# Winter 2009-2010 at the Copper Rail Depot, CC-AK



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

It's time to begin a new thread for the Copper Rail Depot (CRD) at CC-AK (Copper Center, Alaska). We have long-since transitioned into winter, of course, even though winter did not officially begin until 21 December. In the period mid-October, when the snow permanently holds to the ground until the end of December, the lowest temperature I saw was minus 37F.  Snowfall was somewhat above normal in that period, forcing me to have the driveway plowed three times--which is normally all that is required for an entire winter. Of course, the outdoor railway is long-since buried in snow and otherwise frozen-in. Today's daylight was five hours and 26 minutes. Tomorrow we will gain 2 minutes and 39 seconds. In another three weeks the sun will once again re">ach the angle where it is finally touching the CRD property for the first time since early December. In another four and a half months it will once again be possible to operate the outdoor line. With any luck, maybe a bit earlier. 


As I do every Christmas, I put out my holiday trains at the CRD Saloon. Here are some of the pictures from the bar for this season's decorations:
Bar Christmas tree with tin train in background: 

     
The very next day I removed all the train cars from the bar for another year. The regular display is now back in place.


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## Nicholas Savatgy (Dec 17, 2008)

What i wish to know, is why all your bottles are upside down? not a USA thing to do?







In Ny OUR BOTTLES ARE STRAIGHT UP LIKE US


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Nicholas Savatgy on 02 Jan 2010 09:27 PM 
What i wish to know, is why all your bottles are upside down? not a USA thing to do?







 In Ny OUR BOTTLES ARE STRAIGHT UP LIKE US










Not sure what you mean by that. However, those bottles are resting on measuring devices for an exact measurement and unit count. I found I had to do that because one bartender a few years back was going through way too much product. My system works well. No complaints from anyone.


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## Nicholas Savatgy (Dec 17, 2008)

Just kiddin we do the same here, Cant trust those barkeeps he he he







givin the bar away for tips


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This has been a normal winter business-wise: Slow but not more so than in most previous years. Thus, it seems likely I can proceed with plans that involve an expansion of the bar. The new section will be designed INSIDE to resemble the studio version of The Brick Tavern of mythical Cicely, Alaska from the 1990s television series "Northern Exposure." There IS a difference from the REAL Brick and the studio version. The one seen on TV was shot in a studio in Redmond, Washington. Here is a view of the interior studio version of The Brick:   Below is the a partial shot of the interior of the REAL Brick Tavern. It is long and narrow. The producers of NX never shot the interior of The Brick.
  
The producers shot the _exterior _of the REAL Brick Tavern in Roslyn, Washington. You have already seen plenty of pictures of that one:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I do not have the resources to re-create the exterior of The Brick, HOWEVER, the addition to the CRD _interior,_ which will be added to the west-end, WILL strongly resemble the studio version of The Brick as seen on TV:

Here you see the studio plan. The addition to the CRD, in keeping with the new Cicely-based model railroad theme, will be based on THIS layout: 
 The foundation for the addition should be in place by late next summer season. The following year (2011), if all goes well, we will begin framing in the addition. These changes to the original CRD will, of course, significantly alter the existing model railroad.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Looks great Ron. 

Keep the updates coming


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 02 Jan 2010 10:31 PM 
I do not have the resources to re-create the exterior of The Brick, HOWEVER, the addition to the CRD _interior,_ which will be added to the west-end, WILL strongly resemble the studio version of The Brick as seen on TV:

Here you see the studio plan. The addition to the CRD, in keeping with the new Cicely-based model railroad theme, will be based on THIS layout:
  

I had been planning this addition to the existing CRD for some time. However, it was not until the last month that it occurred to me that incorporating significant elements of the studio version of the interior of The Brick as seen on NX would work out very well for my tourist-related railroad theme while still accomplishing my desire to add floorspace for live events, such as band and dancing.The segment you see here will be extended on the left side to allow room for a band shell/stage and some added dancing space. The part on the far right will be kept as close to the original studio plans as possible. The exterior, however, will not.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The track layout on the west end (seen here on the left side) will not be affected next season because only the foundation will be in place by then. However, my previously-announced expansion plans on the east end, seen here in orange, will likely proceed either toward the proposed location of Grand Forks OR far east along the likely east extension seen here in purple. That expansion will require approximately 300 more track feet should I proceed as planned. 
The CRD building extension will be to the left of the red tracks that terminate on the left (west side). This extension will probably eliminate the west wye, substituting a large, internal loop overhead in the new section.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 02 Jan 2010 11:45 PM 

  
I just noticed a problem with the _*ALCANEX*_ map. The color coding on the key does not match for the 2008 Phase II line, which is *RED*. It must have appeared different on the other computer model. Anyway, the *RED line *is the old *ALCANEX mainline*. Not shown on this map is the original CRNW Railway line.


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

How did you get Studio Plans for the inside of the Brick? Do you have a on line source for blue prints?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By John J on 03 Jan 2010 01:51 AM 
How did you get Studio Plans for the inside of the Brick? Do you have a on line source for blue prints? 

Remember these are the STUDIO plans. They are NOT the existing Brick Tavern in Roslyn, WA. In any case, no, I did not get these studio plans on-line. I will be publishing my modified version except I have not drawn them up yet. But what you are seeing is CLOSE !   Maurice Minnifield at the KBHR studio, the REAL Brick Tavern in the background. 
clicking onto the picture takes you to the official Barry Corbin site. Barry was Maurice Minnifield in _Northern Exposure_.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

And there it is on the Cicely town model . . .


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

So is this what Alaskans do to keep from going mad during the winter, or what they do because they go mad during the winter?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Torby on 03 Jan 2010 07:51 AM 
So is this what Alaskans do to keep from going mad during the winter, or what they do because they go mad during the winter?
I originally bought the old Copper Center Bar and renamed it the Copper Rail Depot with the idea that it would house an indoor historic model railroad with an eye toward attracting tourism. As the model evolved, so did the bar itself. The bar became almost too small to meet the needs I had set out for it. There was simply not enough room for either the expanded model railroad with its many historic framed photos and antique items that are a part of the bar while still taking care of the locals. For forty years the bar worked well as a place where one could go to play pool and listen to juke box music. That has not changed. However, with the much longer winters than summers, it is becoming increasingly clear that to attract enough customers to pay for the costs of keeping the property alive, it is necessary to feature some forms of live entertainment. The bar was not designed for this. For the last three years I have been considering an expansion to allow for a more suitable dance floor area plus room to feature a live band without having to remove the pool table. The plans I have shown here may very well take years to implement, but I am proceeding with the first step, hopefully this summer season, economic conditions permitting. People here do need a place to go to escape cabin fever--a very real phenomena. In the long run, this will probably be the answer for many of them. After all, one can only make so many trips to Anchorage. 


The problem then became finding a theme that would serve to direct the nature of the expansion. This plan allows me to combine tourism with my local business in a way that appears to work very well. If the expansion works out well, I can then go back to the old bar area and build in a kitchen area--something I have been seeking to do for several years. We here in Alaska are subject to rather strong swings in the economy, what we call boom or bust. Like most everyone else, we are now on the low end of the curve. This makes any expansion highly tentative, but I have always been an optimist.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Meanwhile the Christmas train is gone and the Great Northern passenger consist once again has been backed into place just in front of the Northern Pacific passenger consist which sits in parallel behind the GN. These are the two trains that will be the first to run, behind the Milwaukee doodlebug test runner, sometime in April.   As with most of my images on this thread and others. you may click this one to view a much-larger version


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Rolling stock is stored in three places on the CRD property besides the CRD itself. The Cicely model town and its underlying Cantwell RR yard stores much of the stock, essentially iced-in for the winter. The unheated Uncle Nicolai Store holds much of the rest--the stock which has not yet been unpacked for use on the model railroad system, including several locomotives awaiting conversion to battery power. The rest is stored in one of my two home offices, as seen here. These are the three AKRR SD Mac 70s and the FA-FB-FA Milaukee Road units.  Several other locomtives with built-in batteries are also in storage here.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

In April these battery-powered locomotive units stored here will be brought to the bar, cleaned up, recharged, and set in readiness for the spring runs that begin once the ice is off the tracks, about mid-April. By that time all of you state-siders will be well underway with your outdoor operations. Probably even the Ontario garden railroads will already be running.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Ok... 

...so what of the layout in the bar? I seem to remember that you cannibalized parts of it for the Cantwell yard. 

Does it get tore out? 

Reworked just enough to not get in the way of the new addition? 

Expanded into the new addition? 

And depending on the above...does it get set up in such a way as to allow for independant (wintertime) operation with out sending the trains out into subarctic temperatures?


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## NTCGRR (Jan 2, 2008)

I love those Mac's 
Such a good idea whith the sun room layout.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 03 Jan 2010 06:39 PM 
Ok... 

...so what of the layout in the bar? I seem to remember that you cannibalized parts of it for the Cantwell yard. 

Does it get tore out? 

Reworked just enough to not get in the way of the new addition? 

Expanded into the new addition? 

And depending on the above...does it get set up in such a way as to allow for independant (wintertime) operation with out sending the trains out into subarctic temperatures? 

This is a map of the existing overhead rail within the CRD Saloon:  Once the new section is completed--two to four  years away--this section will be largely if not completely torn out and redone to reflect the larger area.  This is necessary because the upper left corner, which is the NW, is the point where the old bar merges with the addition. It opens up at the point where a large curved trestle representing the Gilahina now stands. Also, the Phase II parking lanes will have to be removed and then probably re-routed to the new bar area.  The entire overhead support system will probably have to be re-designed. 


I have other items I have wanted to add to the existing layout, which is the historic town layout for the old railroad town of Chitina. The addition will finally give me that opportunity. Also, I will be able to make the entire overhead model more visible, probably by creating one or two new overhead viewing areas. It will be able to operate independent of the other system. While that is actually the case now, the set up is inconvenient to operate in that way. 









1 = CRNW Railway Engine house



2 & 2a = CRNW depot


3 = Hotel Chitina


4 = Chitina Cash Store


5 = Commercial Hotel


6 = Overland Hotel


8 & 9 = Saloon, pool & card room


NORTH is up. West is Left.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By NTCGRR on 03 Jan 2010 07:03 PM 
I love those Mac's 
  Such a good idea with the sun room layout. 

Great engines, aren't they?  Those AKRR SD Mac 70s are the heart of the Phase II system. These are battery powered by Dave Goodson. Numbers 4000 and 4001 work in tandem. Number 4002 I acquired from someone who gave up g-scale model railroading shortly before he passed away.  These are all smooth-running, powerful engines.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Three and one-half months to go before the start of model railroading season ! Whoopee !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is the view from the solarium (the place where I winter-over the fushias for the beer-garden) looking straight east toward Mt. Drum. As you can see, the ground is very dark. It will remain so for the next three weeks when the sun finally strikes the ground again for the first time in about six weeks. The cloud lens formation is typical for that mountain just about any time of year. The temperature that day--three days ago--was minus 25 F. Click picture for a much-larger picture.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I set the digital count-down timer for April 15th, which is not only tax-day, but also the approximate time that it is first possible to at least consider operating the model railroad outdoors. As of today, January 4, it turns out that April 15th is exactly 100 days away.
When the new addition to the bar is built--this is the sketch-up view of the NW corner as I currently envision it--I will be able to happily run even the largest model trains indoors. One thing I learned from both experience and from all you modelers on MLS who have already been through this is that wide curves and wide switches (be very careful which ones you choose) are the way to go. The all new indoor overhead set-up will definitely take this into account ! 

 No windows or doors shown. I will have few if any along the NW corner for security reasons. In the background you can see the red section that is the original and existing bar. Click for larger view.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Although it will undoubtedly take years to complete the proposed CRD addition, I already have certain problems the address. One of them that immediately jumps out is the Phase II ALCANEX line, seen here in red. As you can see, the existing wye, which is integral to the entire line (can't complete the loop without it) falls within a part of the proposed addition. The old bar is in light grey. The pool table room is in dark grey. The remainder of the proposed addition is in light blue.  Obviously the Phase II line will have to be temporarily re-routed during construction of the new pool table room. But after that, I will have the luxury of a whole new indoor area in which to run that line. Most everything you see in red will be moved into the new area. The green line represents the old Phase I CRNW line. It, too, will have to be re-routed because part of it stands in the way of the construction area. The NW corner will have to be removed. It would make more sense to take this entire section down and start over. That is exactly what will happen.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

In Storage Comparison:


More winter storage images:   Bachmann 4-4-0 and Bachman  2-6-0:

  I acquired the 4-4-0 this winter and the 2-6-0 last winter. I purchased the 2-6-0 for the Phase III Klondike Mines Railway project, of which construction could begin as early as this next summer season. The 4-4-0 will probably be used strictly inside the NEW bar area on some kind of simplified loop.  One does not get many opportunities to see pictures of either model close-up. Now is your chance: (click).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 04 Jan 2010 05:17 PM 


In Storage Comparison:


More winter storage images:   Bachmann 4-4-0 and Bachman  2-6-0:

    
These two models have very similar features, although the 2-6-0 is clearly larger than the 4-4-0, which I have renamed the "Chief Nicolai of Taral." It appears to me that these two could be operated in tandem with little difficulty.  Has anyone out there tried this ? I would like to see the 4-4-0 leading the 2-6-0 pulling a small passenger or mixed consist inside the new bar. What you think?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This is one of my two PA-1 locomotives. It, along with its accompanying FA-2 of the same paint scheme--BN Green-- await battery installation before becoming a part of the ALCANEX model railroad. In the rear is an LGB WP & Yukon steel caboose. (click)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Facing the Burlington PA & FB is this CP E-8, followed by a CP FA-FB. Both await battery installation in order to join the ALCANEX model railroad group (click). These have been here since 2007 and will probably remain in "winter storage" at least another year or two: Too many costly projects ahead of them.  A complete set of CP heavy weights is already out there on the line, currently stored in the Cantwell Railroad Yard & Industrial Park. I pull those six units out using one or two of the other engines already on the line from time to time. The visiting Canadians always appreciate seeing those.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

View of sketch-up drawing showing original CRD in red and the proposed addition segments in green:
I have had other expansion proposals on the table in the past, but it turned out that economic conditions were not right. This one can be built in segments, starting with the foundation this year.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The new front entrance, like The Brick, will be angled and with double doors. It is also likely the that windows on this south facing side will strongly resemble those of the original Brick Tavern.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 04 Jan 2010 07:57 PM 
The new front entrance, like The Brick, will be angled and with double doors. It is also likely the that windows on this south facing side will strongly resemble those of the original Brick Tavern. 
  

One feature of this proposed addition is that the floor for the front section will be two feet higher than the rest of the bar. One thing this will accomplish is to bring the overhead rail--which will run along the west wall of the bar--to the five-foot level where it can be more readily-viewed by the public. West is left. You are viewing the SW corner of the proposed addition to the CRD.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

100 days until outdoor model railroading season COULD begin here in Copper Center. ALSO, 100 days until April 15th !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 05 Jan 2010 12:26 AM 
100 days until outdoor model railroading season COULD begin here in Copper Center. ALSO, 100 days until April 15th ! 
Here is one of the photos from last year of my first run of the season for a full train consist. . In 2009 it occurred on the 23rd of April (click image for larger one):  At the time I first wrote this post I was under the impression that this was the earliest date I had run the tracks. As it turns out this was not true. Check out the next post.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

It turns out that I made my FIRST RUN of the season of 2009 on April 11. So my count-down to April 15 is reasonable. This year I will try to beat that by at least a day or two. April 11th is so far the earliest I have operated a train on the outside line since the first one went up in April 2001. 
 Scenes of the Milwaukee Road doodlebug making its first run, April 11, 2009, on the Phase II line.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Last year I still had some alterations, partly consisting of re-routing of track, on the outdoor layout in order to operate the trains more efficiently. That is all behind me now. The mainline was completed with the inclusion of the Cantwell extension and the Cicely Bypass that directly connected the mainline to Cold Pass without going through Cicely. Thus, for all purposes, I am done--IF I chose to be, which is not yet to be the case. 
  This map reflects those upgrades plus it shows the proposed Phase III extension from a point just beyond Cantwell, winding around underneath the Cantwell yard via the Bridge to Nowhere, then over to the proposed Sulphur Springs Wye where the line will terminate just beyond it at the Grand Forks site. That is the extent of my model railroad work that I foresee for the upcoming season. 
The Sulphur Springs Wye/Grand Forks (Phase III extension) is the closest point the tracks will reach the ground, although the entire line will still be supported above the ground on a "ladder" support. This will mark the beginnings of the Phase III segment, which is intended to be serviced primarily by 1:20.3 rolling stock. 

For those of you not familiar with this setup, the Phase I is the original historic Chitina Local Branch of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway. It is built at the highest level, starting in the bar at the seven foot level. About a foot and a half below that is the newer Phase II line which starts at the CRD back bar, then heads outdoors where at one point it is running about four feet _below_ the Phase I line as the Phase II line approaches Cicely.


Another roughly four feet below Cicely is the Cantwell RR yard, _directly_ underneath. Finally, the Phase III extension will work its way around the yard, gradually dropping in elevation, until it reaches a point approximately 1 1/2 to 2 feet _below_ the Cantwell RR yard, making Cicely-Cantwell a three-tier operation. That lowest level will also serve as a railroad siding for the KMR rolling stock, whenever that is added. At this point only the KMR locomotives are here, but except for one piece, these remain to be converted to battery power before they can be used. That is still at least one or two additional seasons away.


In any case, my point is that this is a multi-level line that ranges from approximately 10 feet above the ground on the _CRNW Phase I_ line, to 7 feet above the ground on average for the _Phase II_ line, to an average of 3 feet above the ground for the Cantwell RR Yard segment and ultimately to 1 1/2 feet and less for the lowest level --the KMR or _Phase III_ extension-- that remains to be constructed.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Why the bar expansion now, you ask. After all, the economy is not that good. That is true. The number of out-of-state tourists will almost certainly be relatively low here in Alaska, although I have never derived much revenue from _them_.   The most interesting stateside and international visitors are those who have an interest or tie-in to railroads in general and model railroading in particular--most especially those who know something about g-scale or are themselves participants in the hobby.  I don't see too many of those. 


I am in the early stages of working out a historic tour that ties in my location at Copper Center to the old Mother Lode Mine to the east of Kennecott. We will be doing some work on that project this year. But that is still somewhere off in the distance. Like my construction projects, it is one that takes a lot of advance planning. Of course, the existence of an expanded bar with more historic photos gracing the walls and a more visible historic model railroad would help _that_ project. 


But I am also looking at the increasing possibility that some form of in-state gas line will be constructed through the Copper Valley in the next few years. The original project--Fairbanks to Valdez as an LNG line--appears to be off the table for now. But is it ? We vote for a new governor next year. One of them has made his primary campaign issue that very line, which he states unequivocably must be built for the benefit of all of us Alaskans as a way to reduce energy costs while giving the State a new revenue source at a time when the Alyeska Pipeline may be seeing its final years of operation (more on that in another post). 


Aside from that is yet another proposed instate line which will likely go from Fairbanks, south to Glennallen, then west to the Beluga gas fields that currently supply Anchorage with natural gas. This is to be a two-way line. In the early years the plan is to supply Fairbanks with gas until the North Slope line to Fairbanks is built. THEN the line would be reversed to supply Anchorage from the North Slope once the Beluga fields are exhausted (as soon as 8 years away).  THAT project was itself put on hold for political reasons at a time   when we  NEED to have the availability of more energy in-state. Regardless, I am betting this second line WILL happen regardless and that it will go through the Copper Valley. 


If so, it is important that I already have the concrete foundation in place so that a bar expansion can be built in a matter of months because at the point where it is known that such a line will be built, the demand WILL be there.  So, I am proceeding with step 1--the foundation. If it is a slow season, it may take more than a year to complete the foundation, but it WILL happen because it needs to be in place for future demand.



The plan I have shown is based on what  available land I have for expansion  to the west. The proposed design, largely based on the fictional Brick Tavern of Cicely, AK,  maximizes this.  Undoubtedly elements of the plan will alter over time, but once I commit to the first part of the foundation, that is it. 



Thus we have two elements coming together at about the same time--an increased tourist load for the CRD based on the Mother Lode historic tour that is already in the works AND a natural gas line that may or may not happen. But I will be ready for it if it does.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

REFERENCE  MAP: 


Proposed Beluga-to-Fairbanks Natural Gas Line

  click for larger image


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 04 Jan 2010 05:22 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 04 Jan 2010 05:17 PM 


In Storage Comparison:


More winter storage images:   Bachmann 4-4-0 and Bachman  2-6-0:

  These two models have very similar features, although the 2-6-0 is clearly larger than the 4-4-0, which I have renamed the "Chief Nicolai of Taral." It appears to me that these two could be operated in tandem with little difficulty.  Has anyone out there tried this ? I would like to see the 4-4-0 leading the 2-6-0 pulling a small passenger or mixed consist inside the new bar.
*What you think ?* 


I have seen no comments on this one yet.  Anyone out there use either or both of these Bachmann models ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

During all of my adult life, starting with the lease sale to various oil companies of parcels along Prudhoe Bay by the State of Alaska in 1969 for about $900 million total, oil has dominated our Alaskan economy. 


In 1974 Alyeska built the roads and the camps that would accommodate 20,000-plus pipeline workers, including me, for the construction of the pipeline in 1975-77. It was the largest privately-financed construction event of the times, eclipsing anything which had ever happened in Alaska prior to that. It had long-term consequences that effected Alaska unlike any other economic event ever. 


Yet those times are almost over. Every year the pipeline pushes a decreasing amount of oil. Presently, it is just under 700,000 barrels a day. As it goes by Copper Center, just 100 miles from its destination at Valdez, the oil has already dropped to about 40 degrees inside that pipe. It is getting dangerously and ominously close to the point where it can no longer function. The latest best estimate gives us ten more years. I am far less optimistic. I believe that unless ANWR is brought on line within the next six years, there will not be enough time left to save the pipeline from becoming just another large industrial remnant of better times. 


Yes, I too am closely tied to it and always have been. My first _real_  job after leaving the Army in 1974 was working on that pipeline.  I knew it was a historic event at the time. I am sorry I did not take pictures while I was there. It was definitely a one-of-a-kind boom where money was practically flowing through the streets of every place even remotely connected with this project all throughout Alaska--just as it must have been during the glory days of the series of gold rushes that mark the early days of Alaska. 


In some ways the pipeline will live on after its demise if our legislators are successful in enshrining our Alaskan Permanent Fund into the Constitution. This will guarantee that the investments realized as a result of our early oil revenues will always go first to the Alaskan people. That remains to be seen, but we all want it. All of us, that is, except those too closely associated with government services, that ravenous monster that knows no bounds and recognizes nothing except the justification for an increasingly expensive and ever-growing bureaucracy. Every state faces a similar fate. For some, such as California, New York and Oregon,  the chips are coming due with no way to cover the bets. For us here in Alaska, we still have a chance to escape that fate.  



But the days of Big Oil are very obviously in decline for Alaska as the companies lay off an ever-increasing number of its workforce on the North Slope. ANWR may be a politically dead issue.  Even though we are no where close to running out of oil, politically oil production in Alaska is probably dead.  If so, then the writing is on the wall.  Yes it is true. It is almost over. My business is closely tied to it, as are most every one else's who operates year-round here in the interior. We Alaskans are only too fully aware that we must plan for  what is coming. Most of us are counting heavily on some form of natural gas line to replace it. However, the Trans-Canada Alcan line will likely never come to be. That is because Alaskan natural gas must compete with huge fields of cheaper gas in Canada and Stateside. No way. We can't do it.  Only an all-Alaska line has much of a chance of becoming reality, especially if we gain an export license so we can sell LPG to the Orient. That is where I am placing my bets, at least for now. 



Ten years. Maybe more. Probably less. That's it. That's all there is.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The previous project which even remotely touched the Alyeska Pipeline for economic impact and longevity was the Kennecott Copper Mine and its Copper River & Northwestern Railway. From early construction until its final demise, the project lasted 32 years--one year less than the present-day oil pipeline which has potential to last far longer. 



Just think, at one time, over seven decades ago, with the rest of the valley not even knowing, the engineers at Kennecott had already given up on any possibility of extending the life of the mine any longer. They knew that 1938 was it. Then the end would come, not just for the mine, but the railroad as well, and most of the economy of the Copper Valley with it.  The Alaskan residents did not have such a strong stake in Kennecott Copper as they now do in the oil which pumps out of the North Slope oil fields. In fact, most of them had no idea what was about to happen to their fragile economy. 



When Kennecott sent its final train load down the line on November 10, 1938, many people along the line did not realize it was the Last Train Out. There would be no other to follow. They thought that Kennecott would be back for yet another year. After all, the extent of the great Kennecott copper deposits was not pubic knowledge. But the valley was economically doomed until the oil pipeline came along 36 years later.  By the next year--1939--this would become obvious. 



The possibility to return remained at least until the railroad bed deteriorated to the point where it was no longer even close to economical to fix it. The last caretaker did not abandon Kennecott until 1952.  Even  years later in the late 1960s a latter-day mining company conducted extensive exploration with core sample drilling inside those same abandoned mines, especially on the Mother Lode side where it was still believed that a large vein of copper might lie hidden just out of sight of the old Kennecott company that no longer existed. 

 The abandoned Kennecott mill in 1946: Even then most everything was left in place--just in case.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Well...there is the natural gas pipeline project - the instate bullet line or (eventually) even the one headed out of state - but that remains tied up in politics and corruption. (I seem to recollect a recent news story where the guy running the instate project quit in disqust recently because things were so screwed up). The instate project does have the looming shortage of natural gas in the Cook Inlet area to get action of some sort forced before too much longer. 

There is also considerable oil (and a lot of natural gas) at Thompson Point...but, alas, the political mire there is probably nearly as deep as the one surrounding ANWAR, though for different reasons. 

As to myself...I am contemplating one of these solar heat pump thingies, as are a number of other people around here. Those do seem to show quite a bit of promise...


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 05 Jan 2010 08:32 PM 

  
PUMP STATIONS, Status as of June 2009: We are now running on FOUR pump stations out of the eleven originally built. That is because the average BPD is now 672,028 whereas the high point back in the mid-1980s was 1.2 million BPD. We anticipate dropping to the minimal amount of just over 200,000 BPD within 10 years. That is NOT good ! 

• *PS 1, 3, 4 and 9 operating*.
• PS 5 operating as relief station only.
• PS 9 on line with new equipment December 8, 2006.
• PS 3 on line with new equipment February 12, 2008.
• PS 4 on line with new equipment May 21, 2009.
• PS 7 caretaker status March 9, 2008, in preparation for
ramp down in late 2010.
• PS 2 ramped down July 1, 1997.
• PS 6 ramped down August 8, 1997.
• PS 8 ramped down June 30, 1996.
• PS 10 ramped down July 1, 1996.
• PS 11 was not built but has maintenance facilities.
• PS 12 placed in ramped-down status April 1, 2005.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 06 Jan 2010 12:08 AM 
Well...there is the natural gas pipeline project - the instate bullet line or (eventually) even the one headed out of state - but that remains tied up in politics and corruption. (I seem to recollect a recent news story where the guy running the instate project quit in disqust recently because things were so screwed up). The instate project does have the looming shortage of natural gas in the Cook Inlet area to get action of some sort forced before too much longer. 

There is also considerable oil (and a lot of natural gas) at Thompson Point...but, alas, the political mire there is probably nearly as deep as the one surrounding ANWAR, though for different reasons. 

As to myself...I am contemplating one of these solar heat pump thingies, as are a number of other people around here. Those do seem to show quite a bit of promise... 
Barring a miracle, there will be NO trans-Canada natural gas line out of Alaska. Why are we still fooling ourselves about this ? Your solar heat pump, whatever that is, will undoubtedly be of interest to individuals and maybe small businesses, but it sure won't help the Alaskan economy. 


