is the forums at Ghosttowns.com, several posters are from Arizona and frequently post photos of Arizona ghost towns & mines...some of the more popular ones are near Phoenix & other large cities: http://forums.ghosttowns.com/.


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## San Juan (Jan 3, 2008)

Copper is always a good one to mine.



There was an old copper mine way up the mountains (11,500 feet) somewhat near our place in Colorado. 


On one trip to the old mine site, I took a few pieces from the massive tailing pile to use on our layout mine. The green colored ore was clearly copper, but then there is a lot of orange/yellow ore which is likely just spoil.












Here is a closer up view of some of the tailings:











Don't forget the prospectors


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

That's a great looking mine, Matt! I like the prospector, too.


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