That natural gas at Pt Thompson will be needed to feed our in-state natural gas line, but we really need to get going on that project, whichever version the State of Alaska chooses (I don't think a private entity is going to do it). Probably and hopefully that will be the B2F project that ANGDA originally envisioned some years ago.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I feel like I am leading a historic life here. Much like those early mining engineers who started their careers as surveyors for Kennecott or the CRNW Railway and ended them with those same companies 27 years later when Kennecott pulled out of Alaska, I too am watching history unfold, starting with the early days when those first lease sales made the news of the year for Alaska back in 1969 and started the ball rolling that led to construction of the pipeline in 1975-77. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of it, the total number of men involved in on-site construction over those few years exceeded 70,000. That is a HUGE economic impact, especially considering the almost unheard-of wages that this project brought with it. Well, it looks like I will be here to watch it all end in another decade or so. In a way, I almost hope so, just to be a witness to it.


On the other hand, I would REALLY like to see ANWR developed because THAT would add up to 30 more years to the life of this already 30-year old pipeline. Now THAT would be something ! Either way it will certainly be interesting times here in AK. 


But I sure hope we have something here in Alaska to replace that oil pipeline. Otherwise it seems highly unlikely that future generations not just here in AK but even stateside will fail to have opportunities I and so many others had. Not that I successfully took advantage of many of them. But that's another story.  A historic view of the pipeline shortly after completion near Tonsina, Copper Valley, Alaska, 1977. In the background are Mounts Drum, Sanford & Wrangell.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Your solar heat pump, whatever that is, will undoubtedly be of interest to individuals and maybe small businesses, but it sure won't help the Alaskan economy. 


One of the more promising and practical 'alternative energy' technologies. Two components to this: solar thermal panels on the roof that gather in the suns heat over the course of the spring, summer and fall, which is then transmitted via water to the second component - essentially an insulated water tank/heat exchanger buried beneath the frost level in the ground (temperature neutral level). Heat gets stored up underground during the warmer months and tapped into throughout the winter. Some electric use for the pumps, but no real use of natural gas, oil, ect (except maybe during protracted extreme cold spells). It is the ever rising cost of natural gas here locally combined with the knowledge that the local natural gas supplies are getting seriously low that is making me and others think along these lines, despite the initial expense. 

I could see some companies doing very well installing these devices, but as far as a major benefit to the economy...not really. Other alternative energy concepts out there do require various elements such as the so called 'rare earths' which Alaska does have in places. 

With regards to oil and natural gas...the projections I have seen elsewhere (the recent IEA report being the biggie) claim we are about a decade off from a global oil shortage best described as 'catastrophic'. Not talking all oil fields drying up at the same time, or even close to it, just a lot of oil fields becoming depleted - including some of the really big fields (like is happening with Cantarell in Mexico *now*) and other fields for reasons of geology, technology, or politics, not being able to pick up the slack. At that point, whats left of the Alaskan oil industy pretty much has to go full tilt; it can't make up the full slack or even most of it, but it could 'ease the pain' for...a few years? a decade?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 06 Jan 2010 03:02 AM With regards to oil and natural gas...the projections I have seen elsewhere (the recent IEA report being the biggie) claim we are about a decade off from a global oil shortage best described as 'catastrophic'. Not talking all oil fields drying up at the same time, or even close to it, just a lot of oil fields becoming depleted - including some of the really big fields (like is happening with Cantarell in Mexico *now*) and other fields for reasons of geology, technology, or politics, not being able to pick up the slack. At that point, whats left of the Alaskan oil industry pretty much has to go full tilt; it can't make up the full slack or even most of it, but it could 'ease the pain' for...a few years? a decade? 

Those are sobering projections indeed. If so, it seems that people will DEMAND that ALL accessible oil ANYWHERE on the North American continent be made available because I see no reliable predictions that a reliable energy technology will be available to replace oil that soon. BUT, we have to plan NOW. ANWR absolutely HAS to be developed BEFORE the existing pipeline reaches the point where it is no longer feasible to operate it because that pipeline remains the ONLY practical way to transport oil to a point where tankers can load it--namely to the farthest north ice-free port in the world, which as far as I know is Valdez, Alaska.   Midway along the Alyeska Pipeline, mile 400, north of Fairbanks.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Fascinating discussion in the "This Is Not Good" thread over the price of track, the price of brass, capitalist greed,  the MLS cliques (yes, they are real, what is new?), the effects of floating currency, agreeing to disagree, and other forms of confusion related to being on the MLS board.  Meanwhile, the reality for me is that I have to make a decision soon on whether to go ahead and commit to purchase the roughly 300 feet of track and minimum of two wide-angle switches plus one wye that  I estimate I need for the next season.  Fortunately I still have some time to decide before I decide "yes."  Every year since early 2006 I have been ordering track to "complete" my Phase II line. This last year I declared Phase II to be finished, but I still have to advance to Phase III. It will be Llagas aluminum track unless I find an exceptional deal on used brass track somewhere (but 300 feet of it?).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Profile of the Alyeska Pipeline showing the relative locations of the remaining operating pump stations:   

click image for a larger view.


Currently on line are pump stations 1,3,4 & 9. Nine is on the north side of the Alaska Range. Then there is nothing all the way to the Valdez terminal. Oil enters the pipeline at 140 degrees F.  Because of the low flow, by the time it goes past the CRD it is only 40 degrees--perilously close to freezing. AND there is an increasing amount of water in the crude oil as we reach the end of the Prudhoe Bay available crude oil, which increases the potential for problems along the line.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I keep saying that one of these days I am gong to start in building a model of one of those pipeline construction camps from the mid-70s, such as this one: Five-Mile Camp, just north of the Yukon River.


The problem is that I have not figured out where to place it yet. That was supposed to be part of my Phase IV project, if I ever get that far . . .


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

That, in turn will allow me to reproduce scenes such as this:







Using these 1:25 side booms--the same type used during pipeline construction days. 
















Those 4-foot diameter pipes came from Japan in 40-foot sections. There were approximately 100,000 of them used in the construction of this line.  Don't know where all the side booms went. There had to be many hundreds of them in service for the three years of actual construction. Only a few of these remain on site in select places where they might be needed for pipeline repair.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 02:56 PM 

1:25 side booms--the same type used during pipeline construction days.













I will need about six of these models for realism, at a cost of about a grand by the time they are shipped here. But it WILL be worth it when that time comes. Their scale is 1:25. I will probably start ordering them one or two at a time beginning this year to make sure I have enough of them while they are still available. Expensive hobby, this. No ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 03:05 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 02:56 PM 

  1:25 side booms--the same type used during pipeline construction days. 













I will need about six of these models for realism, at a cost of about a grand by the time they are shipped here. But it WILL be worth it when that time comes. Their scale is 1:25.  I will probably start ordering them one or two at a time beginning this year to make sure I have enough of them while they are still available. Expensive hobby, this. No ?


OK. Found one with the right starting price on Ebay. I am bidding on one of these now.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Before Gracie says "Good night,George," and I say "Good night, Gracie," here is a parting shot for the evening:
This is Atigun Pass in the Brooks Range--the highest point that the pipeline crosses, 4,739 feet--well above the treeline.  Alyeska built a square insulated concrete encasement for the pipeline over this pass to protect it from the loose rock along the south slope.  You are looking at the very top of the pipeline right-of-way-- 170 miles south of Prudhoe Bay. 

  " Say 'Good night,'  Gracie!" "Goodnight, George." "Good night, Gracie." "Good night, everybody !"


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

G'night, John-boy!


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The Northern Rail Extension project achieves the go-ahead from the federal government, bringing us one step closer to my own ALCANEX project seeing reality: Alaska-Canada Northern-Expo Consolidated Railways System. ALCANEX envisions and ultimate tie-in of the Alaska Railroad System with the two Canadian railroads and thus to stateside United States, more or less following the ALCAN highway into British Columbia, Canada. 



The LEAD story in the Fairbanks Daily New Miner this morning read: Alaska Railroad gets federal OK to extend tracks to Delta.
Excerpt: The plan — the *Northern Rail Extension* — would build track 80 miles from Eielson Air Force Base, where the railroad’s track currently ends, to Delta and nearby Fort Greely Army post. The proposed extension is broken into chunks. The pieces include a half-mile road-and-rail bridge from the Richardson Highway to thousands of acres of military training grounds south of the Tanana River. The railroad has said it has the $100 million, from the Department of Defense, needed for the bridge. The entire extension could cost roughly $700 million, according to year-old estimates from the railroad.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The Northern Railway Extension: One _small_ step closer . . .


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

So, train ride to China here we come!


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 07 Jan 2010 04:36 PM 
So, train ride to China here we come! But will it be a tunnel . . . 
  . . . or a bridge ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 07 Jan 2010 02:51 PM 
The Northern Rail Extension project achieves the go-ahead from the federal government, bringing us one step closer to my own ALCANEX project seeing reality: Alaska-Canada Northern-Expo Consolidated Railways System. ALCANEX envisions and ultimate tie-in of the Alaska Railroad System with the two Canadian railroads and thus to stateside United States, more or less following the ALCAN highway into British Columbia, Canada. 



The LEAD story in the Fairbanks Daily New Miner this morning read: Alaska Railroad gets federal OK to extend tracks to Delta.
Excerpt: The plan — the Northern Rail Extension — would build track 80 miles from Eielson Air Force Base, where the railroad’s track currently ends, to Delta and nearby Fort Greely Army post. The proposed extension is broken into chunks. The pieces include a half-mile road-and-rail bridge from the Richardson Highway to thousands of acres of military training grounds south of the Tanana River. The railroad has said it has the $100 million, from the Department of Defense, needed for the bridge. The entire extension could cost roughly $700 million, according to year-old estimates from the railroad.










At the time I made this post I did not have a copy of the larger map for the one shown on the left. It is now available *here. *The impetus for this proposed extension was construction of the new anti-missile missile base at Ft Greeley just south of Delta. The existing AKRR now extends as for as EielsonAFB and has probably been principally used to supply coal to the power plant there. This will mark the first major extension of a railroad in Alaska in over six decades. The last would have been the Eielson extension and the Whittier port line.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 07 Jan 2010 04:20 PM 
The Northern Railway Extension: One _small_ step closer . . . 
  
An expansion on the previous map showing more RR location details: As you can see, you could take the train from Alaska through Moscow and end up in Scotland ! Now _that_ is something to look forward to !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The first half of the winter tends to keep me occupied with local business and winter preparations. Once New Years is over, things tend to settle down considerably. That is when I begin working out the plans for the coming season, as you have seen here. This winter actually began winding down a little earlier than normal--possibly attributable at least in part to the relatively slow economy. Normally I have about three months of relative inactivity before things pick up once again, starting in early January. I use this forum as a kind of scratch pad during the slow times when I cannot do much else, as is the case right now. Did I not hear one of the other MLS members write something similar (scratch pad)? So far I am close to right on with my earlier-announced plans, and will indeed begin moving into the long-announced Phase III as soon as this next season. My earlier announced plans for additional phases are only remote possibilities at this time. But I am never without ambitious ideas and plans for further development of the model railway system.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Ok...I had not heard anything about a actual serious extension of the Alaska Railroad to Delta Junction. 

(I have heard occasional proposals to include a railroad extension as part of the proposed Knik Arm bridge, but thats another matter). 

So...is construction on this actually slated to start soon? As in this summer or next summer? 

Also what is with the number designations? Alternative routes? 

And finally...years ago, I remember a somewhat daring proposal to plant a lot of wheat(?) in the Delta Junction area. Anything come of that? Might give the railroad something else to haul, anyhow. 

Next, I suppose they'll have to look into getting the track down on the old Cassiar roadbed...


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 08 Jan 2010 01:10 AM 
Ok...I had not heard anything about a actual serious extension of the Alaska Railroad to Delta Junction. 

(I have heard occasional proposals to include a railroad extension as part of the proposed Knik Arm bridge, but thats another matter). 

So...is construction on this actually slated to start soon? As in this summer or next summer? 
Are you serious ? Construction ? What construction ? That will likely take years, if ever, unfortunately. All the AKRR accomplished was to get _approval_ to proceed from the feds, plus 100 million of at least 700 or more million needed to actually complete the project. No one has any money for that, least of all the AKRR. In December the AKRR has already laid off something like a fifth of its workforce because it is going broke due to lack of traffic, ironically along that same route. The North Pole refinery, which supplies aviation fuel to the Anchorage airport via the AKRR has had to cut back considerably due to lack of demand. Who knows when that level of activity returns. I don't see the economy coming back any time soon unless a major project is initiated here in AK--such as the Fairbanks to Valdez natural gas line.









Also what is with the number designations? Alternative routes? 
Those are indeed alternate routes. 
And finally...years ago, I remember a somewhat daring proposal to plant a lot of wheat(?) in the Delta Junction area. Anything come of that? Might give the railroad something else to haul, anyhow. 

Next, I suppose they'll have to look into getting the track down on the old Cassiar roadbed... Government programs to promote agriculture in Alaska in both the Matanuska Valley AND the Big Delta area were tried in the 1980s with absolutely disastrous results. Don't expect to see any "daring" proposals to plant a huge amount of wheat or, in this case, barley. 

The Cassiar: That is a railroad extension plan that never seems to quite die. In all seriousness, considering the current political and economic situation, I don't see ANY of this happening. 


Nice pipe dream though, and it sure fits in with my model railroad theme.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Relevant to what Blackburn has been posting about here: 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.ph...ve-trains/ 

Posters on another forum from several different north american and european nations (and a few other places) going on about the merits of rail systems, including possible expansions, economic costs, political considerations, and high speed rail.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 08 Jan 2010 01:34 AM 
Relevant to what Blackburn has been posting about here: 

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.ph...ve-trains/ 

Posters on another forum from several different north american and european nations (and a few other places) going on about the merits of rail systems, including possible expansions, economic costs, political considerations, and high speed rail. 
Some interesting posts in there: Thanks for the link.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a detail of the proposed AKRR crossing of the Tanana River at Salcha. The government actually put up $ 100,000,000 into this part of the proposed railroad extension because it has strong interests in seeing this section completed.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_Very interesting: From a hearing in Delta on the potential impact of the AKRR extension to Ft. Greeley, Feb 2006: _



In a meeting at Delta Junction a resident asked what impact the construction of the natural gas pipeline would have on the feasibility of the railroad through Canada.


Brett Flint, Manager, Northern Rail Extension of the Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) said the gas line would be a definite boost to the railroad project because the gas line would be another major potential customer. The Stranded Gas Act, which was passed a few years back, sets aside money to upgrade transportation infrastructure and support the gas pipeline. 


Gas producers *would like a railroad through Delta Junction before they begin construction of their pipeline* because of the amount of pipe they will need to haul. *In retrospect, the North Slope developers said they wished they had built a railroad to Barrow instead of a haul road.*


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

Doesn't go to Copper Center? Would be a cool trip.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

If you look at the land status where the proposed railroad extension is to be built, you can see huge military training areas all the way to and beyond Ft. Greeley that indicate that the federal government holds a huge stake in possibly pursuing this particular proposal. The AKRR was, after all, originally a federally built and maintained railroad constructed partly to open up the territory but also for military purposes. It was run by the U.S. Army in the early years and again during WWII and thereafter for a few years. This proposal is in line with the historic nature of this particular railroad.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Mid-winter at the CRD:


It is time for the mid-winter check of the ALCANEX facilities. Here is the eastern part of the model railroad line as it appeared this afternoon, January 8, 2010: 

  This building, of course, houses the Cicely town model. The usual access from the east side has long been blocked off by the snow. I will have to work my way over there through the back way, which has been cleared all the way to the Cicely model housing structure by way of the adjacent Kennecott housing structure.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Overview of ALCANEX model RR line, Jan 8, '10: Shows the CRNW Phase I area to the left, the Kennecott structure and the Cicely structure. In front is the origina CRNW Railway 1914 line shack. Click this image or (most) any other in this thread for a larger image.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Meanwhile the Cantwell RR Yard & Industrial Park remains high and dry above (and below) all that snow but fully asleep, awaiting the return of spring in early April to bring it back to life. 
 Both ends of this 32 foot long yard are open to the weather. You can see snow on both sides. Not much to see in the front because the ladder support does not hold much snow but about a foot of it remains on the ground below and the roof above.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This view of the Bridge to Nowhere, taken from the same point as the previous photo, shows the actual ground snow level. So far it is relatively light this year.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I went on line to see what appeared under "bridge to nowhere." Look what I found: two images of the CRNW Gilahina trestle, which is about halfway between Chitina and McCarthy:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 08 Jan 2010 04:48 PM 

Gas producers would like a railroad through Delta Junction before they begin construction of their pipeline because of the amount of pipe they will need to haul. In retrospect, the North Slope developers said they wished they had built a railroad to Barrow instead of a haul road.


This time they will get their wish. When I build that pipeline camp model, it WILL be serviced by a pipe-hauling railroad. 







Rare shot of the train in Valdez that was temporarily used to distribute pipe during construction days. I knew it was Valdez because I recognized that mountain. Seeing this shot spurred the series of posts you see below relating to the short-lived, all but totally forgotten Alaska Railroad operations in Valdez before and during pipeline construction days. 

Below: A second view of Five Mile Camp, just north of the Yukon River (click)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The normal mode of pipe delivery along the pipeline construction route was by trucks such as this one.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 02:56 PM 

That, in turn will allow me to reproduce scenes such as this:















*Or this: *


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 02:00 AM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 08 Jan 2010 04:48 PM 

Gas producers would like a railroad through Delta Junction before they begin construction of their pipeline because of the amount of pipe they will need to haul. In retrospect, the North Slope developers said they wished they had built a railroad to Barrow instead of a haul road.


This time they will get their wish. When I build that pipeline camp model, it WILL be serviced by a pipe-hauling railroad. 







Rare shot of the train in Valdez that was temporarily used to distribute pipe during construction days. http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/blackburn49/Pipeline-PrudhoeBay/FiveMileCampLG.jpg 

MORE ON THE VALDEZ RAILROAD: 



_They used the ex Army 45 tonners. ARR acquired 4 of them in 1974, and retired them in 1983. Except for the Valdez work, and one that was leased to the North Pole refinery for a very short time, they saw little work. Alaska Railroad did not own SW-1500's. The last SW-1 left shortly before the little 45 tonners arrived._


(Curt Fortenberry, Alaska Railroad historian)


_It was not until the advent of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline that Valdez again became a major transportation center. During the pipeline construction, Valdez had a short railroad consisting of twp ex-ARR 45-tonners, no. 7324 and no. 7249 that worked on the dock._


(Cliff Howard, author)



_The Alaska Railroad has about 1/4 mile of trackage and a small barge slip in Valdez (Val-Deez). It is unused now but it did have approximately 1 1/2 miles of rail during the pipeline. The sections of the 40' x 48" pipe were welded together as 80' sections and coated in Valdez, then loaded on flat cars and brought to Whittier. Cars of equipment,cement and steel were loaded on the small 4 track barges for Valdez._


_The Alaska Railroad had a small "Whiting" car mover in Valdez. As the traffic grew the ARR obtained 4, GE 50 ton locomotives from the US Army for use in Valdez. The ARR only managed to put 2 into service, the others cannibalized for spares. The locomotives then were used as switchers in the MAPCO refinery in North Pole until worn/burnt out. The Transportation Museum has one in it's display inventory. The "wild hair" for ARR train crews is that the Valdez locomotives were operated by the Operating Engineers Local 302, Heavy Equipment Operators._


(Frank Dewey, Alaska Railroad engineer)

Cool info, huh? Bet you had NO idea !


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Alaska-Canada Rail Link project, from 2005-2006: 

http://www.economicdevelopment.gov...._link.html 

Concluded that the line was feasible and could be constructed for about 11 billion dollars (but US or Canadian?). Probably work out to 14-15 billion dollars now...but the guru's on Wall Street have managed to loose more than that just in accounting errors. Given all this 'stimulus' stuff going around, maybe it could be sideways financed like this somehow - much like the grand construction projects of the 1930's enacted to help get the US out of the Great Depression. 

Nine or ten proposed routes. Favored 'Tintina Trench' approach (is that south of the Alaska Highway proper?). Great emphasis on import/export from Asia, raw materials - particularly coal and metals - out and containerized cargo in. 

Repeated mention of the White Pass & Yukon line; apparent recommendation it be converted to standard guage, some mention that passenger traffic might get in the way of freight traffic. 

-------- 

Also, judging from the other stuff I looked at, it seems as though should the money somehow appear (and a lot is being handed out from DC these days), construction on the AKRR extension to Delta Junction could actually start fairly soon (this year? next year?) 

And the Mat-Su Borough and AKRR apparently did submit a proposal for a 40 odd mile extension to Point Mackenzie, directly across Knik Arm from Anchorage. Currently under environmental review.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_"After the 1964 earthquake, some of the lands that were heavily damaged as a result of the "64" quake in Valdez was taken over by the U.S. Government._


_
_
_ "In the 1970's the Government excessed that property and the Alaska Railroad requested ownership-transfer of those lands (about 80 acres) to support the logistical movement of pipe for the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Since no other Federal activity (agency) was interested in those properties, the Alaska Railroad became the owner free and clear. We laid tracks from the dock in Valdez to the property where pipe was off-loaded and stored on the newly acquired property. __
_ 




_"The land is still owned by the Railroad and is currently leased._ "

--Jim Blasingame, Alaska Railroad Vice President, Corporate Affair   (Click image for larger one)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 09 Jan 2010 03:04 AM 
Alaska-Canada Rail Link project, from 2005-2006: 

http://www.economicdevelopment.gov...._link.html 

Concluded that the line was feasible and could be constructed for about 11 billion dollars (but US or Canadian?). Probably work out to 14-15 billion dollars now...but the guru's on Wall Street have managed to loose more than that just in accounting errors. Given all this 'stimulus' stuff going around, maybe it could be sideways financed like this somehow - much like the grand construction projects of the 1930's enacted to help get the US out of the Great Depression. 

Nine or ten proposed routes. Favored 'Tintina Trench' approach (is that south of the Alaska Highway proper?). Great emphasis on import/export from Asia, raw materials - particularly coal and metals - out and containerized cargo in. 

Repeated mention of the White Pass & Yukon line; apparent recommendation it be converted to standard guage, some mention that passenger traffic might get in the way of freight traffic. 

-------- 

Also, judging from the other stuff I looked at, it seems as though should the money somehow appear (and a lot is being handed out from DC these days), construction on the AKRR extension to Delta Junction could actually start fairly soon (this year? next year?) 

And the Mat-Su Borough and AKRR apparently did submit a proposal for a 40 odd mile extension to Point Mackenzie, directly across Knik Arm from Anchorage. Currently under environmental review. 
I know. I read all that stuff in great detail. However, the chances of getting funding for any of it any time in the foreseeable future is next to nil under the current economic conditions.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_"As to the question, why was the pipe processed in Valdez and then sent via barge to Whittier? You must first grasp the scope of the pipeline project and the cost of infrastructure required to build it. Then you need to grasp the weather along the route and the terrain northbound out of Valdez. The Richardson Hwy is two lanes with steep grades up over Thompson Pass and it is real dicey in the winter time. Divide 800 miles by 80 foot sections and figure out how many truck loads that will be just for the pipe! 

"The challenge was to coordinate pipe delivery to several points on the pipeline corridor to allow simultaneous construction from several points, keeping the truck haul over public roads to a minimum. There was a pipe coating plant on the north slope where 40 ft sections were delivered by barge, welded cleaned coated and sent south down the North Slope Haul Road (Dalton Highway) that was closed to the public during the pipeline days. This was a gravel/ice road.

"Pipe was delivered from Japan in 40 ft sections to Valdez on ships and off loaded for processing in the pipe coating plant located about one mile away. These plants were about 500 ft long built of folding sections of steel buildings and represented sizable investments. 

"Valdez being a deep water port could receive the raw pipe, and materials for the processing in bulk. As the specific sections of pipe were processed they were dispatched as needed from Valdez. Each section was built to design for a specific location in the line and varied in thickness, coating and finish depending on where it was to be used, at the top of a grade, bottom of a valley, under a river, buried or elevated above ground. Specialty sections with bends, joints, pump station hardware etc. were usually trucked north. Pipe required between Valdez and Delta Junction would move north over the highway. 

"More or less standard 80 ft sections were loaded on 40 ft flats with intermediate idlers and placed on barges for the trip from Valdez to Whittier. At Whittier they rolled across the car float and were made into trains that traveled through the tunnels to Anchorage. At Anchorage they were incorporated into regular north bound freight trains to Fairbanks. I am not sure where they were unloaded in Fairbanks but they could be distributed both North on the Dalton Hwy or South on the Richardson Hwy as needed. 

"I worked for Pictures Incorporated during the boom days, providing nightly movie entertainment in 13 construction camps up and down the line. As a result I had the privilege of traveling the length of the facility in both summer and winter consulting on equipment and facilities for the entertainment program. Few people on the project outside of top management got to see the whole project, and the sheer volume of equipment, materials and people was overwhelming. So moving all that stuff north out of Valdez on the Richardson Highway in addition to the construction on the south end would have been like a dose of Kayopectate.

"As I recall there was a problem with the north bound sea lift that summer that would have taken more materials to the North Slope. Ice conditions or lack of barges for the sea lift resulted in more of the pipe coming into Valdez and being processed there resulting in a mini boom for the Alaska Railroad. There is reference to this in the Alaska Railroad Annual report of the period along with the only photo I have ever seen of the yard there. The photographer was the famous industrial photographer, Stanley McCutchen. There must be some other views." 

--Pat Durand, Alaska Railroad historian_
 The pipeline railroad yard in Valdez (click)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_"One thing that seems to get missed is that the ARR put the track and barge slip at Valdez in service in 1965. It was put in at the location of "old"Valdez, after the 1964 earthquake. It's purpose was to make it easier to bring building materials in, for use in building the "new" Valdez. The slip there was served by the Puget Sound - Alaska Van Lines (Hydro-Trains) barges, from Seattle. PSAVL had seven barges in 1966.(remember it was only in 1963 that the ARR started interchange via Whittier).

"The ARR assigned a small Whiting trackmobile there as a car mover. After the reconstruction of Valdez was done, it was served "as needed". When pipeline construction was started, they used the existing barge slip, and extended the tracks. Valdez was the large storage yard for the pipe, Pipe was also stored at Prudhoe Bay, and Fairbanks. Remember that the pipe for the pipeline had been purchased before final approval of the pipeline, it was stored for a few years before construction started. When construction started, it was moved. The pipe going north on the ARR was loaded on flatcars at Valdez, put on a railbarge, sent to Whittier, and then up the ARR.

"Pipe was in 40' lengths, most pre welded into 80' sections. Welding was done at Valdez. There were also some 60' sections(? not many ?); and some special bends, etc.

"The pipe was loaded on 52' or 60' flatcars, 6 to a car;( 3 high, 2 across). Idler flatcars (50' or longer) were placed between the loads, and at the ends of the loads. _

--Don Marenzi, Alaska Railroad historian







Valdez Track Plan


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Additional note from Russ Blood [6/26/06]:

_"I've found some info on the two engines that were here . Right now the best guess when they arrived is late 1974 or early 1975. No pictures as of yet. However, in going through old boxes we came across some material that identified them as G.E. Locomotive, Diesel Electric 45 Ton Reg. No. 7249 Ser. No.15713 and Reg No. 7324 Ser. No. 15244 (see image below--RS), and shipped from Defense Depot Ogden,Utah, Julian date of 4330. I've also found a few more photos to send. Our photos only seem to go to early '70s, I guess this is because my father and his partners sold to a larger company about June 1974. 

"I'm still going through old paper and found some more interesting items - stack of account billing records that are fairly complete spanning time frame of 8/15/66 to 12/23/68. These are from Slim Blood and Sons [my father's company] to The Alaska Railroad. They show date, trip number [starts at 46-N to 126-N] Consignee, Car No., also van numbers W.B. n.o. and dollar amounts. I don't have an accurate total of cars handled but seems to be approximately 250 or so. This may also include some loaded southbound. 

"Here's a somewhat random listing of car numbers. It is interesting to note some of the railroads and types of 
equipment represented:_ 

GATX 54402 
UTLX 51297 
TCX 3206 
ARR 415 
ARR 10817 
NP 97804 
GN 37503 
SP 330016 
MILW 66423 
PRR 612395 
ARCX 2021 
AT 66705 
UP 112663 
ATSF 75924 
CNW 39071 
SOO 5823 
C&O 80565"


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 08 Jan 2010 07:48 PM 
Meanwhile the Cantwell RR Yard & Industrial Park remains high and dry above (and below) all that snow but fully asleep, awaiting the return of spring in early April to bring it back to life. 
  Both ends of this 32 foot long yard are open to the weather. You can see snow on both sides. Not much to see in the front because the ladder support does not hold much snow but about a foot of it remains on the ground below and the roof above. 


The Phase III access track will run along the step bench level you see here in the shadows on the right. I may also begin building the industrial park in the Cantwell yard this upcoming season by adding at least one or two industrial buildings in the area where you see the orange Milwaukee Road combine with the station house to its rear. The floor will have to be expanded in this direction somewhat to accommodate this.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 04:19 AM 
Additional note from Russ Blood [6/26/06]:

_"I've found some info on the two engines that were here . Right now the best guess when they arrived is late 1974 or early 1975. No pictures as of yet. However, in going through old boxes we came across some material that identified them as G.E. Locomotive, Diesel Electric 45 Ton Reg. No. 7249 Ser. No.15713 and Reg No. 7324 Ser. No. 15244 (see image below--RS), and shipped from Defense Depot Ogden,Utah, Julian date of 4330. I've also found a few more photos to send. Our photos only seem to go to early '70s, I guess this is because my father and his partners sold to a larger company about June 1974. 

"I'm still going through old paper and found some more interesting items - stack of account billing records that are fairly complete spanning time frame of 8/15/66 to 12/23/68. These are from Slim Blood and Sons [my father's company] to The Alaska Railroad. They show date, trip number [starts at 46-N to 126-N] Consignee, Car No., also van numbers W.B. n.o. and dollar amounts. I don't have an accurate total of cars handled but seems to be approximately 250 or so. This may also include some loaded southbound. 

"Here's a somewhat random listing of car numbers. It is interesting to note some of the railroads and types of 
equipment represented:_ 

GATX 54402 
UTLX 51297 
TCX 3206 
ARR 415 
ARR 10817 
NP 97804 
GN 37503 
SP 330016 
MILW 66423 
PRR 612395 
ARCX 2021 
AT 66705 
UP 112663 
ATSF 75924 
CNW 39071 
SOO 5823 
C&O 80565"








I was able to locate one of these out-of-production Bachmann 45-ton locomotives in the ATSF scheme, which I have been able to obtain at a very reasonable price new. I will later alter the markings to reflect the AKRR, but probably also as Alyeska pipeline. This represents a whole new element of the Phase II line I had not contemplated until now. However, as you can see from above, I have a whole new RR yard plan I can use in conjunction with my pipeline construction camp. None of this will be likely to happen over the upcoming summer season, but I wanted to go ahead and secure a 45-tonner while they were still available new.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The obvious location for an industrial pipeline yard would be adjacent the Cantwell RR Yard & Industrial Park, probably in the area seen here. Photo taken Jan 8 2010. 
 This area will probably have to be accessed by the same line that passes over the Bridge to Nowhere when that line is constructed this season.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The basic set up for this small operation is already outlined here: Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 04:15 AM 
_

"Pipe was in 40' lengths, most pre welded into 80' sections. Welding was done at Valdez. There were also some 60' sections(? not many ?); and some special bends, etc.

"The pipe was loaded on 52' or 60' flatcars, 6 to a car;( 3 high, 2 across). Idler flatcars (50' or longer) were placed between the loads, and at the ends of the loads. _








Valdez Track Plan

So this is a project that will undoubtedly occur sometime in the relatively-near future here at the CRD, fitting in well with my already-announced plans to build a pipeline construction era camp somewhere along the model railroad.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

There it sits. Until last night I had no idea any 45-tonners had ever existed in Alaska. What an exciting find ! 







I believe this one is at the Transportation Museum near Wasilla: (click image):   > 
Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 01:46 PM 
The basic set up for this small operation is already outlined here: Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 04:15 AM 
_

"Pipe was in 40' lengths, most pre welded into 80' sections. Welding was done at Valdez. There were also some 60' sections(? not many ?); and some special bends, etc.

"The pipe was loaded on 52' or 60' flatcars, 6 to a car;( 3 high, 2 across). Idler flatcars (50' or longer) were placed between the loads, and at the ends of the loads. _








Valdez Track Plan

So this is a project that will undoubtedly occur sometime in the relatively-near future here at the CRD, fitting in well with my already-announced plans to build a pipeline construction era camp somewhere along the model railroad.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 01:32 PM 









I was able to locate one of these out-of-production Bachmann 45-ton locomotives in the ATSF scheme, which I have been able to obtain at a very reasonable price new. I will later alter the markings to reflect the AKRR, but probably also as Alyeska pipeline. This represents a whole new element of the Phase II line I had not contemplated until now. However, as you can see from above, I have a whole new RR yard plan I can use in conjunction with my pipeline construction camp. None of this will be likely to happen over the upcoming summer season, but I wanted to go ahead and secure a 45-tonner while they were still available new. 
















_GE 45-tonner #7324 was built in 1942 (builder number 15244) for the U.S. Army. The Alaska Railroad acquired it in 1974 and gave it to the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry in 1983. GE 45-tonner #7331 was built for the U.S. Army in 1941 (builder number 12985) and the Alaska Railroad inherited it in 1974. It was sold to CCPR in 1983 (along with 7249 and 7356). This photo of two GE 45 ton units taken in either the summer of 1976 or '1977 at the Anchorage Shops._


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The AKRR roster of 45-tonners imported to Alaska for use in the pipe storage yard at Valdez: 
7249 GE 45-ton 1942 15713 ex-US Army 7249; nee Cornhusker Ordnance plant (Ovina, NE) 1974 1983 to CCPR 007, 1983; to MWRL 4501; to Oregon Pacific 4501, 1997 (used in Valdez during pipeline boom) 7324 GE 45-ton 1942 15244 ex-US Army 7324 1974 1983 to Museum of Alaska Transportation & Industry (used in Valdez during pipeline boom) 7331 GE 45-ton 1941 12985 ex-US Army 7331 1974 1983 to CCPR to Kerr-McGee Chemical 7356 GE 45-ton 1941 13139 ex-US Army 7356 1974 1983 to CCPR to Rabanco From theAKRR roster


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 02:48 PM 
The AKRR roster of 45-tonners imported to Alaska for use in the pipe storage yard at Valdez: 
7249 GE 45-ton 1942 15713 ex-US Army 7249; nee Cornhusker Ordnance plant (Ovina, NE) 1974 1983 to CCPR 007, 1983; to MWRL 4501; to Oregon Pacific 4501, 1997 (used in Valdez during pipeline boom) 7324 GE 45-ton 1942 15244 ex-US Army 7324 1974 1983 to Museum of Alaska Transportation & Industry (used in Valdez during pipeline boom) 7331 GE 45-ton 1941 12985 ex-US Army 7331 1974 1983 to CCPR to Kerr-McGee Chemical 7356 GE 45-ton 1941 13139 ex-US Army 7356 1974 1983 to CCPR to Rabanco From theAKRR roster  

The site where I ordered the 45-tonner says that these units were first produced in the late-1950s. If so, they closely followed the 1941-42 45-ton units employed by the AKRR at Valdez:

_First produced in the late 1950s, General Electric's 45-Tonners were primarily used in short line and industrial applications, designed to complement or replace their steam-powered counterparts at the end of the steam era. GE 45 Ton Side-Rod Diesels are still being produced and are in use worldwide in several gauges. First produced in the late 1950s, General Electric's 45-Tonners were primarily used in short line and industrial applications, designed to complement or replace their steam-powered counterparts at the end of the steam era. GE 45 Ton Side-Rod Diesels are still being produced and are in use worldwide in several gauges. First produced in the late 1950s, General Electric's 45-Tonners were primarily used in short line and industrial applications, designed to complement or replace their steam-powered counterparts at the end of the steam era. GE 45 Ton Side-Rod Diesels are still being produced and are in use worldwide in several gauges._

Comments anyone ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_"I got some back issues of old Extra 2200 South magazines and in the Jan./Feb. 1974 issue on page 4 is the following:
"Four US Army GE 45T are on loan: 7249, 7324, 7331, 7356, arrived 2-3/74 from Ogden, Utah. Two will be used at Valdez, the southern end of the Alaska pipeline on Prince William Sound, and two will be at Anchorage. Valdez is serviced by Alaska Hydro-Train by barge from Whittier. At present a Whiting car mover used at Valdez._
_"In 1968 vast reserves of oil and natural gas were discovered on the Alaska North Slope near Prudhoe Bay. The petroleum reservoir was determined to be twice the size of any other field in North America, and in 1969 the lease sale of oil fields yielded over $900 million. The 800-mi (1,287-km) Trans-Alaska pipeline from the Arctic North Slope to the ice-free port of Valdez opened in 1977 after bitter opposition from environmentalists, and oil has dominated the state economy ever since . . ." --Jeff Childs, Alaska Railroad historian_   This was the other 45-tonner in use at the Valdez pipe yard


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Great stuff Ron


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 09 Jan 2010 04:09 PM 
Great stuff Ron 
Thank you. I have presented plenty of new and, I think, fascinating railroad history here. These were things I found out in the process of pursuing my long-term plans to extend my model railroad and include a pipeline construction camp along the way. Then along comes THIS unexpected bonanza of a small AKRR railroad that operated during pipeline construction days on the old deserted townsite of the part of Valdez that was wiped out by the '64 earthquake. It is discouraging however, that so few comment on something that I would think would be of considerable interest, especially since this involves a piece of rolling stock that was only recently readily available. It does not hurt any of the rest of you to make a comment here, you know ! At least, I don't think it does.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I thought those two images of the abandoned Gilahina trestle were pretty good, too. Especially considering that they were taken from almost the same angle. Imagine trying to walk on that ! Actually, I tried once back in 1991. It was very soft even back then. Since those days the NPS cut access to this side so no one gets themselves hurt. Were anyone to attempt to walk this trestle, which at one point is 94 feet above the ground, they would almost certainly fall through ! 
Posted By blackburn49 on 08 Jan 2010 11:42 PM 
I went on line to see what appeared under "bridge to nowhere." Look what I found: two images of the CRNW Gilahina trestle, which is about halfway between Chitina and McCarthy:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 01:32 PM 









I was able to locate one of these out-of-production Bachmann 45-ton locomotives in the ATSF scheme, which I have been able to obtain at a very reasonable price new. I will later alter the markings to reflect the AKRR, but probably also as Alyeska pipeline. This represents a whole new element of the Phase II line I had not contemplated until now. However, as you can see from above, I have a whole new RR yard plan I can use in conjunction with my pipeline construction camp. None of this will be likely to happen over the upcoming summer season, but I wanted to go ahead and secure a 45-tonner while they were still available new. 







Also, it seems to be there was a discussion here at MLS some time ago about this very locomotive--the Bachmann Spectrum 45-tonner. Where are all you interested parties ? Now I wish I had paid more attention to that particular thread.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

This Center Cab former Army diesel is at the Illinois Railway Museum 


























Randy


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

I remember seeing the line in Valdez in operation during the pipeline days. Remember waiting at a grade crossing while a 
load of pipe was towed past. 

These 45 tonners look interesting...


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 05:27 PM 
I thought those two images of the abandoned Gilahina trestle were pretty good, too. Especially considering that they were taken from almost the same angle. Imagine trying to walk on that ! Actually, I tried once back in 1991. It was very soft even back then. Since those days the NPS cut access to this side so no one gets themselves hurt. Were anyone to attempt to walk this trestle, which at one point is 94 feet above the ground, they would almost certainly fall through !
Posted By blackburn49 on 08 Jan 2010 11:42 PM 
I went on line to see what appeared under "bridge to nowhere." Look what I found: two images of the CRNW Gilahina trestle, which is about halfway between Chitina and McCarthy:
   


How many OTHER places can you get THIS close to an abandoned trestle of THIS size (originally 880 feet of curve) ?  This one is right NEXT to the McCarthy Road !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 03:05 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 02:56 PM 

  1:25 side booms--the same type used during pipeline construction days. 













I will need about six of these models for realism, at a cost of about a grand by the time they are shipped here. But it WILL be worth it when that time comes. Their scale is 1:25.  I will probably start ordering them one or two at a time beginning this year to make sure I have enough of them while they are still available. Expensive hobby, this. No ?



  What about comments on THIS piece of equipment ?  Imagine how about 4 or 6 of these would look laying pipe!


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 07 Jan 2010 02:51 PM 
The Northern Rail Extension project achieves the go-ahead from the federal government, bringing us one step closer to my own ALCANEX project seeing reality: Alaska-Canada Northern-Expo Consolidated Railways System. ALCANEX envisions and ultimate tie-in of the Alaska Railroad System with the two Canadian railroads and thus to stateside United States, more or less following the ALCAN highway into British Columbia, Canada. 



The LEAD story in the Fairbanks Daily New Miner this morning read: Alaska Railroad gets federal OK to extend tracks to Delta.
Excerpt: The plan — the *Northern Rail Extension* — would build track 80 miles from Eielson Air Force Base, where the railroad’s track currently ends, to Delta and nearby Fort Greely Army post. The proposed extension is broken into chunks. The pieces include a half-mile road-and-rail bridge from the Richardson Highway to thousands of acres of military training grounds south of the Tanana River. The railroad has said it has the $100 million, from the Department of Defense, needed for the bridge. The entire extension could cost roughly $700 million, according to year-old estimates from the railroad.










What about THIS story ? How OFTEN is it anymore that there is actually a realistic proposal to _significantly_ EXPAND an existing railroad ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

So where is it going to go ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Assuming I go ahead an build a version of the Alyeska / AKRR pipeyard, the most likely location is shown below with track access from the both the west and the east (via the Sulphur Springs wye).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I don't have a picture of the Valdez pipeyard at this time, but I do have this one of the yard at Prudhoe Bay:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The red line in this google image (click) represents the approximate location of the Valdez AKRR railroad line. You can see the terminal across the bay from Valdez in this image.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

My analysis of the ground indicates that the pipeline railroad should fall along the lines shown here (click):


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

One possible layout of the pipeline yard here at the CRD would be as shown below:



W= West Access



E= East Access



N= Bridge to Nowhere 


The Klondike Mines Railway line remains intact with this plan, continuing toward the east out of the Suphur Springs Wye toward the Grand Forks townsite. 


Storage Areas A & B correspond to the ones shown on the map of the Valdez RR yard.  The rail line will most likely have to run under the walkway shown here in two places. Storage Area B is on the uphill side.


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## bvdrr (Jan 3, 2008)

Ron, sometimes you just blow me away with all this History. And all the the History you have all around you. What an exciting place to live in.Do keep us updated on your RR as you progress with your dream I have followed your story from the very first and have read your book. Don't ever stop because you think no one is interested. Your articals are one off the first I search for each night.
Fred


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I don't have a picture of the Valdez pipeyard at this time, but I do have this one of the yard at Prudhoe Bay:










Looks like I will get my pipe yard long before I get my pipeline construction camp. I don't see setting up the full yard this year--too many expensive RR switches--but I will plan on setting up the access AND the platform(s) on which the full yard will ultimately be constructed THIS season.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Speaking of construction camps:  This is one of the two pipeline camps I lived in and worked out of during construction, Pump Station 6, just in sight of the Yukon River. I was there in 1976 and returned in 1977 , both times to run the sewage treatment plant. This station is no longer active.What you are seeing is the temporary camp--probably long gone. 
u


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is the pipeline construction map. P.S. 6 was near MP 445.  I was also stationed at Franklin Bluffs, which was about 50 miles south of Prudhoe Bay. (click):


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is the completed PS 6 with the Yukon River in the distance, ~July 1977 at pipeline completion (click): 



The pipeline now bypasses this station. It will never be used again for its original intended purpose. Kind of sad. I have a lot of memories tied up with this place from those days some 35 years ago.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 11:39 PM 
Speaking of construction camps: This is one of the two pipeline camps I lived in and worked out of during construction, Pump Station 6, just in sight of the Yukon River. I was there in 1976 and returned in 1977 , both times to run the sewage treatment plant. This station is no longer active.What you are seeing is the temporary camp--probably long gone. 
u 

The pump station work camps were distinguished from the other work camps, which had names such as Tonsina, Old Man, Dietrich, Delta, or Franklin Bluffs. The pump stations only had numbers. They were also smaller. The camps with names tended to cover very large construction areas, because that is where the pipe was being laid. But also, these pump stations had double-decker barracks. The much-larger work camps did not. Fluor was the contractor for all the pump stations. The other camps had different contractors depending on which section they fell in. The most northern ones where I worked were run by Arctic Constructors--a company formed only for this one project. Probably when I build my pipeline model camp it will be based on the 5-Mile camp, which I have already shown here. I will also show you Franklin Bluffs--a camp of 1,100 persons, as opposed to this one above, which probably housed 300 people.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

As I was writing earlier, it is no longer very far off before the entire pipeline looks like this: No pipe, no pump stations, no gravel pads where buildings once stood, no nothing ! The original pipeline agreement calls for restoration of the entire 800 mile right-of-way back to its original state. No ANWR, and this is likely to be its state in about a dozen years.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

No pipeline terminal at Valdez, either. Just the berthing stations where oil tankers once docked . . .


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

As I was writing earlier, it is no longer very far off before the entire pipeline looks like this: No pipe, no pump stations, no gravel pads where buildings once stood, no nothing ! The original pipeline agreement calls for restoration of the entire 800 mile right-of-way back to its origin 

That is what a lot of the pipelines around here look like now - and they are still in use. When I was a kid, Dad picked up a bunch of cheap third hand motorcycles, and the other kids and I spent a lot of time zooming up and down this or that pipeline right of way. (In the winter, we used some old snow machines). Some of those old pipeline right-of-ways have been converted into public roads, with people living off of them - but the pipe is still there.


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## mhutson (Jan 2, 2008)

Great stuff, Ron. Keep it coming! 

Cheers, 
Matt


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## Allan W. Miller (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted by Fred (bvdr): 

"Ron, sometimes you just blow me away with all this History. And all the the History you have all around you. What an exciting place to live in.Do keep us updated on your RR as you progress with your dream I have followed your story from the very first and have read your book. Don't ever stop because you think no one is interested. Your articals are one off the first I search for each night." 

I agree 100%, and could not have said it better. Ron's writings, photos, graphics, and research abilities have inspired me to the extent that the O gauge layout I'm building in my spare bedroom will have an Alaska theme. I already have a half-dozen Alaska RR locomotives and a growing rolling stock roster on a temporary layout and the permanent pike will be started this year.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

COLD WEATHER ALERT: Copper Center: -38;  Big Delta: -36; Prudhoe Bay: -35; Tok: -50; Dawson City: -49; warmer at Fairbanks: -19 and Anchorage, +3 but with heavy gusts (my location this morning).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The outlook this week looks good for you statesiders, quoting _accuweather_:




_"Milder air will build eastward across the nation's midsection this week. Today into Tuesday, the warmth will build over the High Plains. By the middle of the week, temperatures will rebound in the Midwest, turning the recent cold spell into a memory.  

"Temperatures will slowly crawl upwards over the next few days on the Eastern Seaboard as well. By the end of the week, the core of the mild air will sit over the East. Temperatures Thursday into Friday could warm into the 40s along the I-95 corridor as far north as Boston."_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The dead of winter: view from Cicely looking over the turntable toward the CRNW Railway area: I took this during my mid-winter check of the model railway grounds a few days ago.  (don't get out there this time of year too often).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 09 Jan 2010 06:32 PM 
I remember seeing the line in Valdez in operation during the pipeline days. Remember waiting at a grade crossing while a 
load of pipe was towed past. 

These 45 tonners look interesting... 

It does seem a bit odd that Bachmann chose to build it in 1:20.3 scale, though . . .


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

While looking for a supply of cat food in the industrial area of Anchorage, I spotted these: #1551 & #1552. These are EMD MP15DC s.  


The EMD MP15DC was a 1,500 hp (1100 kW) switcher-type diesel locomotive model produced by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division between 1974 and 1980. 351 examples were built. It replaced the SW1500 in EMD's catalog, and is superficially very similar to the predecessor model, using effectively the same engine (a V12 EMD 645-series powerplant) in a similar design of hood and bodywork.

Like the Mexico-only SW1504, the MP15DC used Blomberg trucks exclusively, replacing the Flexicoil trucks or AAR switcher trucks used on the SW1500. In EMD's eyes (among others) this made the new locomotive a road switcher rather than a pure switcher, since it was capable of transition and road speeds up to 60 mph (100 km/h) or so; the designation thus meant Multi-Purpose locomotive, 1500 hp, DC generator. Originally the locomotive was simply designated the MP15; the arrival of the alternator/rectifier MP15AC in 1975 changed the name. (_Wikipedia --RS_)



1551: This unit was built by EMD (B/D 756146-1) in 1976, acquired from the Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion #25 in 1992 and was sold to the Broadway Rail and Equipment Company in Chicago in 2009. They turned their last revenue wheels for the ARR around 2:00 PM on March 3, 2009 and were pulled from service.



1552: This unit was built by EMD (B/D 776021-1) in 1977, acquired from the Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion #26 in 1992 and sold to the Broadway Rail and Equipment Company in Chicago in 2009. They turned their last revenue wheels for the ARR around 2:00 PM on March 3, 2009 and were pulled from service. _    reference_

  It was not easy even finding a safe place to park so I could walk over and shoot these. As you can see, even though the info on them says they were sold to  the Broadway Rail and Equipment Company in Chicago in 2009, they are still in Alaska and still parked on Alaska rails.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

These units are listed in Wikipedia as part of the The Lake Erie, Franklin, and Clarion Railroad (reporting mark LEF). The out-of-date listing fails to show the AKRR ownership as of 1992, the year LEF went out of business. LEF was a fifteen mile long short line that ran from a Conrail connection at Summerville, Pennsylvania, to Clarion, Pennsylvania, the county seat of Clarion County, and included a short branch from Sutton to Hedrick.

LEF traffic included sand for Clarion’s glass making plant, glass bottles, lumber, and outbound shipments of coal, some of it in unit trains from the extensive coal deposits around Clarion. Traffic also included brick from the Hanley Brick Plant in Summerville. The line ceased operation in the last decade of the 1900’s due to a sharp decline in coal mining in the area. The track was taken up and the roadbed in now a hiking path, like so many others, including almost the entire east-west Washington State portion of the Milwaukee Road and my own favorite shortline, the Roslyn Branch of the NP, Cle Elum to Lakedale, Ronald & Roslyn. 

The line’s yard and engine facility were located in Clarion, just south of U.S. route 322.  Motive power in the line’s final years was six EMD MP15DC switchers, which replaced four earlier EMD SW1500s of which just the two shown here ended up in Alaska only to soon return to the mid-west.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

These would look good on almost any layout.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Map showing my "base;" the location of the old AKRR teminal; the approximate east and west boundaries of the AKRR yard; and the location of the two EMD MP15s in the industrial area not far from the main railroad yard. The reason this got my attention was that there were TWO clearly identifiable old AKRR locomotives that were obviously out of place. At the time I did not realize they no longer belonged to the AKRR. Click this image for a larger map.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Allan W. Miller on 10 Jan 2010 06:49 PM 
Posted by Fred (bvdr): 

"Ron, sometimes you just blow me away with all this History. And all the the History you have all around you. What an exciting place to live in.Do keep us updated on your RR as you progress with your dream I have followed your story from the very first and have read your book. Don't ever stop because you think no one is interested. Your articals are one off the first I search for each night." 

I agree 100%, and could not have said it better. Ron's writings, photos, graphics, and research abilities have inspired me to the extent that the O gauge layout I'm building in my spare bedroom will have an Alaska theme. I already have a half-dozen Alaska RR locomotives and a growing rolling stock roster on a temporary layout and the permanent pike will be started this year. 

Very cool. The AKRR allows for a lot of model flexibility thanks to its many configurations over the years, including the evolution of the equipment, the abandoned lines, abandoned sites (Valdez, Matanuska, Chickaloon, Sutton, among others) proposed lines, its connections to coal, historic and current, its connection to the refinery at North Pole, its connection and relationship to the narrow-gauge Tanana Valley Railroad out of Chena & Fairbanks, and the wide variety of the countryside served or once served by the AKRR.  I am pleased to learn that something I wrote might have helped inspire a new layout based on the AKRR. There is nothing else like it !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 07:02 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 03:05 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 06 Jan 2010 02:56 PM 

1:25 side booms--the same type used during pipeline construction days.













I will need about six of these models for realism, at a cost of about a grand by the time they are shipped here. But it WILL be worth it when that time comes. Their scale is 1:25. I will probably start ordering them one or two at a time beginning this year to make sure I have enough of them while they are still available. Expensive hobby, this. No ?



What about comments on THIS piece of equipment ? Imagine how about 4 or 6 of these would look laying pipe!

Then it occurred to me that possibly NONE of you have ever had the opportunity to see this equipment in action, which would normally be in groups of a half-dozen or more.







It was quite an impressive sight to view a long line of these strange-looking machines setting a large-diameter pipe into the frozen earth. Come to think of it, I have not seen anything like it in over three decades. So I understand if you don't relate to this. In any case,* I did win one of them on Ebay yesterday*--one of possibly a half-dozen I will ultimately have for a pipeline construction camp model that does not yet even have a designated location for my layout. Oh well, the idea is to plan WAY ahead. In fact, if I am going to include a scene such as this one, I will need a LOT more room than I had originally anticipated in order to build that scene out there.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 11 Jan 2010 06:20 PM 
These would look good on almost any layout. 
  
Come to think of it, the person who custom-painted a USA stream liner for me also offered to custom paint a version of these locomotives. At the time, I did not realize the significance of it, because I had never seen these. Now that I have, I might have second thoughts about that once I have developed my Cantwell Industrial Park area that will ultimately become a part of the Cantwell RR yard.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 01:32 PM 









I was able to locate one of these out-of-production Bachmann 45-ton locomotives in the ATSF scheme, which I have been able to obtain at a very reasonable price new. I will later alter the markings to reflect the AKRR, but probably also as Alyeska pipeline. This represents a whole new element of the Phase II line I had not contemplated until now. However, as you can see from above, I have a whole new RR yard plan I can use in conjunction with my pipeline construction camp. None of this will be likely to happen over the upcoming summer season, but I wanted to go ahead and secure a 45-tonner while they were still available new.







Scratch THAT one. This particular model is no longer available EITHER. I DID find two of another paint scheme (identical units), however, that I am now considering for inclusion in the model. My experience has been that just about ALL of this g-scale stuff shows up for sale in one place or another multiple times. I will need one or two of these (does _not_ have to be in the ATSF scheme) if I am going to proceed with that Valdez pipe yard in 2011.


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## wchasr (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron, 
Maybe a USAT 44 tonner with modified hoods would better suit your RR? Just thinking out loud. 

Chas


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Hey Ron 

While Backman made the black Santa Fe 45 toners, they were in 1:20.3 scale which is pretty big compared to 1:29th. 

USAT still make a 44 ton center cab. No Santa Fe but if you have to paint them anyway, you might take a look at them. 

http://cgi.ebay.com/USA-Trains-G-sc...45f05067f4


RLD Hobbies has new undecorated 44 tonners 

http://rldhobbies.com/44tonner.aspx

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Views of Cicely from my mid-winter check of the model railroad area last week: 
It was probably well in the sub-zero range in here when I took these shots. 

  All sits in readiness for the upcoming season, well-protected from the elements--all, that is, except the temperature ! 
  Note the signs along the model's east wall (click for larger image)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 13 Jan 2010 12:33 PM 
Hey Ron 
While Backman made the black Santa Fe 45 toners, they were in 1:20.3 scale which is pretty big compared to 1:29th. 
USAT still make a 44 ton center cab. No Santa Fe but if you have to paint them anyway, you might take a look at them. 
http://cgi.ebay.com/USA-Trains-G-sc...45f05067f4
RLD Hobbies has new undecorated 44 tonners 
 http://rldhobbies.com/44tonner.aspx
Randy

I am considering that alternative. Fortunately, my proposed Valdez RR yard is isolated, even though connected by track, from the rest of the layout, and does not require using that same scale as the Phase II section.   In fact, the Valdez yard will be immediately adjacent to the Phase III Klondike Mines Railway Grand Forks townsite, which will feature 1:20.3 rolling stock. I do appreciate the links, though, as it is certainly a reasonable alternative.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The dark green lines represent the proposed 1:20.3 track area, which includes the section I may set aside for the proposed Valdez pipe yard (probably to be re-designated as Phase IV) plus the proposed Phase III Klondike Mines line. This map does not show the pipe yard I have drawn up in a previous map because I do not expect to build it in the upcoming season. I do intend to proceed with as much of the line seen in dark green as economy permits this upcoming 2010 season. 

The light green line extending from the East Loop on the bottom of the map is the _existing_ Cantwell access line.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 10:27 PM 


One possible layout of the pipeline yard here at the CRD would be as shown below:



W= West Access



E= East Access



N= Bridge to Nowhere 


The Klondike Mines Railway line remains intact with this plan, continuing toward the east out of the Suphur Springs Wye toward the Grand Forks townsite. 


Storage Areas A & B correspond to the ones shown on the map of the Valdez RR yard. The rail line will most likely have to run under the walkway shown here in two places. Storage Area B is on the uphill side. 

 
In order to simulate the massiveness of the Valdez pipe yard operation, which accounted for about a third or more of the entire pipe line project material, I had to reserve an area that extends approximately 60 feet just for the yard storage area (The "Port" on the west (upper) end to the east (bottom) end of pipe storage area "B." This is the closest I will probably come to setting up a freight "operations" yard because this involves the transfer of 40 and 80 foot simulated 4-ft diameter pipe on flat cars with the two yard locomotives. This is too large a project to consider building this year due to the amount of track and switches plus underlying platform required to build it even close to "right."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By wchasr on 13 Jan 2010 12:30 PM 
Ron, 
Maybe a USAT 44 tonner with modified hoods would better suit your RR? Just thinking out loud. 

Chas 

As I indicated, this is definitely a consideration. Either scale could be made to work for me due to the context of this segment of the proposed line (Phase IV).


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## tom h (Jan 2, 2008)

Good afternoon Ron, I like the pipe laying tractors, In my line of work we have had 6 pipeline jobs in the last 2.5 years. I think the longest was some where around 175 miles to connect with another one. You talk about equipment, and RR ties tied together to make those machines go through swamps, lot of fun. And I still cant get over how fast they lay the pipe once the line is dug and the pipe is welded. We have a couple of major lines that cross south of Chicago about 40 miles, they connected one with Canada, we send them slurry to the oil fields in Canada where that sand stuff is in it, they mix it with the slurry because its to thick to get through a pipeline, then they ship it back to us, cool process.

Tom h


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By tom h on 13 Jan 2010 04:22 PM 
Good afternoon Ron, I like the pipe laying tractors, In my line of work we have had 6 pipeline jobs in the last 2.5 years. I think the longest was some where around 175 miles to connect with another one. You talk about equipment, and RR ties tied together to make those machines go through swamps, lot of fun. And I still cant get over how fast they lay the pipe once the line is dug and the pipe is welded. We have a couple of major lines that cross south of Chicago about 40 miles, they connected one with Canada, we send them slurry to the oil fields in Canada where that sand stuff is in it, they mix it with the slurry because its to thick to get through a pipeline, then they ship it back to us, cool process.
 
Tom h
I too was amazed at how fast that pipe went down once it was set up. Those pipeliners really moved, but they were under a rather strict deadline with a high bonus on the end for timely completion.  Sounds like you're talking about the Alberta oil fields.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Resuming the Beatson-Bonanza Mine Narrative: I wanted to continue with the original thread, but thought it better to bury it in this one. I have run into some fascinating material on the subject of Alaska's second largest copper (ever).  I will be back here soon with what I have. 










Imagine sailing through one of Alaska's many groups of islands, making a wide curve and unexpectedly coming upon an obviously-industrial town such as this one. Alaska was full of them once. Most were canneries nestled within the Alexander Archipelago, but some were large mining concerns. The largest of these was Kennecott's Beatson, named after the originator of the first copper mine at this site that dates to well before the turn of the 19th Century. You sail closer before you realize there is no one there. The place is a ghost town along the beach. How could you resist not exploring the place ?  


Beatson was one such place. It was on an alternate shipping route between Seward-Whittier and Valdez. From 1930 until sometime in the 1970s--about 45 years, this massive complex sat there just inviting the occasional passing visitor to pull up at the dock and check the place out. Quite the place it was, too.  I used to _dream_ of visiting such ghost towns as a kid.  This one, Beatson on La*Touche Island, Prince William Sound, would have been the crown jewel of all places to visit, probably in the entire North American continent, at one time. Then one day it was no more. . .


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

For many years La*Touch Island appeared on the old Alaska Steamship Maps, such as this one, showing that town (properly named "Beatson") as a port. But by the 1930s the route line moved away from Beatson. Probably by the 1950s even the name had dropped off. And the route had long since changed. Yet it is said that at one time up to 4,000 people lived there--more than live in present-day Valdez or the entire Copper River valley.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Since I am showing you old maps, here is this one: a 1920s-era minerals map of the area served by the Alaska Railroad from Ship Creek/Anchorage to just north of Talkeetna, with an emphasis on the Talkeetna Mountains. It shows the long-abandoned Chickaloon Branch which once extended from Matanuska (abandoned station site) to the U.S. Navy-owned coal fields along the Chickaloon River--my home village. All those triangles, squares and x's represent mostly gold mines in the Talkeetna Range. The last large one--the Independence Mine--was finally abandoned about 1952. It is a tourist site today.  This is one of the few maps I have seen that shows the Chickaloon Branch of the AKRR, which only operated from 1918 until 1922.  That is because the Navy decided Chickaloon coal was unsuitable for its ships. Shortly thereafter the Navy switched to diesel fuel anyway.


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## Allan W. Miller (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron wrote: 

" I am pleased to learn that something I wrote might have helped inspire a new layout based on the AKRR." 

Your fascinating posts did, indeed, inspire me! Also inspired me to spend a lot of $ on the half-dozen or so Alaska RR locomotives I purchased (O gauge) in 2009. Keep those great posts coming, Ron! 

Allan


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## tom h (Jan 2, 2008)

OK Ron, where did the town go? Who destroyed it? And why? Interesting that it would just disappear and why?

Tom h


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Tom, 
There are some places where 'one wouldn't live there but for a job'... without the mine the town would have no money. The workers followed the jobs and the infrastructure followed... 

My RR's namesake The Total Wreck Mine once boasted a town of 400, saloons(4), hotels (3) lumberyard, Post Office, barbershop, etc... before the mine; only cattle and natives wandered through, after the same! I can only get there by 4X4... desolate comes to mind... Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. 

John


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By tom h on 14 Jan 2010 06:38 AM 
OK Ron, where did the town go? Who destroyed it? And why? Interesting that it would just disappear and why?

Tom h

It IS true that _without_ the mine this island was _not_ an inviting place to live. I have never even heard of deer-hunting there, although some of the islands in Prince William Sound have deer. This one only has water. Lots of water--well into the 200 plus inches a year. Having grown up in Ketchikan, the wettest town its size in Alaska, I can tell that this is way too much rain. But that aside, the real question is "where did all those buildings go?" We will get to that. Wait until you see close up what was actually there.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Allan W. Miller on 14 Jan 2010 04:05 AM 
Ron wrote: 

" I am pleased to learn that something I wrote might have helped inspire a new layout based on the AKRR." 

Your fascinating posts did, indeed, inspire me! Also inspired me to spend a lot of $ on the half-dozen or so Alaska RR locomotives I purchased (O gauge) in 2009. Keep those great posts coming, Ron! 

Allan 
That's more AKRR locomotives than I have or am likely to ever have in g-scale. I would say you are a serious AKRR modeler. Of course, the AKRR works its way through some of the most awe-inspiring country in the world and it has a rather fascinating history at that. I have never spent much time with the history of the AKRR, although I have some VERY expensive rare books on the subject. I have always seen the AKRR as incidental to my own railroad. Although as my model has evolved, the AKRR has become integral to it. Twice in the summer time in recent years I have gone to Seward with my dad, who was visiting from Oregon. He grew up there. Both times I have been able to get some fantastic shots of the tourist train that was either heading toward Seward or parked there. I have those raw images on my computer still. This might be a good time to pull some of them out.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 14 Jan 2010 12:49 PM 
Posted By Allan W. Miller on 14 Jan 2010 04:05 AM 
Ron wrote: 

" I am pleased to learn that something I wrote might have helped inspire a new layout based on the AKRR." 
Your fascinating posts did, indeed, inspire me! Also inspired me to spend a lot of $ on the half-dozen or so Alaska RR locomotives I purchased (O gauge) in 2009. Keep those great posts coming, Ron!       --Allan That's more AKRR locomotives than I have or am likely to ever have in g-scale. I would say you are a serious AKRR modeler.  Of course, the AKRR works its way through some of the most awe-inspiring country in the world and it has a rather fascinating history at that.  I have never spent much time with the history of the AKRR, although I have some VERY expensive rare books on the subject.  I have always seen the AKRR as incidental to my own railroad. Although as my model has evolved, the AKRR has become integral to it. Twice in the summer time in recent years I have gone to Seward with my dad, who was visiting from Oregon. He grew up there. Both times I have been able to get some fantastic shots of the tourist train that was either heading toward Seward or parked there. I have those raw images on my computer still. This might be a good time to pull some of them out. 
  I spoke too quickly, having mis-read your post. I now have on hand AKRR locomotives 3015 (SD-40-2), 4000, 4001, & 4002 (SD-Mac-70's). But I also have an original Aristocraft FA-FB unit that will eventually be put into service, plus two other stock g-scale AKRR locomotives that may eventually see the light of day (all of these have to be converted to battery power, which takes, as you all know, time and money). Then there are a total of up to four switchers I expect to have at some point down the road--two NW-2s and the two switchers already mentioned that I will set aside for the Valdez pipeyard. All that adds up to a dozen AKRR engines. But that is years away before all those are activated, if ever. 

Below: The two AKRR switchers 1551 and 1552 plus one other,  when they were operating on an eastern coal line--the Lake Erie, Franklin, and Clarion Railroad:


They look much better, in my opinion, in the AKRR color scheme. 







  US Army GE-45 ton switcher in retirement, Wasilla, Alaska after use at the Mapco oil refinery in North Pole and the Valdez pipeline terminal during pipeline construction. This one needs a _better_ color scheme. 
  

picture from the  _Alaska Museum of Transportation and Industry_



Both switcher types will likely eventually appear on the ALCANEX model railroad line, Copper Rail Depot_
_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 14 Jan 2010 02:55 PM 

I also have an original Aristocraft FA-FB unit that will eventually be put into service, plus two other stock g-scale AKRR locomotives (USA GP-9 & USA GP-38-2). 
Unfortunately, the AKRR never used ALCO FA-FB units in their locomotive line-up. _Do you think anyone will notice ? 
_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 14 Jan 2010 07:28 PM 
  Posted By blackburn49 on 14 Jan 2010 02:55 PM
  I also have an original Aristocraft FA-FB unit that will eventually be put into service . . .
Unfortunately, the AKRR never used ALCO FA-FB units in their locomotive line-up. _Do you think anyone will notice ? 
_ 



So I went to the Aristocraft uncataloged database to see what they had to say about their AKRR FA unit. Very interesting. Here it is: 


"_ALCO FA-1 Diesel Locomotive 22012 Alaska (ARR) Road Numbers: 2012 Alaska RR FA-FB were produced by Aristo in early 1990's but have never yet been rerun. The distinctive blue/yellow paint scheme was based upon actual Alaska prototype units...actually MRS-1 Alco Road Switchers that were shrouded like an FA to protect crew members from harsh Alaskan winters. Out of all Aristo FA-FB's produced I would rate Alaska roadname as among the 4 rarest /hard-to-find...Alaska-Erie-Northern Pacific and Florida East Coast versions."_








Here is an AKRR MRS-1 Alco Switcher:








I fail to see the relationship between the two, but that is what the Aristocraft site says.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Allan W. Miller on 14 Jan 2010 04:05 AM 
Ron wrote: 

" I am pleased to learn that something I wrote might have helped inspire a new layout based on the AKRR." 
Your fascinating posts did, indeed, inspire me! Also inspired me to spend a lot of $ on the half-dozen or so Alaska RR locomotives I purchased (O gauge) in 2009. Keep those great posts coming, Ron! 

Allan 

  There is a long list of 0-scale model RR items that were available or still are available in the AKRR scheme _here._
_  The G-scale AKRR rolling stock_ is a much shorter list, of course.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is the part of the USGS map which shows the Beatson-Girdwood mine sites on La*Touche Island, Prince William Sound.


Beatson was the original site. Girdwood is the name that Kennecott assigned to the Blackbird mine property once it obtained those claims to the north of Beatson.  


Powder point is the site from which many historic photos of Beatson were taken. 

As you can see from this early 1980s map, there are almost no structures to be seen in an area where nearly 4,000 people are once said to live. Part of the reason why no one lives there now is reflected in the precipitation totals shown below, which are about the same as Ketchikan, AK--Alaska's rainiest city.   Period of Record Monthly Climate Summary for La*Touche Island  Period of Record : 9/ 1/1949 to 11/30/1959 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Average Max. Temperature (F) 32.8 34.9 37.3 42.4 47.9 55.8 60.4 60.0 54.6 45.5 39.7 34.7 45.5 Average Min. Temperature (F) 25.4 26.7 26.6 31.1 36.6 43.2 47.2 49.7 44.5 36.7 32.3 27.3 35.6 Average Total Precipitation (in.) 10.51 12.57 12.44 15.68 12.86 5.26 7.93 11.11 16.82 20.45 17.45 16.40 159.49 Average Total SnowFall (in.) 33.2 34.9 55.0 19.3 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 4.3 31.4 179.2 Average Snow Depth (in.) 16 26 45 43 14 0 0 0 0 0 1 6 13 

Neither particularly low, nor particularly high temperatures here, but combined with relatively high rainfall levels, this makes for a miserable existence !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Earlier this week I had a chance to examine aerial photography of the Beatson mill and mine site area as it existed in 1975. In that year, a significant amount of the original structures still existed. Here is your first look. I will move the images closer and give you some analysis shortly. 







In this image the "bluff pit" and adjacent tailings are clearly evident. Below the tailings are the remains of the massive mill and ore bunker structures. The long tramway snowshed that ran from the mill to the dock is also evident, although parts of it appear to be missing--probably collapsed. Near the top of the aerial is the wharf building--now well above the water line since the 1964 earthquake raised this area quite a few feet. It probably also knocked down several of the buildings. Unfortunately, we have no existing close-up photos from the post-earthquake period to document this.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 15 Jan 2010 12:47 PM 
Earlier this week I had a chance to examine aerial photography of the Beatson mill and mine site area as it existed in 1975. In that year, a significant amount of the original structures still existed. Here is your first look. I will move the images closer and give you some analysis shortly. 







In this image the "bluff pit" and adjacent tailings are clearly evident. Below the tailings are the remains of the massive mill and ore bunker structures. The long tramway snowshed that ran from the mill to the dock is also evident, although parts of it appear to be missing--probably collapsed. Near the top of the aerial is the wharf building--now well above the water line since the 1964 earthquake raised this area quite a few feet. It probably also knocked down several of the buildings. Unfortunately, we have no existing close-up photos from the post-earthquake period to document this. 








In an earlier thread I also promised to show you a detail of the map I discovered late last year _in my own place_ ! (see above). I told you at that time that I was looking for a map that it turns out I had all along. Soon you will be seeing details of that map too.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi Ron

I'm sure someone will say something, but wether it's prototypical or not it's a great looking FA-1

As for the road switcher being reskinned to look like an FA-1, I seriously dought that is true. First off the road switcher has 6 wheel trucks. So if they had reskined it, a PA-1 is more in tune to what it would look like.

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 15 Jan 2010 02:42 PM 
Hi Ron
I'm sure someone will say something, but wether it's prototypical or not it's a great looking FA-1
As for the road switcher being reskinned to look like an FA-1, I seriously dought that is true. First off the road switcher has 6 wheel trucks. So if they had reskined it, a PA-1 is more in tune to what it would look like.
Randy

I had just brought in my own Aristo FA-FBs from the very cold Uncle Nicolai's Shop storage area to photograph them in my second office. These have been in storage since about 1998, if I recall properly. I found them at a train hobby shop in downtown Anchorage which is also long gone. Here they are: 
  
  And this was the REAL AKRR #1520: Different paint scheme. In fact, the one shown above did not exist until the mid-1970s--about the time that the F7As like the one below were taken out of service. The average person will not be able to tell the difference between the FA and the F3A in any case. I certainly don't see much obvious difference. As for the paint schemes, very few people are around now who remember that the existing paint scheme is only three decades old and that there were previous ones like the one below. 
 Number 1520 is an EMD F7A. It was built in 1952 (builder #16519) for the DRGW, #5711. Is that the DRG paint scheme ? The Alaska Railroad bought it in 1970, rebuilt it in 1976 and then traded it in to EMD. 
taken at Anchorage, September 11, 1971 
In any case. the Aristo FA-FB is impressive, it is rare, it is the ONLY one like it, and I am going with it. I will probably have these units powered up this coming season.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Winter storage at the CRD: Here are the F-units adjacent the SD-Mac 70s (and three more Milwaukee Road F-units in the BG)
  My second office--lots of g-scale locomotives stored there (many unseen)


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

The F7As definitely look like D&RGW paint schemes. 

As I said before, the FAs look great in the Blue and Yellow 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This was as close as the sun got today to reaching the property.  At least it is striking the trees just beyond the bar. In the center is the building which houses the Cicely town model. Temperature at the time this was taken was zero. Meanwhile, tonight up at Ft. Yukon it is minus 58 !  Obviously we hope not to see that frigid arctic air spread into this area. 
  As with most all of my images, you may click this one for a much-larger version--2250 pixels wide.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Blurb in the paper today about how our new governor is very excited about the military projects up near Delta Junction. Maybe this will translate into a bit of funding for the rail spur?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 15 Jan 2010 10:58 PM 
Blurb in the paper today about how our new governor is very excited about the military projects up near Delta Junction. Maybe this will translate into a bit of funding for the rail spur? 

Not unless the AKRR has funds already dedicated[/i] for that kind of expansion AND the project is largely funded by the feds who will benefit the most from such expansion due to the presence at Ft. Greeley.  Remember that only a few years ago it appeared that Greeley was going to be abandoned and sold off as surplus government property. Nearby Delta Junction was facing economic disaster. Then came the missile site project. That aside, there is not enough potential revenue to be had in that direction to justify the expansion absent a major project that does not yet appear to exist--such as a gas line down the Alcan.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

"The original ore deposit on the surface occurred along the face of a
large bluff 2000 ft. long and rising 450 ft. above the ground at its base.
It had a slope which varied from 30" to 70" with the horizontal. The
first mining operations were on a very small scale and the work done
entirely on the surface, breaking the higher grade ore and shipping direct to the smelter at Tacoma . . . " _--Bevan Presley, Kennecott Beatson Superintendent _

This was known as the bluff pit. It was and remains the single most distinguishing feature of the Beatson mine operation. Virtually every mining operation conducted by Kennecott on La*Touche Island somehow revolved around this one pit. _
_








Below: The panorama from which the above was taken. The bluff pit is clearly visible. Picture was probably taken before 1920. 

 
BP= bluff pit / B1=approximate shaft & mine entrance for Beatson mine / M = mill complex area / T1 & T2 = tailing piles / G= Girdwood Mine, originally the Blackbird Copper Mine, picked up by Kennecott and operated from 1925 until 1930 / P1 = main Beatson wharf


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The Beatson mill, while not as tall as the interior Alaska Kennecott mill site was, nevertheless, quite impressive. 



_"Ore__ was discovered and claims located on La*__Touche_ _Island__ in July, 1897.__  __The mines were worked in a desultory manner until 1910, when the property was acquired by the Kennecott Copper interests.. The first shipment of ore was made in 1904; only the higher grade ore was mined and no attempt was made to treat the ore until it was taken over by the Kennecott company.__  __Since that time the mine has been developed to produce 1500 tons a day, and a mill has been erected for treating this tonnage, using flotation entirely.__  __The orebody is more or less lenticular in shape with a maximum width of about 280 feet and a length of about 800 feet.__  __The southern end of the lens is split by a horse of waste for about 400 feet.__ _
_"The hanging wall limit is a well-defined fault associated with a band of pyrrhotite, having an average dip of 60 degrees.__  __There is no defined foot wall, the value of the ore governing the limits of the mining; in one part of the mine, however, it is defined by a minor fault. The orebody is in a shear zone of the country rock of graywacke and slate.__  __The principle mineral is chalcopyrite associated with pyrite and quartz._
_"The__  __mine is situated a few hundred feet from tidewater; the mill is on the beach and the ore is hoisted direct from the mine through a vertical shaft into the mill bins.__  __Until the past year practically all the mining had been conducted in open pits.__  __During the past two years, the ore above the 200-foot level has been developed and a system of stoping devised to recover this ore; however, this system has not__  __been in use long enough to give any definite results as to costs or efficiency.__ "   --Stephen Birch, chairman, Kennecott Copper Corp, 1925 report. _

  The picture above is a detail shot of the one below. This is the Beatson mill as it would have looked by 1923 when all the flotation processes would have been in place. 
 The mill has a very simple flow sheet. Crushing is gone by gyratory and Symonds disk crushers; grinding by ball mills; and concentration by Janney oil flotation machines.  A large Oliver filter dries the concentrates. This completes the milling.     --1925  USGS report
The ball mills, Janney oil flotation machines and Oliver filter were also used in the interior mill at Kennicott.    --RS


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_"The mine has two entrances, a vertical shaft and a main-level tunnel. The main-level tunnel is 970 feet long from the portal to the central point of the orebody. It is about 7 by 7 feet in size. Where timber is used,the measurements are 6 by 6 1/2 feet inside the timber. The shaft is 360 feet deep with three compartments, each compartment being 5 by 5 feet inside the timbers. Loading pockets are located below the main level and below the 200-foot level.  "  --Stephen Birch, 1925. _ I am almost certain that this is a picture of the main frame for the referenced 360-foot deep shaft of which one compartment was the manway while the other two were for the 4-ton ore skips, which were operated in balance. Thus, the shaft was probably integrated into the mill and adjacent to the mill orebunker. During the latter years of the operation of the mine, this would have been the main access into the mine as they operated at lower levels in the process of cleaning up the remaining copper ore. 
  

As with all my pictures that have a border around them, this one can be clicked to view a larger image.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

It was particularly eye-opening for me when I viewed this aerial using 3-D glasses of the type I used when I was a military intelligence officer. This 1975 detail view of the Beatson mine reveals that the mill was still essentially intact, even if most of the roofs were gone.  Some of the other large structures, including the main barracks, dining hall and a very large amusement hall that included a bowling alley, and possibly the power plant, appear to be absent. These were  probably sold off by Kennecott years ago and hauled away in pieces. But the entire mill appeared to be intact in 1975. By 1980 it would be gone. Realizing how large some of those mill structures were, look again at that bluff pit, which is filled with water. 



The sun is striking those buildings from the east, so you can see the shadows of those structures ! Note that the wharf building is completely out of the water. This land was raised a considerable distance during the 1964 earthquake.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a basic profile of the main Beatson mine workings showing the main level, which was the original working level, the 150 level, which is the "grizzly" level, and the 200 level--the haulage level. 
We will be looking at this mine in a little more detail before returning to the surface structures. After all, it was the richness of the mine itself which determined what would appear on the ground above. The profile is from the 1925 Stephen Birch report.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Copper Ore Samples
  

1. Native Copper: commonly found in the Nizina River valley south of Kennecott and in lesser quantities on La*Touche. In both cases this was used by Natives for tools and for ornamental purposes.


2. Chalcopyrite: Principle copper mineral at Beatson: : _Crystals small. Mostly compact masses. __Occurs in igneous rocks and copper-bearing shales, as was the case at Beatson._ 


3. Covellite: Used in Stephen Birch's fireplace at his cottage in Kennecott 


4. Chalcocite: Primary copper mineral at Kennecott
_image: --Rocks, Minerals & Gemstones," by Walter Schumann_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

" . . . the country rocks are slates and graywackes, with
green schists occurring along fault planes. A well-defined shear zone
runs almost the entire length of the island. The orebodies are mineralized
portions occurring in this shear zone.***  Several have been developed
of which the Beatson is the largest and most important. This body
is roughly lenticular in form, 800 ft. long, with a maximum width of 340
ft. A tongue of waste protruding into the southern end divides it in two
portions. The hangingwall is clearly defined in the south end of the mine
by the Beatson fault with a band of hard pyrite and pyrrhotite accompanying
it in the upper levels. Below the 200-ft. level the pyrrhotite is
not encountered. There is no well-defined footwall, ****  the stringers and
bunches of ore becoming less frequent, until the ground becomes too low
grade to be profitable to mine, and an "econonlic footmall" is determined.
There are innumerable minor faults and slips running through the
orebody in all directions. These are invariably accompanied by talc
and clay seams, making the ground treacherous and necessitating close
timbering in the permanent openings.* **** In that portion of the orebody
where the slates and schists are mineralized the ground is soft; where the
graywackes are mineralized it is hard and breaks in large blocks.
The principal mineral, chalcopyrite, associated with pyrite, pyrrhotite
and quartz occurs in masses, veinlets and disseminated particles."
*  *_ --Bevan Presley report_
 
***  this is the Beatson Fault, which marks the western boundary of the mineral occurence. This is also the "hanging  wall" referred to in various reports relating to this mineral occurrence  --_RS_ 

*** * this is the opposing wall from the hanging wall. For the most part this eastern side of the mineral occurrence was nothing more than the area where the minerals ceased to be of economic significance. --_RS_ 

***** Much of the mine host rock proved to be unstable, requiring considerable timbering, and in some cases, a blocking out of the stopes, which means even more timbers. --_RS_
 
Mine plan for the main level showing the mineral occurrence in shadow: The Beatson fault is on the west (bottom).  This ore occurrence has been described as being in the shape of a fish. 
  
The line A to B above is shown below as a profile of that same area.
   The reference to the La*Touche system is the underground mining method developed specifically for the Beatson copper mine to extract the part of the ore which occurred below the main level. Above is a profile view of a system of grizzlies and ore-ways that sent the ore to the bottom level where it was retrieved through chutes that dropped into 4-ton side-dump ore cars that were sent to the ore skip to be lifted to the ore bunkers at the surface. --RS


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Part of the Beatson mining plan called for 70 foot wide stopes mined between 30 foot wide pillars that would serve as supports until all the stopes were mined out. Then the miners would come back to start removing the pillar supports. Once the pillars were gone, the mining would be over. The problem was two-fold: 1) ensuring the safe removal of the ore, including the pillar supports and 2) ensuring that the ore would not become too diluted with the non ore-bearing host rock by caving it improperly. This did happen at both the Kennecott interior and Kennecott Beatson mines because in each case the amount of support needed in one section was underestimated. The interior Kennecott mines relied on a different system known as stope shrinkage. It was less complex than the method shown below because the nature of the copper ore and the host rock between the two mines was different.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here, for instance, is a profile of the Jumbo mine, Kennicott, Alaska--one of four .  As  you can see, it was developed in what at least superficially appears to be a much less-organized manner than that of the Kennecott Beatson mine.  Yet both mines encountered the same difficulties toward the end when it was time to start removing the pillars left in place as supports but that nevertheless contained considerable rich copper ore.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

Did the mines extend out under the water or stay under the land above? 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 17 Jan 2010 04:57 PM 
Ron 

Did the mines extend out under the water or stay under the land above? 

Randy 

The underground mine came within 3 tenths of a mile of the shoreline. It was never threatened by the ocean water due to the nature of the fault line which marked the western edge of the copper ore occurrence. More on that later.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Winter in Alaska, yes indeed. You statesiders experience it, but you don't get to keep it nearly as long as we interior Alaska residents do. We are now in mid-winter. Winter will remain with us well into April.  These are the scenes from my property taken today, MLK-Day, Jan 18, 2010. This morning the temp was about minus 20. It will not reach above zero today.  First picture looking east: Mt. Wrangell
  This is Mt Drum, the closer of the two mountains visible to the east from the CRD: Be sure to click on to these images. They are remarkable. 
  

And this is Mt Drum as seen from just beyond Uncle Nicolai's Store, looking east. I use Uncle Nic's Store primarily as storage for rolling stock that is not ready for placement on the outdoor model railroad.  These include the USA GN grain hoppers, numerous LGB, USA and Aristocraft streamliners as well as some Aristocraft heavy weight coaches, a wide variety of locomotives awaiting conversion to battery AND the Christmas trains that are only in public view for one month out  of the year.   Additionally, items ordered for the Cicely and Cantwell set ups are stored  here awaiting placement in the spring, which will be about late March to early April. 



Note that as of today the sun is still not striking the ground on this property. It will finally hit us in about a week.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Over at the CRD outdoor model railroad, the sun is hitting some of the roofs now, but that is about it. 

  

Above: The junction between the Phase I and Phase II model railroads is buried in snow and ice.


Below: The sun hits the roofs of the structures, but is at too much of an angle to hit the walls or the ground: ONE more week to go before that happens ! 

  Below: Not much sunshine on the property, and yes, it is cold !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 13 Jan 2010 12:25 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 09 Jan 2010 01:32 PM 









I was able to locate one of these out-of-production Bachmann 45-ton locomotives in the ATSF scheme, which I have been able to obtain at a very reasonable price new. I will later alter the markings to reflect the AKRR, but probably also as Alyeska pipeline. This represents a whole new element of the Phase II line I had not contemplated until now. However, as you can see from above, I have a whole new RR yard plan I can use in conjunction with my pipeline construction camp. None of this will be likely to happen over the upcoming summer season, but I wanted to go ahead and secure a 45-tonner while they were still available new.







Scratch THAT one. This particular model is no longer available EITHER. I DID find two of another paint scheme (identical units), however, that I am now considering for inclusion in the model. My experience has been that just about ALL of this g-scale stuff shows up for sale in one place or another multiple times. I will need one or two of these (does _not_ have to be in the ATSF scheme) if I am going to proceed with that Valdez pipe yard in 2011. 


UPDATE: I DID win an unlettered NEW Bachmann SD-45 tonner in the red-yellow paint scheme on Ebay. These units are STILL in relatively-high demand. My winning bid was higher than I had anticipated--well into the two-hundred dollar range. I lost out on two others on which I was bidding, not realizing how much value these units still command. In any case, I will have one here in two or three weeks to examine and determine its suitability for my model. I do not anticipate, as I have noted before, that I will be setting up the proposed Valdez pipeyard, or anything quite like it, THIS summer season; probably NEXT year.


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## bvdrr (Jan 3, 2008)

Ron, was wondering after that last picture,do you still have customers in this weather and if you do whats the average number? Also what do you use to plow the snow with around the bar?
Fred


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

It is difficult today to appreciate just how enormous Kennecott Copper Corporation was in the early part of the 20th Century and all the way into the 1950s.  It operated some of the largest copper mines in the world--The Chino, Ray, Ely, Braden (THE largest underground mine in the world), and, of course, the Bingham Canyon Mine--referred to as the largest man-made hole in the world. That, in turn, created some fabulous fortunes for some of the shareholders, such as Stephen Birch. Wait until you see where _he_ lived.    The fabulously-rich Braden Copper Mine, Sewel, El Teniente, Chile
  

Sewel is a ghost town now, but it is also a World Heritage site. Picture taken about 1938 when it was still Kennecott.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By bvdrr on 18 Jan 2010 10:34 PM 
Ron, was wondering after that last picture,do you still have customers in this weather and if you do whats the average number? Also what do you use to plow the snow with around the bar?
                                                                Fred


In the winter time I have just enough customers to keep this place alive. That does not stop me from my ongoing development here on the property because I have other small sources of income that tend to make up for otherwise very slow times.  The issue is not snow or cold so much as it is a generally poor economy in the interior since we are now in the "bust" cycle of the well-known Alaskan "boom or bust " economy. I have a plow truck operator (large plow on a 3/4 ton pickup truck) who comes in to scour down the driveways and parkways whenever there is sufficient snow to warrant it. Until this year, that never happened more than four times in a season. I think we are already up to the fifth snow-plowing with only half the winter gone.  The typically-snowier half is about to begin.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I have copies, or in some cases, _original _Kennecott Corporation annual reports, from the beginning in 1915 until 1938 when the Alaskan operations were finally closed--all except for Alaska Steamship Company.  Here is the 1915 one--the first--showing the initial acquisition of the Kennecott interior properties, the Copper River & Northwestern Railway, Alaska Steamship, Beatson Mines and Braden Copper, plus acquisition of shares in Utah Copper--owner and operator of the Bingham Canyon Mine (pages 6 & 7--click for larger version). This marked the beginning of the mightiest copper corporation of the 20th century.  And it _all_ started with that ONE location up the Chitina River along the Kennicott Glacier--named after Robert Kennicott, a naturalist who explored a part of Alaska for the United States upon purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Robert Kennicott never saw the Kennicott Glacier, which became the inspiration for the name of the new corporation whose start can be traced to a deal made between a group of a dozen prospectors and Nicolai of Taral--that Ahtna Indian chief who was born the same year that Alaska became an American territory. It was those prospectors headed by a man named McClellan who eventually sold their interests in the claims along Bonanza Ridge to Stephen Birch. It was Stephen Birch who put together the investors, including the Guggenheim Brothers, JP Morgan, Kuhn Loeb Brothers and Stephen's original backer H.O. Havemeyer, who then proceeded to fund the CRNW Railway and the Bonanza Mine that would ultimately bear the name "Kennecott," marking the early beginning of Kennecott Corporation. Kennecott would prove to be one of the best run corporations of its type in the entire world. It has never ceased to amaze me the acquisitions the corporation made that at least on the surface appeared to be incredibly lucky but which could only have been accomplished through incredible skill on the part of Birch and others, whose decisions to purchase these properties quickly catapulted the early  investors in that corporation into richness well beyond the dreams of many even to this day. Even if one is to only look at the original Alaskan operations, Kennecott somehow found two copper formations that historically have never seen an equal in Alaska.  Those two copper mines together produced more mineral value than the richest of the Alaskan gold districts--ANY of them, including the Nome, Fairbanks or Juneau districts, or even the Klondike gold of the adjacent Yukon Territory.  Then there was the Utah Copper Bingham Canyon mine which has been operating almost non-stop for more than a century, and the Braden Mine of Chile--the single richest copper mine ever found which to this day supplies about 20 per cent or more of the world's copper. It is quite a story. 
  
 >


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_"The Bingham pit was developed by Daniel Cowan Jackling, the metallurgical engineer who pioneered the mass mining of low-grade ores from open pit mines. Jackling also used his revolutionary methods at mine locations in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, all of which were eventually bought by Kennecott. _


_"Unlike many new companies, Kennecott made money every year in its early history. The company did not suffer its first operating loss until 1932, at the bottom of the Great Depression. World War I had created high demand for all metals, and when it ended, the copper industry found itself stuck in high gear, overproducing in the face of slowed demand. Kennecott was able to remain profitable mainly because production at the Alaskan site was among the cheapest in the industry, including extremely low labor costs._


_"The trend among copper companies in the 1920s was toward vertical integration. Companies such as Anaconda and Phelps Dodge created their own fabricating operations in order to guarantee outlets for the products of their copper mines. Kennecott participated in this trend, but to a far lesser extent than did its main competitors. The company's only significant non-mining acquisitions during this period were the Chase Companies Inc. (which became Chase Brass and Copper Co.) in 1929, and American Electrical Works (changed to Kennecott Wire and Cable Co.) in 1935. _


_"In 1933, following Kennecott's first unprofitable year, Birch was succeeded as president and chairperson by E. T. Stannard, a director of J. P. Morgan and Company. Around that time, the market was beginning to show the effects of a new flood of copper from Rhodesia. Since Kennecott was set up as a high-production outfit, and also had to keep Chase Brass operating full tilt, cutting back production was not a practical strategy. Stannard instead sought out new markets. Although this policy made no significant gains, Kennecott was bailed out in the late 1930s, as was the copper industry in general, by greatly increased demand for copper in preparation for entry into World War II."_
E.T. Stannard was Birch's protege at the original Kennecott site. E.T. Stannard was the company manager during some of the formative years there, also developing the unique ammonia leaching system that was ultimately employed at Kennecott to separate the copper carbonates from the dolomite limestone. Stannard was considered a brilliant engineer, but was not a particularly likable manager. Both Stannard and Jackling appear as Kennecott board members during the 1930s. 

One of the questions I get most often is "what if Kennecott had remained open during the war years?" Did it close too early? In fact, the mine was largely exhausted of its copper ore reserves by 1938. It was not in a position to provide copper during WWII. Similarly, the Beatson and Girdwood mines were exhausted by 1930. 



_The Kennecott mill & leaching plant, 2004_


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

One of the questions I get most often is "what if Kennecott had remained open during the war years?" Did it close too early? In fact, the mine was largely exhausted of its copper ore reserves by 1938. It was not in a position to provide copper during WWII. Similarly, the Beatson and Girdwood mines were exhausted by 1930. 

Speculation...that kinda sorta fits in with your combined railroad theme... 

So Kennecott was largely exhausted...but Kennecott is not the whole state. Nor was copper the only 'in demand' metal. I seem to recollect a mining operation at Nabesna (sp?) to the north and east of Kennecott, for example. So...as part of a wartime measure - the same sort of wartime effort that saw the AKRR spurs to Whittier and Eilson - the Copper River Railway effectively gets temporailly 'nationalized' (put under military control) and expanded to said alternate mine sites. After the war, the post war boom is enough, and the deposits are enough to justify keeping the line open even with greatly reduced military demand.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 19 Jan 2010 07:11 PM 
One of the questions I get most often is "what if Kennecott had remained open during the war years?" Did it close too early? In fact, the mine was largely exhausted of its copper ore reserves by 1938. It was not in a position to provide copper during WWII. Similarly, the Beatson and Girdwood mines were exhausted by 1930. 

Speculation...that kinda sorta fits in with your combined railroad theme... 

So Kennecott was largely exhausted...but Kennecott is not the whole state. Nor was copper the only 'in demand' metal. I seem to recollect a mining operation at Nabesna (sp?) to the north and east of Kennecott, for example. So...as part of a wartime measure - the same sort of wartime effort that saw the AKRR spurs to Whittier and Eilson - the Copper River Railway effectively gets temporailly 'nationalized' (put under military control) and expanded to said alternate mine sites. After the war, the post war boom is enough, and the deposits are enough to justify keeping the line open even with greatly reduced military demand. 





An interesting approach to a "what-if"  historic railroad--one that _could_ have been.  I wonder if anyone has ever tried it with the Copper River & Northwestern in some other scale.  Who knows what quasi-historic layouts are out there in the deep dark recesses of someone's basement ?  


I expect to be doing something similar with the Klondike Mines Railway of the Yukon Territory at some point in the future, since I will eventually build  a version of the KMR based on the presumption that the KMR of Dawson City/Klondike City/Grand Forks  was extended to White Horse to connect in with the White Pass & Yukon at some point in a future not yet determined.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 19 Jan 2010 07:11 PM 
One of the questions I get most often is "what if Kennecott had remained open during the war years?" Did it close too early? In fact, the mine was largely exhausted of its copper ore reserves by 1938. It was not in a position to provide copper during WWII. Similarly, the Beatson and Girdwood mines were exhausted by 1930. 

Speculation...that kinda sorta fits in with your combined railroad theme... 

So Kennecott was largely exhausted...but Kennecott is not the whole state. Nor was copper the only 'in demand' metal. I seem to recollect a mining operation at Nabesna (sp?) to the north and east of Kennecott, for example. So...as part of a wartime measure - the same sort of wartime effort that saw the AKRR spurs to Whittier and Eilson - the Copper River Railway effectively gets temporailly 'nationalized' (put under military control) and expanded to said alternate mine sites. After the war, the post war boom is enough, and the deposits are enough to justify keeping the line open even with greatly reduced military demand. 


Nabesna was one of many gold mines shut down in Alaska during the war because it was considered unnecessary to the war effort. Nabesna did re-open, but like many other similar operations, with so many years of having been closed down, it proved ultimately unprofitable. The Alaska-Juneau gold mine and the Fairbanks Exploration dredges and their Nome-based dredges proved to be exceptions, at least for a time. Regrettably, no other valuable or strategic minerals were ever developed in the territory or the state until after the advent of the oil pipeline. 

There has always been a lot of speculation about the Wrangell Range, of course. One would think there would be considerable minerals there besides what was already developed. But all that land was tied up by 1980 by the federal government, same as the other likely-mineral rich Denali National Park lands. So we will never know. 


Of course, once the CRNW Railway was abandoned, the only relatively economical means of developing the region was lost.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

My ALCANEX scenario assumes that the Trans-Canada gas line goes through, prompting a parallel construction of a railway that connects B.C. to Alaska by way of the Alcan route. At the same time, it allows for the reconstruction of the Chitina Local Branch of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway from Chitina to Kennecott as a tourist train since it would no longer be possible to conduct mining or any extensive commercial activity except tourist-related within the park. The ALCANEX, however, would be primarily a heavy-industrial railroad originally that also allows for passenger traffic, mostly tourist-related. There are plenty of papers which have been written about this ALCANEX-type railroad, all of which envision considerable resource extraction from the Yukon and Alaska by means of such a proposed railroad. Of course, now we know that the original intent of using an extended AKRR for military purposes has never gone away.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Typical cold day here in Copper Center along the Klutina River: Officially we hit minus 27. Unofficially we were into the minus 30s. It has not warmed up much. As of noon we were at minus 22 F. And THIS is NOT a real cold spell for us. View of the Mt Drum from my solarium this morning: Plenty of ICE FOG ! 
  Ice fog in the valley: Yet another day where running trains out in the garden is out of the question.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

It remains to cold to even go over to the Cicely town layout area. These were pictures I took when I made the rounds when it was zero or above out there a couple of weeks ago. 
Here it all sits waiting for spring to come to life once again. 

  In mid-winter I added one more track house, seen below, to complete this part of the residential section (got it for about half off the usual on-line retail price). The bus yard hasn't changed, except that I added a car-carrier (seen in yellow) earlier this winter. I am still adding classic cars to this model from time to time. This is a great layout for displaying those Franklin Mint and Danbury Mint cars (including the yellow car carrier). I have found that early in the season I need to take out these roughly 100 model cars, two at a time, and clean off the dust. Then, while all that is sitting elsewhere, I can do a street and roof-cleaning. But at least it is not as bad as it would be were this model open to the elements. Nothing here ever gets wet unless I want it to, and there are no leaves, pine cones, mole holes, or other pests and varmits that add to the maintenance. I DO have to watch for yellow jacket or mud-dauber nests. So far so good. That is a real pain to kill them off and then remove the nests. Had that problem happen over in the Kennecott section a couple of times, so I know. Mainly this model is subject to dust and cotton from cotton wood, fireweed, dandelion, wild roses and other weeds and plants blowing in through whatever openings they can find. 
  What do you think? Is it starting to look full ? I never tire of taking pictures of the layout because, like the wild country that surrounds this place, it is forever evolving. EVERYONE who has a model railroad layout should be doing the same, if for no other reason than to document what they have on their individual layouts over time.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

More on the Kennecott Copper Corporation investment in Chile from the 1915 annual report: 

BRADEN COPPER MINES COMPANY:

On Dec 31, 1915, the Kennecott Copper Corporation owned 96.45 per cent of the outstanding stock and bonds of the Braden Copper Mines Company. The BCMC owns the entire outstanding stock and bonds of the Braden Copper Company, a Maine corporation operating in Chile. 

The Braden Copper Company owns at Sewell, Chile (named after one of the two founders of the American-owned Braden Company) 174 claims equal to 2,362 acres, and at Rancagua for railroad terminals the Company owns about 16 acres. At the present time it also has a concentrator with a capacity of 4,400 tons of ore per day, its own complete smelting plant, hydro-electric power plant, and a village for housing its employees. The entire property is in the Province of O'Higgins, Chile. The terminal of the mine's (NG --RS) railway at Rancagua is about 48 miles SE of Santiago.The narrow guage railroad depot at Sewell, ChileThe principal groups of mines are known as "Teniente," "Fortuna" and "Centinela"' ; they were discovered by Spaniards in the latter part of 1700 and originally operated by them; they were later owned and operated by Chilean natives. The Braden Copper Company acquired the property from the Chileans in 1904 or 1905 and development work has been carried on at these properties up to the present. The climate is very similar to that in the northern part of California. Labor conditions are good. The Company owns its own (NG) railroad, running from Sewell to Rancagua, a distance of about 45 miles; at Rancagua it connects with the government-owned railway which runs to Valparaiso on the seacoast.   _The narrow gauge railroad at Sewell, Chile_

The ore in the mines is a concentrating copper ore in the form of sulphides of copper in a brecciated andesite; the ore bodies occur around the periphery of an extinct volcano.There was milled during the last quarter of 1915 382,553 tons of 2.16 % ore and the production was 11,236,470 pounds of copper at an average cost of 7.9 cents per pound, and estimated earnings from the sale of same amounted to $1,033,000. . . The ore in the mines is a concentrating copper ore in the form of sulphides of copper in a brecciated andesite; the ore bodies occur around Mr. Pope Yeatman, consulting engineer of the Braden Copper Company, estimated as of January 1, 1915, 113,694,880 tons of ore, with an assay value of 2.84 per cente., and allowing for dilution in mining he reduces this value to 2.5 per cent. He estimates the value of the copper contents of the above tonnage, based on a 14-cent copper market, allowing an 80 % mill extraction, a 95 % smelter extraction and 6 1/2% cost of producing copper delivered to European markets as $324, 030,408, and the life of the mine, 32 years, based on above tonnage and with a plant having a capacity of 10,000 tons of ore per day.From the 1915 Kennecott Copper Corp annual report "for the period May 27, 1915 to Dec 31, 1915:On December 31, 1915, the Kennecott Copper Corporation owned 96.45 per cent of the outstanding stock and bonds of the Braden Copper Mines Company (note: formerly owned by the Guggenheim Brothers, major stock-holders in the newly-formed Kennecott Corp --RS). 
The narrow gauge railroad depot at the Kennecott Corporation Braden Copper Mine, Sewell, Chile







  _The railroad depot at Sewell, Chile_


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Hi Ron 

Cicely is looking great. To help keep the dust down on the layout, why don't you cover it with something like bed sheets. 

Love the pics of the mine towns 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 20 Jan 2010 05:41 PM 
Cicely is looking great. To help keep the dust down on the layout, why don't you cover it with something like bed sheets. 

Love the pics of the mine towns 
Randy I continue to do things to add to Cicely. It has been a marvelous and entertaining project for me. I still have the model of the Cle Elum Milwaukee Road depot to add to this model, the Minnifield log mansion and possibly more before it is done. Meanwhile there are all those details including dozens of figures just waiting for their chance to become permanent residents of this model town. 

Because almost all the dust collection takes place during the operational period of the model railroad, it is not practical to cover the model with sheets. I won't be doing any cleaning in there until well into the season. 


  _Butcher shop back to back with a small art-deco cafe. Speaking of art-deco, note the figure in a chef outfit on the roof of the butcher shop holding a line of sausage links. I have art deco sign figures everywhere on the model: great stuff ! _


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Cicely Art deco: The Union and Esso men and the dinosaur holding the Esso sign.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

I really like the Esso man. He's cool


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 20 Jan 2010 08:27 PM 
I really like the Esso man. He's cool 

I recall seeing advertising objects like that back in the 1950s when I was stateside. The two I have are both good quality heavy plaster pieces.  When I bought them, I just hoped they would turn out to be the right size since I got them through Ebay. They worked out well.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a shot I took through the glass at night late last summer--the only way to see the front of the Union 76 man:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

A closing post for the night:


It is minus 30F. I don't think we got above minus 20 today. Here are two shots of Mt. Wrangell this afternoon showing the rich alpenglow effect of the setting sun on the south side of the mountain.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Swung by the library today while in town and checked out the giant 'Alaska Regional Profiles' from the mid 70's. 

The maps therein showed the various mines/claims on LaTouche island...and for some reason, quite a few on Knight Island as well, just north of LaTouche. Oddly enough, alot of mine sites were shown to the NE of Whittier (right at the base of the glaciers) and a serious concentration at one point along the coast roughly midway between Valdez and Cordova. 


Maps also indicated 'occurance very high' for copper, gold, molybenum (sp?) and showed several mine sites and what not extending from Nabsena almost to the Canadian border. 

The area where the 'Pebble Mine' is supposed to eventually go was also listed as 'very high' in metal occurances, and it looks like there was a mine of some sort within a few miles of that location. 

Then tonight, on the news, it was mentioned our esteemed governor is apparently behind the idea of a road to Nome, partly to create jobs, partly to lower costs of goods in the bush villages along the way. That gets done right, we get not only the road to Nome, but one most of the way to Bethel as well. This has me wondering more and more if he might not give a serious looksee to the AKRR extension to Delta Junction as a sort of job creation measure, maybe as part of a warm up for the natural gas pipeline to the states. (Yes, not real likely on the road to Nome, and less likely on the railroad extension, but...)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 21 Jan 2010 01:14 AM 
   
 . . . our governor is apparently behind the idea of a road to Nome, partly to create jobs, partly to lower costs of goods in the bush villages along the way. That gets done right, we get not only the road to Nome, but one most of the way to Bethel as well. This has me wondering more and more if he might not give a serious looksee to the AKRR extension to Delta Junction as a sort of job creation measure, maybe as part of a warm up for the natural gas pipeline to the states. (Yes, not real likely on the road to Nome, and less likely on the railroad extension, but...) 

So once again the century-old Road to Nome proposal surfaces. Of course, it makes more sense as a railway, possibly following the old U.S. Army telegraph line.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The possibilities are certainly out there. In the case of either proposed extension, there are no unusual obtacles, such as mountains or glaciers, save one: In either direction from Fairbanks one encounters a near-continuous permafrost zone.  And, of course, in either case the distances are considerable. 
  

Map showing an AKRR of the future ?   I say this is "probable" AND very doable for _both_ extensions and within two decades ! 



All we need is to regain our sense of "can-do," recognizing the obvious, which is that Alaska IS a resource and particularly and _energy_-resource state and act accordingly.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Jan 21, 215PM: In the distance you see the sun at its highest point for the day, leaving most of the property in the shadows all day long. That's the CRNW track behind those blue and green corrugated sheets, about four feet above the Phase II ALCANEX-Great Northern  track bed in the foreground. 
  As the tracks leave Cicely, heading west, they are buried  2 feet of snow--nearly 50 feet of scale-snow at 1:24.  This _could _turn into a record winter for snowfall here in the valley since most of the snow tends to fall in the latter part of the winter.  And, yes, it is as cold as it looks. I did not stay out there long when I was taking pictures today.


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## tom h (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron, I see you got the "Big Boy" guy, I used to always see him in Wisconsin and the U.P. of Michigan, only 1 left on our route up there.

tom h


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I took the opportunity to get another shot at the art-deco chef figure attached as a kind of advertisement above the Cicely butcher shop:


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

So how much snow is normal for the interior of Alaska? It seems you don't normally get that big an amount of snow. 

Silverton Colorado is said to avg 400 inches of snow each winter. But I'm sure their temps aren't near as brutal. 

Great pic also 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

And here is a more recent shot of the two art-deco oil men in the same pix: Esso & Union 76 as of Jan 21 '10:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 21 Jan 2010 04:57 PM 
Ron 

So how much snow is normal for the interior of Alaska? It seems you don't normally get that big an amount of snow. 

Silverton Colorado is said to avg 400 inches of snow each winter. But I'm sure their temps aren't near as brutal. 

Great pic also 

Randy 
The amount of snow already on the ground--about 1 1/2 to 2 feet is typical here for the entire winter. If nothing more falls, we are about right as it stands.C   Cicely model town structure, Jan 21 '10 as the first rays of sun for the year finally hit the windows.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

View 2 of east end of Cicely, Jan 21 '10:


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Outside of the Red Dog Mine, I don't know just what there is in the general region of Nome that would justify a rail way extension in that direction at this point in time. Plus...a lane and a half or two lane gravel road would be vastly less expensive. Still...that situation could change...maybe the Russians will get something moving on the other side of the strait and we'll be more or less forced into action. 

My impression from the news commentary was that the idea was to at least partly fund the road to Nome via federal stimulus dollars.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 21 Jan 2010 06:24 PM 
Outside of the Red Dog Mine, I don't know just what there is in the general region of Nome that would justify a rail way extension in that direction at this point in time. Plus...a lane and a half or two lane gravel road would be vastly less expensive. Still...that situation could change...maybe the Russians will get something moving on the other side of the strait and we'll be more or less forced into action. 

My impression from the news commentary was that the idea was to at least partly fund the road to Nome via federal stimulus dollars. 



Hopefully they will SERIOUSLY consider the railroad option. I don't want to see THAT much land opened up to ready public access. That would be like creating one huge hunting corridor--definitely not a good idea, having seen what already happens along the existing highways just in the Copper Valley area.  Then there is the very high added cost of maintenance AND rescue of stranded motorists along such a long road running through wilderness area for hundreds upon hundreds of miles.  I am not among those who wants to see that area developed except to the limited extent that would be required by constructing a rail line.  As we have already seen by the Copper River & Northwestern Railway and the White Pass & Yukon Railway, their presence did virtually nothing to degrade the wilderness each line traversed. True, it would be far less expensive to simply _build_ a _road,_ but in the long run I am convinced the rail option is far  superior for an ecological, maintenance and also a military and/or industrial standpoint (transporting large amount of materials from the mines through Fairbanks and then to the world with minimal disruption to the rest of the countryside).   


I also strongly believe that there should be aggressive, persistent attempts to work with the Russians toward a long-term goal of ultimately connecting the two continents by means of a high-speed rail system the would have the effect of connecting most of the world by means of a land route.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This is one area that will see some changes early this coming season. I wll be expanding the carnival, adding five more rides and a g-scale circus tent I picked up somewhere right into the area currently occupied by the coal tower and that siding. The railroad should have torn that down long ago anyway. After all, who uses coal towers anymore ?  (Of course, the railroad, in its wisdom, will simply pick up that old tower and move it somewhere else along the line).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

January here in the Copper Valley is proving to be typical weather-wise: Cold and mostly clear. The  temperature range in the last few days has been about minus 20 to minus 30. Picture taken this afternoon, Jan 22, 1 PM.  Can't do much more than plan for the upcoming season. Looks like I can start setting up in about 2 1/2 months for the coming season.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 20 Jan 2010 04:50 PM 
More on the Kennecott Copper Corporation investment in Chile from the 1915 annual report: 

BRADEN COPPER MINES COMPANY:

On Dec 31, 1915, the Kennecott Copper Corporation owned 96.45 per cent of the outstanding stock and bonds of the Braden Copper Mines Company. The BCMC owns the entire outstanding stock and bonds of the Braden Copper Company, a Maine corporation operating in Chile. 

The Braden Copper Company owns at Sewell, Chile (named after one of the two founders of the American-owned Braden Company) 174 claims equal to 2,362 acres, and at Rancagua for railroad terminals the Company owns about 16 acres. At the present time it also has a concentrator with a capacity of 4,400 tons of ore per day, its own complete smelting plant, hydro-electric power plant, and a village for housing its employees. The entire property is in the Province of O'Higgins, Chile. The terminal of the mine's (NG --RS) railway at Rancagua is about 48 miles SE of Santiago.The narrow guage railroad depot at Sewell, ChileThe principal groups of mines are known as "Teniente," "Fortuna" and "Centinela"' ; they were discovered by Spaniards in the latter part of 1700 and originally operated by them; they were later owned and operated by Chilean natives. The Braden Copper Company acquired the property from the Chileans in 1904 or 1905 and development work has been carried on at these properties up to the present. The climate is very similar to that in the northern part of California. Labor conditions are good. The Company owns its own (NG) railroad, running from Sewell to Rancagua, a distance of about 45 miles; at Rancagua it connects with the government-owned railway which runs to Valparaiso on the seacoast.   _The narrow gauge railroad at Sewell, Chile_

The ore in the mines is a concentrating copper ore in the form of sulphides of copper in a brecciated andesite; the ore bodies occur around the periphery of an extinct volcano.There was milled during the last quarter of 1915 382,553 tons of 2.16 % ore and the production was 11,236,470 pounds of copper at an average cost of 7.9 cents per pound, and estimated earnings from the sale of same amounted to $1,033,000. . . The ore in the mines is a concentrating copper ore in the form of sulphides of copper in a brecciated andesite; the ore bodies occur around Mr. Pope Yeatman, consulting engineer of the Braden Copper Company, estimated as of January 1, 1915, 113,694,880 tons of ore, with an assay value of 2.84 per cente., and allowing for dilution in mining he reduces this value to 2.5 per cent. He estimates the value of the copper contents of the above tonnage, based on a 14-cent copper market, allowing an 80 % mill extraction, a 95 % smelter extraction and 6 1/2% cost of producing copper delivered to European markets as $324, 030,408, and the life of the mine, 32 years, based on above tonnage and with a plant having a capacity of 10,000 tons of ore per day.From the 1915 Kennecott Copper Corp annual report "for the period May 27, 1915 to Dec 31, 1915:On December 31, 1915, the Kennecott Copper Corporation owned 96.45 per cent of the outstanding stock and bonds of the Braden Copper Mines Company (note: formerly owned by the Guggenheim Brothers, major stock-holders in the newly-formed Kennecott Corp --RS). 















I was unable to find out much more about the 48-mile narrow gauge except that it used a certain number of Lima Shay locomotives. It makes sense to me, given the mountainous nature of the terrain. Both of those shown are survivors from the old days.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I also found this drawing of a 2-6-6-2 NG that may or may not have ever been used at Braden, but it does have the Braden name on it. This is interesting in that it reveals that the gauge of this railroad is 2 ft 6 inches. 
  Here is the Braden Copper Mineb(red asterik) in the context of nearby Rancagua (green)--the end of the 48 mile line and the location of the smelter--and the port of Valparaiso (blue), going through the capital of Santiago. I had always imagined the Braden to be more isolated from Chilean civilization than it turns out that it was.


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

The Building that the Cicely model is in, does it have any heat in it?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By John J on 23 Jan 2010 07:58 AM 
The Building that the Cicely model is in, does it have any heat in it? 
Neither outside structure--either the Kennecott or the Cicely one--is designed to keep warm. That would have been prohibitively expensive. It is all I can afford to keep _myself_ warm ! On the other hand, even though the models and rolling stock left in place experience a temperature range of  as much as 150 degrees, the problem, to the extent it exists, is on the _higher_ temperature end--_so far_.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

All the Kennecott Copper Corporation reports from its formation in 1915 through the closure of its Alaskan operations in 1938 show the main office as being at 120 Broadway, NYC:
As you can see from reading this part of the Braden Copper Company report, the purchase of that Chilean copper mine was huge. Who was behind this purchase ? Where did the money come from ? 

  
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k...cott_Corporation_Worldwide/BradenReport-a.jpg


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Kennecott Copper Corp occupied this building at 120 Broadway from the time it was brand-new in 1915: 
  


_Upon its completion, the Equitable building was the largest (in total floor area) in the world. It rose as a single tower with the appearance of two separate identical towers standing side by side, connected by a wing for the whole height of the building, such that it appeared in the shape of the letter "H" when viewed from above. A striking feature of the building by modern standards is that it has no setback from the street beyond the depth of the sidewalk, rising vertically for all its floors. (Wikipedia) _

This 40 story building casts a 7 acre shadow across the city, which caused public outrage when it was completed. As a result, New York City passed the 1916 Zoning Resolution which aimed at restricting the height and bulk of buildings and assuring the penetration of light and air to the streets below.
This structure was the last skyscraper to be constructed before building regulations were instituted in New York.
Built to replace the first Equitable Building which burned down in 1912.
Used by some 15,000 people daily, this was the world's largest office building at the time of completion.
The principal designer was Peirce Anderson.
Building features a subway entrance.

_Businesses located at 120 Broadway:_
American International Corp. 
The Corporation Trust Co. 
Empire Trust Co. Inc. 
Fidelity Trust Co. 
American Smelting & Refining Co. 
Armour & Co. (New York Office). 
Baldwin Locomotive Works 
Federal Mining & Smelting Co. 
General Electric Co. 
Kennecott Copper Corp. 
Metal & Thermit Corp. 
National Dairy Products Corp. 
Yukon Gold Co. 
Stone & Webster & Blodget, Inc. 

Federal Reserve Board of New York
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Bernard Baruch

The entities in red had a direct connection with the Guggenheim Brothers--major stockholders in the Kennecott Corporation at the time. There was probably a financial relationship with some of the others on the list, but I have not found it so far. In any case, what we have here is an impressive array of Big Money and power of the type that would have been needed to pull off the kind of mining investments conducted by Kennecott.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The very same Equitable Building exists to this day at 120 Broadway, absent Kennecott. Here is a Google Street view of it.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The Guggenheim Empire: 
  Included the Alaska Syndicate (Kennecott, Beatson, Alaska Steamship, CRNW Railway, Northwestern Commercial); American Smelter & Refining (including the Tacoma smelter that refined all the Alaskan metals); Guggenex--the exploration company that included the Binham Canyon, Utah, Braden, Chino, Ray and Nevada Northern Consolidated; and much more . . . The Guggenex holdings and those of the Alaska Syndicate were for the most part picked up by the new Kennecott Copper Corporation in 1915. Some of the holdings were not fully transferred until the 1930s. They were literally too much for even the backers of Kennecott to swallow all at once.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Sewel alone--the part of Braden Copper at the top of the mountain--was a wholly-owned company town of _16,000_. 
 


Above: The company town of Sewell in 1970, shortly before the government of Chile nationalized the company holdings. 
Below: The concentrator at Sewell:Look at the size of the mill compared to the housing complexes to the lower right and the right.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Sewell had a very definable American sector. When it became clear that the Chilean government would be taking over the mine, the Americans began a mass exodus. To my knowledge, all the American compound homes were destroyed by the Chileans, possibly to erase the reminders of the historic American presence at the time of the very anti-American Marxist Allende regime. Prior to his ascent to power, Kennecott had already sold its majority interest to the Chilean government. Thus, its losses were somewhat minimized, compared to nearby Anaconda Copper, which had been investing heavily in its holdings at the time of the rise of Allende.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a report explaining the basic geology of the Braden mines and something about the mine layout as well. I emphasized certain points of particular interest with yellow highlight: 
 Andesite is described as a relatively pale rock with porphyritic texture. It occurs in lava flows and stocks together with basalt, latite and trachyte. It is the most important volcanic rock after basalt, with the distinction made according to the color index. In andesite the dark minerals make up less than 40 per cent by volume of the total rock whereas in basalt, the dark minerals exceed 40 per cent. _Andesite rock samples:_







_A ridge of Andesite lava flow: _
 NOTE ALSO: Reference to the use of 22-ton underground ore cars in groups of 14 ! The ones used at Kennecott & Beatson were 3 and 4 ton cars.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Once again the temperature range here at Copper Center along the Klutina River was minus 20 (warmest) to minus 29 (coldest). This is when animals such as the moose shown below tend to come out. Picture taken this afternoon (Saturday Jan 23) from my bedroom window. In the background is Mt. Wrangell.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k...rporation_Worldwide/BradenReport-c-detail.jpg_image from the Braden El Teniente copper mine in 1941
_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I will be getting back to the Beatson-Girdwood, but first I intend to pursue these other fascinating (to me anyway) lines I have developed in this one thread. I have a few more items on the Braden Copper Company and on Kennecott and its directors and managers in general before heading back to Alaska. 
  Relative to the rest of the Kennecott operations, Alaska quickly devolved from a matter of major interest and concern for the new corporation to one that was relatively unimportant before finally becoming all but irrelevant to the powers-the-were at 120 Broadway, NYC. For some of us, this topic will _always_ be fascinating. It is a story of Titanic proportions. In fact, the topic of the Guggenheim Brothers, Stephen Birch and all the rest, deserves its own place as a theme in a major motion picture. 
  _Kennecott Copper Corporation's original office, the Equitable Building, 120 Broadway, New York _


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

I like pictures of Mine Cars/trains. Talk about narrow guage


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 23 Jan 2010 06:18 PM 

 http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k...rporation_Worldwide/BradenReport-c-detail.jpg _image from the Braden El Teniente copper mine in 1941
_  
Wow Ron

When you first talked about the 22 ton cars being used in the Ore Mine, I thought about the 10 ton coal cars used in the mine I worked and the 20 ton coal cars used in some other coal mines. I thought, man those have got to be huge cars. I forgot that Ore generally weighs a lot more than coal so the cars aren't near as big. As for the mine motor, I've operated motors similar to the one pictured. Interestingly I don't see a trolley pole, so it must have been battery powered. Also of note, those little motors had no air brakes. That wheel operated manual brakes and that is all you had to stop those 14 loaded cars. Yikes!

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

From an interview with Bob Haldeman, the new junior engineer at the Braden Mines (1941)
Swent : 

How did you get up to the mine? 



Haldeman: I took the train to Santiago, and I met the manager, Charlie 

Palmer, and said hello to him. He got me on the train to 

Rancagua. 

Swent: What kind of train was it? 



Haldeman: A regular train. In Rancagua I had to wait a while and catch 

the rail car. It was a narrow gauge railroad built in 1915 or 

1920. It was seventy kilometers from Rancagua up to the mine in 

Sewell. If the railroad had one, it had a thousand curves in 

it, and the train had one of these old side-drive logging steam 

engines. They bought them from Washington and Oregon, took them 

down to Chile, and put little cars on them. It was like a 

Toonerville trolley, with seven or eight cars. They'd slowly go 

uphill. 



The train took four and a half hours, and the rail car was 

nothing but a truck chassis with a Ford motor in the front, and 

then they put steel wheels on it that they made in the foundry 

there. Then they put a canopy cover on the thing with isinglass 

windows that you took off in the summer and put on in the 

winter. It had five rows of seats of four each and a driver. 

That took two hours. 



So I got up to Sewell late in the afternoon. 

Swent: How high is Sewell? 



Haldeman: Seven thousand feet. I walked from the railroad terminal to the
mine staff house, which was near the mine portal

track grade at Sewell:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*The Three-Year Contract *



Haldeman: I stayed there for three years; I had a three-year contract. 



Swent: That was the standard contract, wasn't it? 



Haldeman: Right. 



Swent: They paid your way if you stayed the full three years? 



Haldeman: No. They retained 20 percent of your salary every month for the 

first eighteen months, in case you quit early, and that 

compensated them. Then you had to pay your way back. 



My first three months in the mine and this was standard 

with all the foreign shift bosses, gringos-- 


_winter scene at Sewell:_










*The Practicante. or Training Period* 



Swent: There was three months of the practicante period? 



Haldeman: Yes. That meant you were assigned to be a timberman's helper, a 

miner's helper, and a trackman and a pipeman's helper, knowing 

no Spanish whatsoever. All the workers there were on piece 

rate; every bit of work that you did was measured, and you got 

paid for that. You could make 50 to 100 percent over your card 

rate with a good helper. Of course, when they got the ******, 

who couldn't even understand the orders they would give, they 

were very disgruntled and unhappy, because they were just able 

to get their basic card rate; they couldn't get any bonuses on 

contract. 



It was hard work. The shifts were an hour in, an hour out, 

and eight on--ten hours, and you came out just completely 

pooped. I was staying in the mine staff house with twenty other 

American and Canadian shift bosses. The food was Chilean style, 

with a lot of cooking oil in it. The eggs and bacon in the 

morning were not like my mother made. Instead of an egg cooked 

in butter and a strip of well-cooked bacon, it was served in a 

little aluminum dish that they called a paila, it was floating 

in oil, and the bacon was half-done. Of course, my stomach 

didn't appreciate this, and for three months I was just 

miserable. All of us had it. 



We took in lunch, which was an empty gin or rum bottle full 

of chocolate milk, an orange, and a ham sandwich on Chilean 

bread--hallulla, the heavy, unleavened bread. It felt like I 

had a brick in me every day, and with the hard work it was 

miserable, no question about it. 



But it was a wonderful way to learn what an eight-hour 

shift meant- -how much you could do and how hard the work 

was because after three months you started out as the boss. 

You had to be a fair judge of whether the fellow did a good 

shift or whether he was knocking off or trying to get out of 

doing hard work on a day's labor. 



Swent: You really knew. 



Haldeman: You absolutely knew. After being a timberman's helper, then I 

became a timberman and had a Chilean helper. During the lunch 

hour in the mine, you could sit down right where you were 

working, in the drift or wherever it was. The Chileans wanted 

to know how you say all the dirty words in English, and they 

would teach me the words in Spanish. [laughs] Of course, after 

six months my Spanish was becoming fluent, but, oh, I couldn't 

use it in social circles; it was really rough language. 



The Chilean worker was very respectful of the ******. They 

would have fights among themselves. They had knives, and they 

would roll their jacket around their left arm, take their knife, 

and hack at each other. But I could walk in between them, push 

them apart, and say, "No. If you get cut up in the mine, 

they're going to fire you. Don't lose your jobs." They'd never 

touch me. We gringos were always "Mister"--"Mister Haldeman." 

[pronounced "meestur"] A high respect for the gringos, so it 

was very nice. Of course, the nicer you treated them you had 

to be very stern with them, but if you treated them fairly, they 

would work their hearts out for you. I just have to take my hat 

off to them. 


_Aerail Tram and Train at Sewell: _










They're very ingenious people, too. They Just never had 

the tools or the education to be smart workers- -which they are 

now. They're coming around; the educational system has improved 

in Chile.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: Where were you in the mine at that time? 



Haldeman: We were way back in there, just like the square wheel that is 

undercutting directly on top of timber, heavy ground. We had 

quite a big labor force, about three or four thousand 

underground alone. After we modified the mining system, putting 

a solid block in between the undercut level and the draw level 

and ran finger raises up through it, a different type of mining, 

we cut the labor force down to maybe a thousand or nine hundred, 

about 25 percent of what it had been before. There you didn't 

have all of this heavy timberwork and maintenance and the likes. 



Swent: What kind of machinery were you using? 



Haldeman: Oh, just standard stopers. They didn't even have the jacklegs 

then; you just took the hand drills and held them up yourself. 

The jackleg came in later on. 



Swent: The equipment was mechanized, though? 



Haldeman: Oh, yes, we had air and all that. But ventilation-forget it. 

When I was in there they had dry drilling in half of the mine, 

and I have partial silicosis from that. We were a highly 

silicotic mine, if you want to put it that way. As time went on 

we had modern safety measures put in. The Chilean legislators 

started putting heavy fines on industrial illnesses, sicknesses, 

and diseases, including silicosis, and management perked up and 

started to clean up the air. 

_
Sewell in winter:_











Swent: When did that happen? 



Haldeman: It was gradual, and maybe the mine fire precipitated a lot of 

it. 



Swent: Ventilation particularly. 



Haldeman: Yes, absolutely. That's about the time it started to take off. 

I would say we went to wet drilling at the time of the mine 

fire. 



Swent: That was in 1945. 

Haldeman: Yes.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*World War II; Copper Mining as Part of the War Effort* 



Haldeman: One of the strange things about fate- -here fate comes in. In 



September of '41 I took the job, Pearl Harbor came in December, 

and immediately after that Guam and the Philippines were 

invaded . (Haldeman had turned down job offers at both Guam and the Philippines in order to accept the one in Chile --RS)



Swent: You were kind of glad you weren't there. 



Haldeman: Yes. Fate also took a little bit of a role in that 1941 period, 

because when I went to work in San Francisco I was also 

registered in the draft. I was 1-A, and I said I wanted to be a 

pilot. They had this program they were starting with 50,000 

planes and 50,000 pilots a year, when they were starting to 

mass-produce airplanes. I went up to Hamilton Field, north of 

San Francisco, and passed the examination there to become a 

pilot, a lieutenant in the air corps. I was on a standby basis 

there. 


_One of the many long concrete staircases at Sewell: _









In 1942, I got a call to report to Hamilton Field, that I 

had been accepted in the air corps, and they finally had enough 

airplanes. I took this letter over to my boss at the mine, he 

gave it to the mine superintendent, who gave it to the general 

manager, who sent it up to the New York office, who had at that 

time declared to the government that they needed so many people 

down there to get the copper as part of the war effort. So 

myself, along with the other boys, were classified as 4-F and 

frozen in our jobs. The fickle finger of fate.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*A Nearly Fatal Accident in Bad Air *



Haldeman: From "41 to '44 I started working hard. In 1942 I almost 
disappeared from the map. I was going up to check a chimney 
raise we were running about thirty meters up; they call them a 
zigzag. It's about a 50 angle, and you go zigzagging up. Then 
you ran a drift thirty meters high into an area of a 
block-caving that had failed to cave. It was all hung up in 
there, and we wanted to find out what was wrong with it. The 
night shift put in the log book that they had broken through to 
this cave area. The rule was that the shift boss had to go 
ahead of everybody and make sure the working areas were safe. 

So I took my number one head straw boss--capataz, they call 
the man the two of us went up this ore pass hand-over-hand, on 
a big one-and-a-half -inch manila rope. We always carried 
carbide lamps, because of possible oxygen deficiency. This ore 
body was made up of copper minerals and had a lot of pyrite in 
it. Pyrite oxidizes when it's exposed to air and consumes 
oxygen. You'll get in places where there is oxygen deficiency, 
and your lamp will go out. Going from 16 to about 12 percent 
oxygen, the flame grows real large, and then pffft. That's the 
point where you have to get back where you were; otherwise you 
will faint. And that's why the bosses always wore .carbide 
lamps . 

I was shinnying up this thing, with my friend behind me. I 
can remember that my flame all of a sudden went pffft, and I can 
remember my head going down gently on the floor of the drift. I 
fainted and tumbled back into his arms. He went to grab me, and 
I was so heavy with only one hand [free], both us went 
head-over-heels, bouncing down this thing. 

At the bottom, when we get out on this drift, there's a 
60-meter open ore pass below us that has two track rails across 
it, where they have little one-ton cars that they can push back 
and forth. I didn't quite get there. There were what they call 
spuds, two- inch steel about twenty- inches long. You drill a 
hole in the rock and put two of these in with a board on top, 
and you can set the rig up to drill the next blast. They keep 
carrying this, relaying it up. 

One of these spuds was there, and it happened to catch me 
on my shoulder- -here, you can see. 

Swent: You still have the scar. 

Haldeman: I hung up there, and my hard hat continued down. There happened 
to be a workman passing by that ore pass and that drift, and my 
hard hat went "tic, tic, tic," down with my lamp. Well, he knew 
something was wrong, and he went and got another boss. They 
came and saw me up there, and my friend was hung up, too; he was 
unconscious. They pulled us out and got us over to the tool 
shed- -they call it a bodega , an underground tool shed- -where 
they had first aid and a stretcher. First aid was like a 
bandage. 

1 lay there in pain. What the fellows had done was to put 
a bandage around me like this [demonstrates], and of course they 
pushed the bone in. When you have a broken collar bone, you're 
supposed to pull back and get the bones away. 1 was a horrible 
mess; my eye was all gouged, and 1 was scratched up all over. 1 
felt like somebody had been beating me to death. The mine 
superintendent finally showed up, and he said, "Get this bandage 
off," and he pulled my shoulders back and tied them back, 
it was a wonderful relief. 


They took me and my friend, my capataz, out to the 
hospital. I had a fractured collar bone, and they set it. 1 
had a gouge out of my right upper eyelid, and for almost half a 
year I couldn't sleep; I could see the light out of that little 
hole. I was out of service for about a month and a half. We 
were so very close to being killed. My friend, the capataz, in 
his fall somehow completely tore his tendons on his right arm 
and shoulder. They couldn't repair them, so he lost the use of 
his right arm. But he was alive. 

That was in '42.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I'm surprised that when you fell you didn't regain consciousness 

when you got better air. 





Haldeman: Well, I knocked myself out; my head was banging all over. I had 

bruises and scratches on my head. I looked horrible; I have a 

picture somewhere. 

_
The hospital at Sewell_









Now comes 1944 and the end of my contract. 

Were you already married by the time this accident happened? 



Haldeman: No, I was single. Comes '44, and now I'm a foreman getting $528 

a month. (His starting salary was $200. --RS) 


Wow! And of course promotions and raises came, just 

to keep the boys happy, because we had to get our quota of 

copper out. 

*

Extending the Contract and Getting Married. 1944 *





Haldeman: I had had enough of it. I went in to the mine foreman, 



Mr. Casarotto (Mr. Casarotto is another story; he's quite a man, 

I'll tell you), and told him I was riot going to renew my 

contract. "Well," he said, "Let's talk, Bob. Now, what's your 

problem?" 



I said, "No problem, but I've just had enough. I would 

like to go home . " 



"What are you going to do, get a job?" 

"I'll find a job." 





"Do you have a girlfriend back there?" He knew. 

I said, "Yes. I'll go back now and marry her." 



"Well," he said, "look. If that's the problem, we'll bring 

her down for you, and we'll give you a two-week honeymoon in 

Vina. You can stay on, and we'll give you a houseone of those 

houses up there [points to photo] . How would you like that? 

Would you sign another contract on that basis? Furthermore, I'm 





sure you're going to get another promotion, 

for your salary to go up to $650 a month." 



_Sewell miners and an Americano in 1926: _





Who am I to turn down a wonderful offer? [laughs] Here I 

am, still in Chile. I called up my bride-to-be, Doris, whom I 

had only known for three or four weeks before I left for Chile. 

I met her on the Russian River, and we corresponded. It took me 

three days to get the call through, because in those days part 

of the lines were physical lines--copper and steel wire on the 

surface; we didn't have any satellite. I finally got through to 

her, and I said, "Would you like to come to Chile and marry me? 

They've offered me another contract."


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

She didn't answer. I kept asking, "What's the matter? Is 

the line cut? Operator! Operator!" 



Finally she said, "I'm still here, but I'm crying." 

I said, "Well, what's the answer?" 

She said, "Yes." So she came down. 

You got married down here and stayed here? 




Haldeman: Yes. We moved up to the house up in the town site. 

Swent: Did you have the two-months honeymoon? 



Haldeman: No, two weeks. I was supposed to have a two-week honeymoon. My 

wife went across the states by train and went to the New York 

office. It so happened that the mine superintendent's wife was 

coming down at the same time, so they arranged for the two 

ladies to travel together, by air this time. It was Panagra at 

that time, a Pan-American Grace line. They were DC-3s, and in 

1944 passengers were subject to off-loading because of war 

priorities.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

went: The planes didn't fly at night, did they? 



Haldeman: No, it was all day flights, because it was instrumentation 

landing; that was way back in the square wheel days. [laughs] 

They calculated that it took three days to get here. On the 

second day, the mine superintendent called me up and said, 

"We're going to go down and meet our wives, so I have my special 

rail car here." He had a special management car. He said, "I 

want you to be at the station this afternoon at a certain time, 

and we're going to go down. I have hotel rooms at the Crillon." 

Okay. 



So we went down. This man, Jack Withers, was a real nice 

guy and a good miner, but he had a problem with the bottle; he 

drank an awful lot. Most of the people at that time in the 

mining business were pretty heavy drinkers. We got down to 

Santiago, and the next daythe third dayI got a call from him 

at seven in the morning at the hotel. He said, "You call the 

airline and find out when the girls are arriving." So I tried 

to get through to the airline. It so happened that the airline 

didn't answer me until just about one o'clock, and they told me 

they had been off-loaded in Panama. They weren't exactly sure 

which plane they were scheduled out on. 



"All right," he said, "if that's the case, let's go over to 

the restaurant on the central plaza, the Bahia, and we'll have 

lunch. It's the best restaurant in town, and I'll buy." Well, 

with the cocktails and the like, I had to take him home in a 

taxi and put him in bed. This happened five days in a row. The 

girls were off-loaded later on in Quito, and then in Lima. 



Finally they arrived. Then we went up to Sewell and got 

married by the Registro Civil, the civil registry a legal 

marriage, not a church wedding. Then we went down to Vina. So 

for two weeks' honeymoon, I spent half of it with the mine 

superintendent and the other half with my wife. [laughter] 



_
The American compound at Sewell in 1967 shortly before the area was razed
_









Haldeman: We went up to the house, and I had bought a bed from a family 

who was leaving and had stored it in the mine staff house 

basement. I told the mozos there- -the boys who worked in the 

place- -to have it put in my house to be ready when I came. We 

walked into the house, and I went into the bedroom, showing my 

wife around. It was a very small house; they're all the same 

size and shape, painted the same colors, and they had some 

company furniture that was Just as rustic as it could be. It 

was nice and well done, but it was very functional. 



Here's the bed, flat on the floor, no legs on it, no 

bedstead. My friends in the mine staff house had gone away with 

them. [laughs] I had a trunk that I had bought, and that trunk 

was in the living room. On top of it 1 had a lamp. I had 

choapinos, little throw rugs made by the Indians. That's how we 

set up our house. 



I called up the mine timber- framing shed. All the mine 

timbers were 12 inches by 12 inches by 6, 7, or 8 feet long. I 

had them cut out four blocks a foot long and bring them down to 

the house, and that raised the bed for a month until I could get 

the guys to give me the rest of the bed. [laughter] 



Swent: This was one of those tricks they played on honeymooners? 



Haldeman: Yes. Little bit by little bit my job was a little better, a 

higher boss.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: I'd like to ask you a little about your wife's adjustment to 
Chile. Did she learn Spanish? 

Haldeman: Yes, she learned Spanish. Not completely, but she learned it 
and got along real well. 

Swent: She enjoyed it here? 

Haldeman: She was a very adaptable young lady here. She fit in well. 

Finally, when I got to be a general manager, I was very proud to 
have her as the general manager's wife. 

Swent: It must have been quite an adjustment for her. 

Haldeman: No, she enjoyed it. She is very adaptable. A very nice girl, 
and we got along fine. During my first contract from '44 to 
'47, we had two boys, and then one was born in '49. 

Swent: Were they all born here? 
Haldeman: In Sewell, in the mine hospital. 

During our first year of marriage, in 1945, we had the mine 
fire.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*The Mine Fire. June 1945* 



Swent : 
It was in June of '45, wasn't it? 


Haldeman: Yes, and you have interviewed Mr. Reed on that and got all the 
particulars. 

Well, it just so happened that Mr. Burney Egemo was one of 
the three American bosses who died in the fire. Because of his 
outstanding ways, he was a leader, and management had its eyes 
on him as going up to superintendent. 

Swent: He was captain of the football team in Lead High School when I 
was in high school; I was behind him, and his sister was in my 
class. We all idolized Burney. He was a leader. 

Haldeman: Yes, he was; a very nice fellow. He married a Chilean girl, 

Sadie Eichelbosch, a very charming person. Burney had trouble 
with his teeth; I think they called it pyorrhea at that time. 
The dentist decided he had to have them out; it was about the 
third time he was having some out. He didn't want to miss 
shift, and he got in and was on the level where the majority of 
the people were killed. Had he not gone in, I would have had to 
replace him. I was on the level up above, and we walked out of 
the mine with a cloud of smoke behind us about twenty meters, 
and the rats running alongside in the drainage ditch, scurrying 
out. 



That was a tragedy, and 364 people died in the fire, 
fate again came into my life: I didn't have any apparent 
competition for going up in the mine organization.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

We go along from '44 to '47 with another contract, and from 

'47 to '50 there's another contract. I had a third boy then, 

and by that time I was just going up to the top job in the mine. 

I was a mine foreman, and from there I was assistant general 

mine foreman in 1951. That would be number two to Mr. 

Casarotto. 

*

General Mine Foreman Pedro Casarotto *



Haldeman: Mr. Casarotto was an Italian immigrant who went from Italy to 



the United States, California, and started to work in the Guasti 

vineyards. I think it was in the late twenties that the IWW 

[Industrial Workers of the World] was formedthe wobblies. 

They were called communists, and they formed unions. They had 

Pinkertons breaking them up. 



Mr. Casarotto, who had never gone beyond the third grade, 

was involved in this. The police were after him, so he went 

down to San Pedro, California, and got a job on a nitrate ship 

returning to Chile. When he got to Valparaiso, he jumped ship, 

went out to Rancagua, and hired on as a laborer- -peon, they 

called them at that time at the Teniente Mine. He had a brass 

tag, and that was his work number. He went up to the mine, and 

in those years the mine was a good place to run away from 

justice. Not too many questions were asked, just to get guys to 

work in the mine, which was a hard place. 



Casarotto started out as a laborer, then became a 

timberman, a miner, and worked up to become a straw boss. He 

was outstanding; he was a leader--a big, husky Italian. I'm not 

sure of the year, but in about 1935 they needed a general mine 

foreman. From mine foreman, the next step up was in the 

superintendency, and usually that job had been filled by 

Americans. The mine superintendent at that time didn't feel 

that he had any Americans qualified below that level in the 

mine, and Casarotto was a real good, reliable fellow, a reliable 

worker, and intelligent with his limited education. 



So the mine foreman called the general manager, Mr. Turton, 

and said, "I have a fellow who is Chilean of Italian descent, 

and I want to put him in as a general mine foreman." 




Sewell in 1930











Turton said, "I'm going up to the mine next week. Wait; I 

want to talk to the guy first." When Turton got up there, they 

called in Mr. Casarotto. Turton had heard of him, and he talked 

to him and asked, "Do you think you can handle the job? What's 

your name?" 



He said, "My name is Inocencio Casarotto." 



Turton, who grew up in the mine, a blustery, great big 

fellow, macho and all that, said, "Inocencio? I would never 

have a general mine foreman by the name of Inocencio. From here 

on out, you are Pedro Casarotto." [laughter] And until the day 

he died, he was Pedro Casarotto. 



Pete was a wonderful educator or trainer of young mining 

engineers. He knew how to really get the maximum out of 

you- -give you real difficult tasks, delegate you all the 

authority, and allow you to make a couple of mistakes. He 

trained so many of the people in the industry. 



That's Mr. Casarotto, and he is really the fellow to whom I 

owe my understanding and knowledge of underground block-caving 

mining. Pete really pulled me out of the ranks. He took a 

shine to me and pushed me up and up. Sometimes he would jump me 

two positions to replace a man and left me alone. It certainly 

develops you when you are fully responsible for something like 

that. [laughs] You're sharp. 



In those days there were thousands of timbersets and 

hundreds of ore passes in places all over the mine. All of us 

working in the mine at that time developed a memory of the 

numbers of these sets, the pieces of wood in each set and in 

between the sets, the drift numbers, and so on. I could sit 

down and see the mine in my mind at night. Somebody would call 

me up, and I could get a visual picture of that set or two sets, 

in between them, how many stringers there were up above, and 

which ones were broken. It was a tremendous teacher. All the 

rest of it we learned that way. It was a wonderful training 

school. 

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/blackburn49/Kennecott_Corporation_Worldwide/Sewell1930.jpg


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Hope you have been enjoying this interview as much as I have. I will be continuing it later. What an insight into the historic Kennecott Braden Copper mine !


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Great stuff Ron


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 23 Jan 2010 12:50 AM 
I also found this drawing of a 2-6-6-2 NG that may or may not have ever been used at Braden, but it does have the Braden name on it. This is interesting in that it reveals that the gauge of this railroad is 2 ft 6 inches. 
 


Although the drawing clearly says 2' 6", I read further that this rather large, yet compact looking NG was to be a 30-inch gauge This 2-6-6-2t was proposed in 1940 for Chile's Braden Copper Company. Somewhat resembling the Uintah Railway 2-6-6-2ts, the locomotive would have had 15x20 inch cylinders, 36-inch driving wheels, and outside frames. It was never built.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This was / never was it:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 24 Jan 2010 09:11 PM 
What do you think--is there a more than passing resemblance ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I was skeptical as to how an engine of this size could replace the Shays that were employed on the Braden NG RR. But it turns out that Uintah successfully accomplished just that very thing--having the only two articulated NG engines ever used in the US built for their Uintah RR which included grades of up to 7.5 % and curves of 66 degrees. Incredible. So that plan would have probably worked. Apparently, these must have been studied by someone in the Kennecott Copper Corporation since two of them were being successfully used in Utah-Colorado--conveniently, as it turns out, not far from the greatest of the Kennecott's USA mines--the Bingham Canyon Utah copper mine.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I have mentioned my proposed pipeline construction camp and my proposed Alyeska Valdez pipeyard. I have a model of the historic CRNW Railway, built to serve Kennecott Copper Corporation's original copper mine. And now I am discussing interesting elements of the Braden Copper Mine once owned by Kennecott. Did you know that there was once a direct connection between Kennecott and the major stockholder of the Alyeska Pipeline ? Several times I have mentioned historic similarities between the original Kennecott and the construction of the pipeline, but there was _far more_ than some interesting historic comparisons. 







_Alyeska's Pump Station 1_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 25 Jan 2010 03:29 PM 
I have mentioned my proposed pipeline construction camp and my proposed Alyeska Valdez pipeyard. I have a model of the historic CRNW Railway, built to serve Kennecott Copper Corporation's original copper mine. And now I am discussing interesting elements of the Braden Copper Mine once owned by Kennecott. Did you know that there was once a direct connection between Kennecott and the major stockholder of the Alyeska Pipeline ? Several times I have mentioned historic similarities between the original Kennecott and the construction of the pipeline, but there was _far more_ than some interesting historic comparisons.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 24 Jan 2010 09:23 PM 
Posted By blackburn49 on 24 Jan 2010 09:11 PM 
What do you think--is there a more than passing resemblance ? 
 









I saw this LGB model when it first came out in a demonstration in a long-gone large scale train store in Tigard Oregon. At the time the most impressive aspect of it besides its size (and price) was its sound system. Strange-looking engine. Never saw another one quite like it. After examining the history, now I know why.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

An interesting chronology and _the tie-in_: 


1969 Feb 7, Atlantic Pipe Line, Humble Pipe Line and BP Oil Corporation (formerly BP Exploration U.S.A., Inc.) approve an amendment to their original agreement, electing to proceed with design and construction, and changing the name of the project to "Trans-Alaska Pipeline System." The acronym "TAPS" was applied in usage. 

Feb 10, Atlantic Pipe Line, Humble Pipe Line and BP Pipe Line Corporation (a subsidiary of BP Oil Corporation) announce plans to build an 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline. 
Jun 6, TAPS files for federal right-of-way permits. 
Sep 13, First 48-inch pipe arrives in Valdez from Japan. 
Oct 22, Humble Pipe Line, Atlantic Pipe Line and BP Pipe Line are joined by Amerada Hess Corporation, Home Pipe Line Company, Mobil Pipe Line Company, Phillips Petroleum Company and Union Oil Company of California in joint venture. 


















1970 
April, Suits filed by environmental groups and others to block pipeline construction. 
Aug 14, Incorporation of Alyeska Pipeline Service Company by the Owner Companies. Note: changes from original incorporators are as follows: Home Pipe Line transferred its interest to all other Owners except Amerada Hess. Atlantic Pipe Line has become ARCO Pipe Line Company by name change. Humble Pipe Line has become Exxon Pipeline Company by name change. BP Pipe Line Corporation was merged into Sohio Pipe Line Company (also see Feb. 12, 1971); Sohio Pipe Line later (see Aug. 9,1974) transferred part of its interest to Sohio Alaska. Amerada Hess Corporation has transferred its interest to Amerada Hess Pipeline Corporation. Mobil Pipe Line Company has transferred its interest to Mobil Alaska Pipeline Company. Phillips Petroleum Company has transferred its interest to Phillips Alaska Pipeline Corporation. Union Oil Company of California has transferred its interest to Union Alaska Pipeline Company. 

1971 
Feb 12, BP Pipe Line Corporation is merged into Sohio Pipe Line Company (a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company [Ohio] ).

1977 
Oil flows from the Alaskan Pipeline, producing unprecedented profits. After nearly 20 years of inactivity, corporate hiring expands dramatically.

1978 
BP gains ownership of 55% of Sohio when Sohio's share of Alaska Oil volume reaches 600,000 bbl/day.

1981 
Sohio Corporate coffers overflow. Desperate to invest $2 Billion accumulated in banks, Sohio buys Kennecott Copper, paying twice the current stock value. World copper market collapses. Sohio stock plummets from $140/share to $35/share.

1984 
After investing nearly $1 Billion , Sohio abandons Mukluk, the largest dry-hole ever, in the Beaufort Sea. BP is nervous. Upper management is reorganized. Austerity strikes Sohio! Hiring slows.

1987 

BP buys the portion of Standard Oil it did not already own, once again reorganizes and assumes control as 'BP America'. Robert Horton is CEO. As a corporation, Sohio ceases to exist and the Sohio At about this time, oil prices collapse. 

Thus Kennecott became a subsidiary of BP Minerals in 1987, when BP purchased an outstanding minority interest in Standard Oil in June 1989. BP Minerals was then acquired by RTZ Corporation plc, Britain's largest mining company, probably because BP could no longer justify owning BP Minerals following the world-wide collapse in oil prices. 

1988-1990 
BP replaces the red, white and blue Sohio ovals, once the most recognized logo in the US, with redesigned BP shields 'with an emphasis on the colour green'. (Ultimately that did not go over so well, either. --RS)


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## sschaer (Jan 2, 2008)

ron, 

another really interesting topic. 

the green flower of the new bp logo should actually show bp's interest in solar power. it is the worlds largest manufacturer of solar energy system. 



some suggestions. did you ever consider of writing your stories in a different format ? let's see. one document for the crd stuff, one for the kennecott, one for other mines ...... you get the point. now if you enhance each of these documents over the time you might send it to subscriber. such as version 1, version 2 which follows a few months later with tons of new informations/pictures added. 

similar to a blog but instead of keeping it online you email it to subscribers.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By sschaer on 26 Jan 2010 12:16 AM 
ron, 
. . .did you ever consider of writing your stories in a different format ? let's see. one document for the crd stuff, one for the kennecott, one for other mines ...... you get the point. now if you enhance each of these documents over the time you might send it to subscriber. such as version 1, version 2 which follows a few months later with tons of new informations/pictures added. 

similar to a blog but instead of keeping it online you email it to subscribers. 
First, I would need a potential list of subscribers to make such an endeavor worthwhile. That is so much easier said than done.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Continuing the Haldeman interview:

*ASSISTANT GENERAL MINE FOREMAN, 1951 
Far-Reachine Effects of a Plane Crash in Canada. 1950 *

Swent: You were assistant mine foreman in 1951. 

Haldeman: Yes, I was being considered for that. In 1950 comes another act 
of the fairy of fate. Kennecott's Mr. Stannard, who I met when 
I first came down, plus two of the key executives were getting 
along in years, and the board of directors said, "You have to 
replace yourselves with younger people." 

Haldeman: At that time Kennecott had acquired controlling interest in a 
mining company in Canada, Quebec Iron and Titanium. 

Swent: You were working for Braden Copper Company, which was a 
subsidiary of Kennecott, so it was natural for them to turn 
here--? 

Haldeman: Yes. They had a reorganization policy that the board had 
insisted on that they get some younger people in the top 
positions. The incoming executives, with the outgoing 
executives, took a plane to fly up to Canada. On that plane was 
the wife of a postman who was fed up with her, and she was going 
up to visit some relatives in Quebec. He put a bomb in her 
suitcase. 

Swent: Oh, I didn't know that caused the crash. 

Haldeman: They all went down--the wife and all of the outgoing and 
incoming executives; Stannard was one of the outgoing and Frost 
was one of the incoming. Kennecott was absolutely decimated; 
they had nobody to run it. 

Swent: To this day most mining companies don't send all of their 
executives in the same plane. 

Haldeman: That's exactly the reason; that started the policy.

Swent: It was a terrible thing. When was that? 
Haldeman: It was 1950. 

Charles Cox was taken from a steel company; I don't know if 
it was U.S. Steel or not. He was a financial man, and he was 
brought in as president. I think a year later he picked up 
Frank Milliken from New Jersey Zinc and put him in as number two 
man.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Growing Awareness of the Political Situation in Chile *



Haldeman: Let me go into the political side of the story. About this 
time, I'm getting up in management, and I'm becoming very aware 
that there is a growing movement in Chile to say that the copper 
should be in the hands of the Chileans. This is a backlash 
imitating what was going on over Latin American oil in Brazil 
with Petroleo Es Nosso and in Venezuela. The oil companies were 
trying to negotiate a graceful exit. This was the anti- capitalistic theme, 







and that's when the left-wing parties,the socialists, and the communists started to become very important. 
They believed that the countries should own their own natural resources. This is going to be threading through the story 
as we go along. It began to have more and more effect on mining and my involvement in the company. 












Charles D. Michaelson[/b] 



Haldeman: It's now 1951, and Mr. Milliken hires a Mr. Charles D. 
Michaelson, who had experience in Bolivia with the Patino group 
and in Cuba with a nickel company. He sent Mr. Michaelson down 
to Chile to train to take over Mr. Turton's job. Mr. Turton 
also was about the age of Mr. Stannard, and Turton had never 
really prepared any number two man young enough. He grew up 
with his cronies and stuck with them. He was the old, old 
school: "That's the way we do it," and "the rock in the box" 
thing. Forming management groups ten years apart for succession 
was something he didn't bother with; that wasn't management at 
that time. 


Mr. Michaelson came down here, and I think his job was 
general superintendent of operations, or about at that level. 
He saw that there was nobody below him, so he started to look 
around the company. After he got oriented, he started inviting 
me to have a martini in the afternoon and asked me about the 
mine. The next thing you know, I was called in by the manager. 
I was told after wards that Mr. Turton had also put an eye on me. 
He said he liked me because 1 also came from the mine; he was a 
mine man, and that had a lot to do with it, then. 

I was taken out of the mine as number two to Mr. Casarotto 
and put in as assistant to the general manager, in training. 
Well, that was a title that was created, and I was working under 
Michaelson 's wing. In 1952, after four or five months of 
training, they named me as general superintendent of operations 
and Mr. Michaelson as assistant general manager. I had to go 
around and learn what the smelter was like, and the shops and 
the railroad and so on.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT OF OPERATIONS, 1952 *
*
Learning Diplomacy *

Haldeman: All of the departments were managed by Mr. Turton's old cronies 
and buddies, and each man had a little empire. They just didn't 
think anything about this young whippersnapper who was coming 
around. I had to sit for an hour in the mill superintendent's 
office, waiting for him to receive me and then sit back and say, 
"What do you want to know?" I remembered Machiavelli's book and 
the rule that the new prince always decimates the other princes 
and puts his own people in. So I had to start, bit by bit, to 
assume management. I was the general superintendent, and these 
fellows had to report to me. It took an awful lot of diplomacy. 

Swent: Had you had any formal training in management? 

Haldeman: In those days management was not what you call management 
today.. . Harvard Business School and management classes in 
universities. No, I learned engineering, mining, geology, and 
metallurgy, period. I never had a course in management, much 
less a course in politics, an area I will get into. 

Swent: Had management even been mentioned as something that you would 
need to be aware of? 

Haldeman: In the fifties, Harvard Business School suddenly became 
important in all of the business world. Prior to that, 
businesses were run by old-time managers. It was only in the 
forties and the fifties there was a sudden awareness of 
industrial engineering and the likes that became a tool of 
management . Then came all of these management training schools . 
This all started about the time I was stepping out of the mine 
and into management with absolutely no background in it. Nobody 
else did in the company. [laughter]


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: You were so isolated up there, you probably weren't aware of the 
domestic politics either. 

Haldeman: No, absolutely not. I was isolated in the mine, with American 
town sites, American management, and 1 wasn't aware of any 
politics going on. 



*General Manager Franklin D. Turton* 

Haldeman: About this time Mr. Turton passed away. He died at Coya, the 
town where the management office was. Mr. Michaelson had to go 
to Santiago to take the head job. Turton never wanted to. 
Stannard tried to get Turton to go to Santiago, and he built a 
building there with an apartment in it. But Turton had a 
beautiful house in Coya with a big garden and fruit trees. He 
was out at the mine, and he said, "I'll go to Santiago over my 
dead body," and that's exactly how he went. He died of a heart 
attack while he was out in the garden, propping up his fruit 
trees after a windstorm. 

Turton was a character and a wonderful man. He built up 
the company. We used to have nail factories and made our own 
stationery and form books and everything, because you had to be 
independent to do it. Sometimes it took eighteen days by boat 
to get instructions down from the United States. You can't run 
a company that way. Sometimes the telephone didn't work; . 
sometimes the manager had so many problems that he didn't answer 
the telephone. [laughs] There wasn't any fax or anything like 
that. Those were different days. We even made our own coffins. 
You had to be self-contained.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Self-Contained Camp* 



Swent: What about health care? 



Haldeman: We had very good medical service. It was excellent. We had 
what they call "womb to tomb" philosophy in everything; 
paternalism to the nth degree. 


Swent: Company doctors, company hospital-- 


Haldeman: Everything. A hospital in every town site. We took care of all 
of the people. We had some excellent doctors, all Chilean 



Haldeman: 

. . . We imported, without any question as to cost, everything 
they needed. Many people in Santiago would call up and ask if 
they could send their kid up to Sewell to have him operated on. 
So did Anaconda, because we both had to be self-contained. The 
Chilean national health service--government socialized 
medicine--at that time was very substandard. 


So we did a very good job on that, 
and still do today. 



Swent:
You had your own schools, too? 


Haldeman:
The company always did.
We had public schools there, and for the foreigners we had the 
Calvert system. My boys went to the Calvert school in the 
mining camp, and when I moved to Santiago we put them into a 
British boys' school, the Grange. 


Swent:
Did your wife teach, or did you hire teachers? 

Haldeman:
No, the wife of the safety director, the wife of the mill 
superintendent, and the wife of this and that who had experience 
in teaching before in their lives took over the teaching jobs. 
They did a real good job. 

Swent:
Did the company pay them? 


Haldeman:
Yes, a modest, nominal sum, and gave them all the equipment they 
needed. And we gave all medical and other paternalistic 
services to the teachers that the government sent to the public 
schools, and we helped them out with supplies, because the 
government was short on that, too. There are an awful lot of 
indirect subsidies that you have to get along with. We also had 
quarters for the police force; we gave them housing. We had 
18,000 people in our town sites, and we gave them everything, 
plus all the 18,000 complaints that you can imagine. Everything 
you get for nothing is not very good. If you have to buy it 
yourself and take care of it yourself, it's not bad; even though 
it's lousy, you don't complain. [laughs] 










Swent:

So now as superintendent you were getting into all of this. 


Haldeman:
Oh, when 1 got into management, the women used to call me up and 
say, "The welfare department hasn't changed the light globe in 
my basement now in three weeks." Oh, dear. And I'm supposed to 
be taking care of producing copper. 

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k...rporation_Worldwide/Sewell1960escalalarga.jpg


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Relations with Anaconda Copper Company *

Swent: You mentioned Anaconda- -did you get together at all with the 
Anaconda management to discuss problems? 

Haldeman: No. We were competitors, although friendly competitors. A lot 
of things Anaconda did, we didn't agree with eye-to-eye, so we 
would have to let them go their own way. They played a lot more 
politics than we did. And, of course, we were isolated. The 
offices in Santiago, sure, they got together. You're always 
listening with one ear and trying to hear the conversation on 
the other side with the other ear. We were not against or have 
any fights with Anaconda except in the last days, when they were 
very bitter at us for our selling 51 percent of the company to 
the Chileans. I'll get to that later on. 

Swent:
Did you get into Santiago very much for socializing? 










Haldeman:
No, I did no socializing at all in Santiago. I vacationed in 
the States with the family and went up to see my wife's mother, 
my mother, who was still alive at that time, and my wife's 
brothers and sister. I was a typical U.S. expatriate working 
abroad. The Chilean market didn't have much in clothing or 
bedsheets and so forth. So when we went up to the States for a 
three-months' vacation every three years--. I shortened the 
contracts to two years with two months' vacation to get the guys 
out more to the States, and they would come back loaded with 
things. We'd send a truck down, and all that stuff. We 
imported Arrow shirts. 

 

Swent: I came down on the plane this week with some fellow who was 
carrying four lampshades by hand. [laughter] So it still goes 
on. 

Haldeman: It still goes on. Goods imported from the U.S., people just 
love to have them and show them off in their houses. That's why 
I have no worry about this North American Free Trade Agreement 
[NAFTA]; we'll be money ahead. The more they can buy our goods, 
and they love them and let them manufacture it down here, and 
they can buy it here with our label on it. The Japanese do it. 
Mr. [Ross] Perot doesn't quite agree with me. 

Turton passed away, and Michaelson had to go to Santiago. 
Turton never did want to go. The New York board of directors 
wanted to have somebody for political representation. By this 
time we were having problems with our tax rates going up. The 
Chilean Congress was starting to levy more burden on the copper 
companies to finance the budget deficits rather than try to
develop new business atmosphere. It was just the contrary; it 
discouraged new business to come in, because they were treating 
the existing businesses badly. That's the way it went.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

More on this interview to follow . . .









photo taken in the 1930s or 40s somewhere near Sewell


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The previously-mentioned 1:25 scale side boom finally arrived. The dozer with ripper (very large) was already here. The two cars ('39 Chev coupe & deluxe 4-door) are part of the new group of items destined for Cicely. Ultimately the heavy equipment--Internationals--will end up in a separate structure that is not even in the planning stage yet. The side boom is definitely of the type used during pipeline construction days. It came with a small manual indicating it was built in 1975. That is exactly right ! My guess is that the dozer-ripper combination was also employed on those sites at least during the road-building phase of pipeline construction. I wanted the two cars because they were from my Dad's era, and I believed his coupe was of the same type. The Santa Fe 18-wheeler is one of two similar but not identical vehicles that will also go to Cicely. The blue auto is a 69 Mustang "Boss" --one of several Mustangs I added to the Cicely inventory within the last few months where none existed before. This should complete the automobile & light truck group at Cicely (well over 100 for that town). 
   Even if I never build the proposed pipeline construction camp, these two items will be on display somewhere in Cicely where people can see them. The side boom pipe-layer is of particular interest.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

My inside temporary storage is beginning to look full ! 
 I do anticipate obtaining at least two more of these side-booms. That way I can proceed with plans for a segment of model pipeline somewhere along the model railroad. 

_As with most of my images, you can click on this one for a larger image. In my more recent posts, I put borders around my images, which never exceed 640 pixels-wide. Those with borders act as links to the larger images, which are typically 1000 to 2250 pixels wide, usually at a fast-loading resolution, but still good image quality._


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Those dozers look great


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 26 Jan 2010 10:50 PM 
Those dozers look great 

They are remarkable models--far better than I imagined. Two more views of them:    And here is one of the two 18-wheelers. The other is solid red and unmarked.


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## sschaer (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 26 Jan 2010 02:19 PM 
Posted By sschaer on 26 Jan 2010 12:16 AM 
ron, 
. . .did you ever consider of writing your stories in a different format ? let's see. one document for the crd stuff, one for the kennecott, one for other mines ...... you get the point. now if you enhance each of these documents over the time you might send it to subscriber. such as version 1, version 2 which follows a few months later with tons of new informations/pictures added. 

similar to a blog but instead of keeping it online you email it to subscribers. 
First, I would need a potential list of subscribers to make such an endeavor worthwhile. That is so much easier said than done. 

i would subscribe immediately.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

For the first time the sun hits all the buildings on the north side of the CRD property: Jan 27. Also, for the first time this month the temperature moved above zero ! 
Does it_ still _look cold out there ? It _should_ !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Some Thoughts on Chilean Politics *



Haldeman: We came up now to a little bit more political pressure of 
elections, and the left wing is drumming hard to take over 
copper. The political situation in Chile has been and still is 
divided in generally three groups. One is the extreme right, 
one is the center, and one is the extreme left. Each of the 
three groups has about one-third of the votes. 

Swent: So two-thirds controls. 

Haldeman: Yes. When Alessandri was elected, he was only elected on 

one-third, and he had to sue for peace to get a majority to give 
51 percent in the Congress for votes. And Frei was elected with 
plus-50 percent of the vote, but he didn't have a majority in 
Congress; so he also had to sue for peace to govern. Ibanez was 
the same way, and Gonzalez Videla was the same way. As I told 
you yesterday at lunch, we now have two-thirds, the left and the 
center, who were always fighting, both against the right third. 
They are now together, sharing the glory of what the military 
did to reestablish a free, open-market economy here. As long as 
they can stay together, we are not going to have a problemif 
they can just keep the GNP [gross national product] at 6 percent 
a year. A man would have to have a gun at his forehead and pull 
the trigger to upset the apple cart and destroy the balance of 
this thing. It's working. The socialists, the left wing, the 
center left, and the Christian Democrats realize that this 
market economy is the best thing to increase the standard of 
living for the whole country. I hope they can get another 
generation coming through that, who will vote that way. Then I 
don't care what the parties are called, they're going to be 
voting for a good economy, and politics secondly. 

Swent: Which, as you were saying, is quite a change for Latin America. 

Haldeman: Absolutely. And they're very proud of it. They don't want 
anybody to come back and say, "Hey, you fell back, just like 
Peru or Bolivia." No, "I want to be the leader." The national 
pride here is going to keep that alive for quite awhile, I hope. 

Swent: We might interject that it's hard to find a quiet place in this 
city, with all the construction going. 


Haldeman: It's wonderful. It's jobs. 

Swent: I've never seen so much construction in my life. It's all day 
and all night in every block. 

Haldeman: Good. 

Swent: Tremendous prosperity. 

Haldeman: That means TV sets, a new stove for the wife, clothes for the 
kids, and so on, for our workers. 

Swent: The people on the street are so well dressed. 

Haldeman: It's awfully hard to get a strike nowadays. People don't strike 
any more; they make too much money. It's wonderful.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: Well, the prosperity is something to see. 

Haldeman: We owe that to the general. 

Swent: General Pinochet? 

Haldeman: Yes. He was convinced that a market economy had to be 
established here for the country to get ahead. He was smart 
enough, like many great leaders, to get good young people around 
him and let them go. They made a couple of mistakes, but they 
didn't repeat them, and he prevailed. He didn't have to go 
through Congress. He had his boys go out and canvassed the 
world to find out what we had to do to be competitive in mining, 
exports, quality control. Write the law, and he would sign it. 
[Pinochet said] Labor- -what do we need in labor? Take all 
the labor laws, which are all political laws and such a mess you 
couldn't understand them. Just put them all to one side. All 
of these laws were superseded by very simple legislation. You 
can strike, and if you don't get a settlement by sixty days, the 
employer has a right to hire new people and start all over 
again. The first time it happened, nobody believed it and went 
to see the minister, who said, "I'm sorry; it's the law." On 
the fifty-ninth day, they signed up. 

The employers started abusing the thing a little bit, and 
the president said, "Now, come on. If you're going to abuse it, 
we're going to doctor it and give the workers a better break. 
What do you want?" He called in a pow-wow, a jawboningthe 
Central Workers' Confederation, the biggest union; the head of 
the national manufacturing society; and the head of the mining 
association, and private sector. They sat with the ministers of 
finance, economy, and labor, and said, "You have to teach your 
people properly. As the economy goes up, you--business--trickle 
down. If you don't, I'm going to legislate." 

So the bosses started to open up the trickle valves. We 
haven't had a strike here in I don't remember when. Everything 
is booming. In fact, we have trouble because there is just too 
much purchasing power here. We can't get the inflation down to 
a single digit just because the economy is doing too well. 
Wouldn't you like to have that in the States? [laughs] But 
don't shoot holes in it down here.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*GENERAL MANAGER, CEO, VICE PRESIDENT, DIRECTOR OF BRADEN 

COPPER COMPANY, 1954-1967 *



Haldeman: Where were we? 

Swent : 
Turton died, and Michaelson moved to Santiago. 


Haldeman: As he moved to Santiago, I became general manager in 1954. 

Swent: Did this mean that you moved down to Coya? 


Haldeman: Yes, I moved to Coya, but I was there only seven months. I had 

furnished Mr. Turton 's house, and it was beautiful. Now fate 

comes in again. In the United States, Cox and Milliken had 

hired a man to be manager of the Western Mine Divisions. I 

forget his name. They didn't realize that the man had a bottle 

problem. About the third time he got off the plane in Salt Lake 

City, Utah, and fell down the stairs, they decided that they had 

to let him go. So they called Mr. Michaelson and said, "Mike, 

you come up to the States and take over the job, and tell 

Mr. Haldeman that he has to move into Santiago. He will be the 

chief executive officer."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I don't know about you, but I find this interview absolutely fascinating--what an insight into _company politics_, Chilean politics AND even politics in general. Of course, this is not a political thread. Far from it. But then again this _is_ history !


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Company politics has destroyed many a company.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 27 Jan 2010 06:11 PM 
Company politics has destroyed many a company. 

Probably has. I have had second thoughts about agreeing even in part with that because such a statement is highly speculative and probably unprovable since I doubt if one could find a way to make an objective study on "company poitics" and its role in destroying a company. Besides, whether we want to admit it or not, I suspect politics within an organization of almost any size is unavoidable just by the nature of us as human beings. However, historically, Kennecott has proven to be among the most adept corporations when it came to long-term survival at least for the first half-century of its existence.  Even within Alaska, where the Guggenheims, locally known as the "Alaska Syndicate," were particularly unpopular, the Kennecott Corporation successfully avoided the reputation of the Syndicate, quietly operating in Alaska for nearly three decades without ever becoming a political issue. Even in Chile, Kennecott's Braden Copper Company proved to be far more adept than Anaconda, which lost out big-time during the Marxist regime of Allende.  I believe that Kennecott, having its roots in a real geologist (Stephen Birch)--a practical down-to-earth man, and whose successor was of the same mold (E.T. Stannard), had an enormous advantage over those corporations who were even in those days being run by "money-men." Neither Birch nor Stannard were Wall Street men, although they proved themselves to be remarkably smart investors within their own industry.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 26 Jan 2010 12:04 AM 



1981
Sohio Corporate coffers overflow. Desperate to invest $2 Billion accumulated in banks, Sohio buys Kennecott Copper, paying twice the current stock value. World copper market collapses. Sohio stock plummets from $140/share to $35/share.

1984 
After investing nearly $1 Billion , Sohio abandons Mukluk, the largest dry-hole ever, in the Beaufort Sea. BP is nervous. Upper management is reorganized. Austerity strikes Sohio! Hiring slows.

1987 

BP buys the portion of Standard Oil it did not already own, once again reorganizes and assumes control as 'BP America'. Robert Horton is CEO. As a corporation, Sohio ceases to exist and the Sohio At about this time, oil prices collapse. 

Thus Kennecott became a subsidiary of BP Minerals in 1987, when BP purchased an outstanding minority interest in Standard Oil in June 1989. BP Minerals was then acquired by RTZ Corporation plc, Britain's largest mining company, probably because BP could no longer justify owning BP Minerals following the world-wide collapse in oil prices. 













RTZ--Rio Tinto-- has its own great-looking fleet of diesels in the Down Under country--iron ore haulers. 

   http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k220/blackburn49/Kennecott_Corporation_Worldwide/RTZ-Med1.jpg


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

RTZ--Rio Tinto--another RTZ paint scheme. 
  Thanks, RalPictures dot net. Photo taken in Australia. --RS


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 27 Jan 2010 06:11 PM 
Company politics has destroyed many a company. Or did you mean _this _definition: _ politics_ 


6. use of intrigue or strategy in obtaining any position of power or control, as in business, university, etc.8b. to deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement.



(slang): _The often internally conflicting interrelationships among people in a society_ (or group, perhaps?)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Harmersley Iron consists--very similar in appearance to the RTZ consists seen above: Hamersley is another RTZ company operating in South Australia.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 28 Jan 2010 12:11 AM 
Posted By rlvette on 27 Jan 2010 06:11 PM 
Company politics has destroyed many a company. Or did you mean _this _definition: _politics_ 


6. use of intrigue or strategy in obtaining any position of power or control, as in business, university, etc. 8b. to deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement.



(slang): _The often internally conflicting interrelationships among people in a society_ (or group, perhaps?) 






Hi Ron

My comment was not mean to be specific or directly related to the story. Just an opinion on company politics in many American companies.

Randy


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

Let's break the word down:

Poly - Many. A large number.

Tics - Blood sucking Arachnids.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

To me as a political science major, politics just is. It can not be avoided so it must be dealt with.  I suspect that the Kennecott of the days of Stephen Birch and E.T. Stannard that emerged from an older period when big business was not so favorable in the eyes of the public (largely because of the big railroads, iron & steel and the emerging oil monopolies of the day) looked at it the same way I do. They did not seek involvement in it but recognized that at some level politics could not be avoided. 



There is an interesting analysis on this very subject in Melody Webb Graumann's "Big Business in Alaska: The Kennecott Mines, 1898-1938:" Here is part of it: 



_Kennecott represents not only the extensions of western mining frontiers to Alaska but also provides a case study in the analysis of American business and economic history.  In other words, the discovery of one of the weorld's richest copper deposits led to the development of one of the world's greatest copper conglomerates (note: This was written in the 1970s well before first Sohio, then BP, and finally RTZ took over ownership of Kennecott, giving even more emphasis to what this author wrote back then. --RS)._


_The Alaska Syndicate, comparable to the early Rockefeller and Carnegie enterprises, typified the nineteenth century business organization and tactics.  Kennecott Copper Corporation, on the other hand, applied the methods and philosophy of twentieth century business management.  This interesting contrast becomes fascinating when it is recognized that essentially the same people directed and controlled both organizations--Stephen Birch and the Guggenheims._


_The basic goals of both organizations were to keep down production costs and raise copper prices.  The Syndicate employed political means to achieve these business goals.  As a result, threatened politicians lashed back crying "monopolism" (Note: his is well documented in The Copper Spike by Lone Janson --RS).  Kennecott adroitly succeeded by controlling labor, acquiring competitive mines, and ensuring a ready market.  Furthermore, rather than single-handedly attacking local or national politics as the Syndicate attempted, KennecottCorporation joined with the rest of the copper industry in various organizations to lobby Congress, to stimulate national and international consumption, and to minimize cut-throat competition. (pt 1 of 2 --RS) _


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks to a muckraking press, the Guggeheims, aka the Alaska Syndicate, were seen as monopolists who sought to take over Alaska.  This was not at all true, but the perception was there. In the end, this perception, created by yellow journalism, would change the political landscape of America itself.    









Lone Janson's Copper Spike, published in 1975,  was largely about the politics that revolved around the construction of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway. It chiefly involved access to cheap energy, in this case, coal for the railroads. 
A national scandal developed over this very issue known as the Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy. It brought about a mini "Boston Tea Party" in Cordova over local anger at access to local coal.  As the Katalla Herald wrote:  "The feeling here is that the government proposes to confiscate all the coal lands on some technicality for leasing purposes."  This followed a presidential decision by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 to withdraw all coal from access to large-scale development. 


Ultimately, this long-running affair brought Theodore Roosevelt back into the presidential election of 1912, splitting the Republican vote between Roosevelt and Taft and thus handing the election to the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson. In the process this killed any possibility that a new government railroad in Alaska would start by including the original Copper River & Northwestern Railway from Cordova to Chitina and then extending it to Fairbanks. That would have been by far the least expensive option, but the Wilson Administration considered even a cheap purchase of that part of the Guggenheim-owned railroad to be a political liability.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By tom h on 21 Jan 2010 04:42 PM 
Ron, I see you got the "Big Boy" guy, I used to always see him in Wisconsin and the U.P. of Michigan, only 1 left on our route up there.

tom h 

The more I thought about this the more I decided you had a great idea. So I found and ordered one that will sit on the roof of my art-deco style cafe in the Cicely model. I used to eat at a Big Boy restaurant in Anchorage some three decades ago. That franchise, at least in Alaska, is long-gone. Anyway, thanks for giving me the inspiration. Brings back memories. 

By the way, this piece is not far off from the original icon seen below. Hopefully, once in place, it will have the same effect on others who had the pleasure of dining in one of Bob's Big Boy restaurants years ago.


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

I like the colors of the Rio Tinto RR. Those are some great pictures


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ah, the Big Boy figure looks great. I too used to eat at a Big Boys resturant in Pittsburg Pa some 40 years ago. I also like the pics of the Rio Tinto trains. 

Thanks


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By John J on 28 Jan 2010 03:52 PM 
I like the colors of the Rio Tinto RR. Those are some great pictures 

These are identified as Evolution Series GE ES44DCi locomotives, which are visually similar to the discontinued Dash 9 (I'll say !) and AC4400CW. I regret to inform you that these color schemes are not available through Aristocraft. Bet they'd sell well in Australia, too. Hmmm. Doesn't that look a little like Arizona or the desert part of California ?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Yet another division of RTZ ore train in Australia:


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

This must be some kind of record. Your thread has drifted all the way from Alaska to Australia!


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Torby on 30 Jan 2010 09:32 AM 
This must be some kind of record. Your thread has drifted all the way from Alaska to Australia! 

  In case you did not notice, my own ALCANEX theme is_ international_ . This winter I decided to track the world-wide Kennecott Copper Corporation, which became absorbed by an even larger Sohio, then BP, and finally RTZ, which has substantial holdings in Australia even as Kennecott and Anaconda lost their investments in Chile.  In fact, that is probably the reason that Kennecott became weakened enough that its shareholders voted to allow Sohio to buy them out back in 1980.  The loss of Braden was a serious blow to Kennecott.  Last winter I was following the theme of a North American railway land-bridge to Asia, which would ultimately become the largest railroad project of all time.  The land-bridge proposal is the natural extension of my own ALCANEX railroad which envisions a railroad tie-in that completes North America and opens the way to the Bering Sea and beyond.  I can only pursue these historic investigations and proposals (even my_ futuristic_ land-bridge railroad is _historic_) in the winter.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

RTZ in Australia caught my attention because it has such impressive locmotives in the form of Dash-9 s and Evolution Series GE ES44DCi , which are upgraded Dash-9s.  Many of us have those engines. I have two of them for my ALCANEX railroad. Up until I saw these models, all I was seeing was some very old rolling stock from the Kennecott days--almost all of it early diesel models or steam engines. These RTZ engines represent quite a leap, revealing a fully-modern corporation (or series of corporations under one huge international umbrella entity) that is definitely 21st Century in both its choice of equipment and how it operates its railroads--a topic I have not discussed here.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_If_ I were _still_ operating and building upon my model railroad even five years down the road, visitors to this part of the world should not be surprised to find a few of these within my ever-expanding ALCANEX line. After all, RTZ is the successor to Kennecott, which was my original inspiration that brought about the long-gone Copper River & Northwestern Railway. 
  

With that in mind, you can see that there is a distinct connection between my current thread and my model railroad of the future.


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## silverstatespecialties (Jan 2, 2008)

The book, "The Copper Spike," is a fascinating tome of information and is almost a must-read of anyone interested in mining and/or railroading in Alaska. The one thing that stuck in my mind after reading my copy was not only how bitter & tough the winters are there, but how widespread the use of steam was, to bore holes in the frozen ground and many other uses! 

You Alaskans are some tough hombres. 

And thank you Ron for the fantastic historical recounts as well; the Chiliean copper stories are absolutely fascinating!!


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By silverstatespecialties on 30 Jan 2010 11:43 AM 
The book, "The Copper Spike," is a fascinating tome of information and is almost a must-read of anyone interested in mining and/or railroading in Alaska. The one thing that stuck in my mind after reading my copy was not only how bitter & tough the winters are there, but how widespread the use of steam was, to bore holes in the frozen ground and many other uses! 

You Alaskans are some tough hombres. 

And thank you Ron for the fantastic historical recounts as well; the Chiliean copper stories are absolutely fascinating!! 



  The Copper Spike is a classic and definitely a key to understanding 20th Century history in Alaska, particularly the complex politics that comes into play when big business is involved.  It was unavailable at any price for many years. Fortunately, copies of this great history with some spectacular historic photos can once again be found. 



It is minus 18 as I write this--just as it looked like it was warming up, too.  I had to go out there and plug in my truck so I can get it started this morning. STILL I could be running my first train  (the Milwaukee Road Doodlebug is always the first one) by some time in the second week of March. Well, I certainly hope so anyway. 



More to come on the Braden mine in Chile. I now have on hand a copy of their mining report for 1928 which reveals the mining methods employed. Also, that interview with Haldeman is not yet completed.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

It is minus 18 as I write this--just as it looked like it was warming up, too. I had to go out there and plug in my truck so I can get it started this morning. 

21 above this morning in my not quite as cold corner of the state. Yesterday we had temps in the high 30's with light overcast and an occasional patch of blue sky. (and one or two short shots of rain).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 28 Jan 2010 10:19 AM 


To me as a political science major, politics just is. It can not be avoided so it must be dealt with.  


To me, everything has a context. It is one of _my_ recurring themes. I saw a recent reference to "stupid politics" here on MLS.  In a way I agree. Modern-day politics is _at best_ aggravating. I avoid it in this forum except for purposes of _historical_ analysis. In that sense how society makes decisions through its power players (official and otherwise) can be fascinating. Let's face it, without politics there would have been no industrialization and without that no railroads. That is because industrialization (and operating railroads) cannot exist outside of some form of at least minimally-organized society, which means "politics."  


An artfully done reproduction of a steam engine is _only_ interesting in and of itself for a_ brief_ time. Then we are inclined to say "that's nice but what else you got?" Give that same skillfully-done model  _historic_ context, which I believe inevitably involves an element of _politics_ as a part of a greater story, and _then_ you have something of _lasting_ interest ! But that's the limit of it for our purposes: _historic_ context ! 


I have said as much before, but occasionally the message bears repeating. Enough on that topic.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Continuing the interview between Swent & Haldeman over Kennecott Copper Corporation in Chile: 



Haldeman:

Here I was, thrown into politics. 

Swent: This was in '54? 



Haldeman: The end of '54 or the beginning of '55. I was thirty- seven 
years old, the youngest general manager in the company's 
history. Mr. Ibanez was president, and he was a very weak 
president. He was a general of the army and had a second term. 
The first term he had a military coup and took it over, but he 
was voted in again for president, because all the people 
remembered that bread only cost twenty centavos a loaf at that 
time, and he'd probably get the food prices down. Inflation was
rampant.

Haldeman: Anyway, the general got in, and the government floated along
from '52 to '58. In the middle of that, in 1957 I became vice
president of Braden Copper. It was another title and a raise in
pay, and then I became a member of the Braden board in New York
but still staying in Chile. I received a decoration, the Orden
Al Merito Bernardo O'Higgins from the Chilean government, with
the rank of oficial. There was a ceremony with the minister of
mines.

Swent: That must have been a big thrill.

Haldeman: Very big thrill. It raised my posture and stature in local
society.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Tax Problems 



Haldeman: Now we came to a problem with taxes. Our taxes were way, way 
up. In fact, our direct and indirect taxes were 82 percent. 
The exchange rate was an indirect tax, and so on. 

Swent: Did they tax your ore? 

Haldeman: No, they just taxed all of the business part of the 
thing transfer taxes, exchange rates, import duty rates, 
corporate tax rates. Nothing to do with the ore in the ground. 

Swent: No severance tax? 

Haldeman: No. Of course, the companies were really groaning. The 
government needed some help from the United States , which used 
to give money to cover up the deficit problems. So in '55 they 
legislated a new law, Number 11,828, in which they reduced the 
tax rates for increasing production with certain investments, 
which was a very modest and nominal thing, but it got Chile off 
the hook. They had also accumulated an awful lot of copper 
there when they decided they were going to sell it through the 
Chilean Central Bank and give us the proceeds. They weren't 
able to sell it, as nobody would buy it. There was a blockade 
on the thing.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: Through the Chilean Central Bank? 


Haldeman: 

Yes. So Uncle Sam bailed them out on the basis, "I'll pick up 
the copper as long as you make a better shake for the copper 
companies." They did, and that law came out. That also created 
what the Chileans had always wanted to have, what they called a 
Departamento de Cobre, which was a fiscalizing agency, an 
overseeing agency that would centralize all of its activities on 
the copper companies' exports, imports, profits, and all the 
rest of the stuff. It was a watchdog kind of thing. That 
satisfied an awful lot of political anger, because nobody was 
quite sure whether we had a lot of gold that we were sneaking 
out in bars of copper that we were shipping and not declaring. 
Everybody was suspicious of everybody, so they just put up a 
government agency. This was a watchdog, and you reported on 
everything. We had to report to them. Finally it took the heat 
off of us, which was very good. 

Swent:
What were your relationships with the American embassy? 

Haldeman: Very good. 

Swent:
Did you work with Chile through the American government? 

Haldeman: Oh, no. I worked directly with the Chilean government. At that 
time, really the major export industries were owned by American 
interests. There were the nitrate and the copper companies, 
Bethlehem Steel, and iron ore. There was a big American colony 
at that time. I was the second-most important man in the mining 
industry and in foreign investments in Chile. Anaconda was 
number one because of their size, and we were number two. I was 
seated accordingly in protocol. 

Swent:
So when they wanted to put the squeeze on someone, they went 
directly to you and Anaconda? 

Haldeman: They would do it through Congress, 
have to enforce it .. . Then the government would


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Building Relationships with the Chilean Government *



Swent: How did you get these messages from them? 

Haldeman: When I got into Santiago and the general manager's job, I 
realized that I was still a foreigner, and I had to have a 
Chilean with some political know-how who would give me political 
advice and get me the contacts and open me the doors. 


Swent: Had Michaelson handed over anything to you? 

Haldeman: He was only there seven months. He just sprang in there and 
went out and left me. There was nobody prepared for that. 


*Mario Illanes* 



Swent: You had to do all your allying yourself? 

Haldeman: There was a man working in the office, a Chilean named Mario 
Illanes, who had been in the diplomatic service in the Chilean 
consulate in San Francisco and in Washington for several years. 
Turton had hired him to stay in Santiago and handle the 
politicians and so on, because Turton wouldn't work in Santiago; 
he wanted to live out in Coya in his nice house with a garden. 
So I got Mario Illanes, and I said, "Mario, I have to get to 
know the senators, representatives, ministers, the president, 
and all the businessmen in the National Manufacturing Society. 
I've got to get myself into the Chilean business and political 
whirl." 

Swent: Was there a Chilean Mining Society? 

Haldeman: Yes, but it was only mining engineers, and most of them were 
small miners. 


Swent: Your job was to get to know the Chileans, and about eight months 
of the year you were in Santiago? 

Haldeman: For about eight months of the year everybody was in Santiago. 
The other four months December, January, February, and 
March people started vacations, and Congress and the courts 
shut down. I said, "Every month, I'd like to have a lunch at 
the office." That was in the apartment they had built on the 
top floor of a five-story building in Santiago for Turton to 
live in.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Monthly Luncheons at Agustinas 1389 *


Swent : What was the address? 


Haldeman: Agustinas 1389. It still has on the top part of the concrete, 
that not even Allende took away, that is in intaglio, indented 
Roman letters, "Braden Copper Company." 

I had the apartment turned into a nice big dining room, an 
office suite, another executive office, and a secretary's 
office. We had it all redone. We started the invitations for 
about sixteen people, 1:15 or 1:30 for cocktails in my office 
room, and the best catering service we could get. Then we'd go 
in and have lunch. We had oysters, lobsters, the best wine. At 
that time you were able to get good cigars. Of course the 
Chilean politician likes to live well, and I invited all the 
political parties. I even invited Mr. Allende, but he never 
accepted. When Alessandri was president, he accepted. Gonzalez 
Videla accepted, and, in fact, he invited me. 

I started to know the political leaders of the country--, all 
political, economic, social, banking, et ceteraand I mixed 
them up. Mario Illanes was a wonderful diplomat; he knew how to 
handle them. Of course, the first lunches were just as dry as 
could be. They were waiting for me to ask for what I wanted, 
and nothing happened. I just asked a couple of questions, "What 
do you think about this?" and so on. Word got around that these 
were just social lunches, and they had good food, the best 
liquors you could imagine, nice cigars, there were a lot of 
enjoyable people, and Haldeman didn't want anything; he just 
wanted to know. 

It got to be that Mario had a waiting list to be invited. 
The guys would stay around until 5:30 and 6:00 and booze. The 
radicals were the biggest bon vivants of the lunches. I got to 
know people who to this day are still my friends. That's why I 

was able to open doors, 
I could even call up ministers and so on . . .


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 30 Jan 2010 01:45 PM 
It is minus 18 as I write this--just as it looked like it was warming up, too. I had to go out there and plug in my truck so I can get it started this morning 21 above this morning in my not quite as cold corner of the state. Yesterday we had temps in the high 30's with light overcast and an occasional patch of blue sky. (and one or two short shots of rain). 
Our high temp yesterday here at Copper Center _might_ have reached 10. I can see that today we will not even see zero. But it is a beautiful day out there and the sun is finally shining over most of the property: No running trains _outside_ today !


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Byron E. Grant; Modernizing the Management *



Haldeman: I had come to Santiago in 1955 as head of the company 
(Kennecott's Braden Copper Company--RS). About 
that time I needed a second man, and I started to interview 
people who were recommended through Kennecott, other executives 
who had Latin American experience and Spanish or something. 
After a couple of attempts at hiring people and not being 
satisfied, which took about a year or a year and a half, I came 
across Mr. Byron E. Grant. He was the man whose last experience 
at that time had been in United States Smelting and Refining in 
Utah. He came down for an interview, and we talked together. 


About this time I became very aware of the need for 
incepting modern management methods in the company. We had been 
quite archaic, and the world was slipping us by, being so far 
away from the modern world. Harvard had started up, and 
industrial engineering became the fad, and new organization with 
all of the frills. And Mr. Milliken was quite a bug on 
management . 

I talked it over with Grant, as I was very enthused about 
the idea of becoming a bit more modern and bringing ourselves up 
to date. Mr. Grant accepted the job. Of course, I was in 
Santiago, and he, being in Coya, had the day-to-day business 
with the seven or eight thousand people involved. I was in the 
political arena with the government authorities and the likes, 
trying to get our image corrected in the country. Maybe two 
times a month we'd get together and plan out what we wanted to 
do. 

We decided at that time to incept all of the new tools that 
were out on the market- -wage and salary administration, job 
evaluation, reorganization, warehouse controls, training 
programs. We started to plan on how we would send our 
supervisors, superintendents, and second-in-lines abroad to get 
some training and mix with the rest of the world that was 
spinning around above us. We were too far away.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Using More Chilean Engineers *



Swent: Were you hiring more Chilean management? 

Haldeman: No. At this time we talked over this as an issue, in 1955 and 
1956. I had some fifteen years in Chile, and I became very 
convinced that the Chilean engineer, the professional, who was 
always held to the third-rate level with the foreigners holding 
the first- and second-level jobs, was just as capable, didn't 
require a three-year contract, didn't have to have a wife who 
had to go home every two or three years, didn't have to have his 
children in special Calvert course schools, and was satisfied to 
work a lifetime with the company. 

Swent: And already knew Spanish. 

Haldeman: Yes. So we decided that we would start to train the Chileans. 
I was having a lot of problems with the foreign service people. 
They were demanding more and overseas premiums, 20 percent over 
salary, just to go abroad. 

Swent: Were they able to get good engineering training in Chile at that 
time? 

Haldeman: Well, yes. Their schools were turning out good people. At that 
time the steel industry, Campania Acero Pacifico, CAP, was 
plowing right ahead. It was a very top-class, iron ore mining 
and steel company with Chilean engineers. The Chilean power 
company, Endesa, had excellent people in engineering, operation, 
and planning. The Chilean oil company, ENAP, had excellent 
engineers. Mr. Simian, ex-minister of mines (who was the best 
man at my second marriage), was the man who was on the first 
well that found oil in the south of Chile. He was a mining 
engineer in petroleum. 

So there were excellent people. Of course, these were in 
Chilean companies , and in the American companies the Americans 
had the top jobs because they didn't trust the Chileans, if you 
want to put it that way. They didn't trust them with 
purchasing, because they always thought they were crooked. Even 
today it exists to a certain degree. Canadians come down here, 
and they don't trust the Chileans to have the purchasing jobs or 
in the accounting and controlling departments; they have to have 
their own men. I don't mind having two men, one to make major 
decisions and one to make sure he has the key to the cash 
register. But as for the rest of them, Chile has plenty of 
capable engineers. 

So we incepted that, and started to work on it in about 
1956 and 1957. As we go along here, I'll start to phase in the 
results of it.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Presidential Elections. 1958. Alessandri the Winner *



Haldeman: In 1958 we had presidential elections. At that time there was a 
great threat of Mr. Allende becoming elected. The other 
candidate was Mr. Alessandri. Of course, one of Allende 's major 
platforms was the expropriation of copper. It was painted on 
the walls all over the country. We were called every imaginable 
thing you can think of, having stolen I don't know what from the 
country, et cetera. Chile was still divided politically into 
thirds, and the Christian Democrat Party now started to bubble 
forth as a major faction in the center. 

Mr. Alessandri was the new president. At this point it 
seemed like new presidents were given the country with the 
coffers empty; they were broke. They looked for the greatest 
source of income--the copper companies, the major export. 
Sixty, seventy, eighty percent of their foreign exchange came in 
copper--two companies. 

Swent: Anaconda and Kennecott? 

Haldeman: Right. Of course, the president would call on you and ask you 
what you were going to do to for the country: if you can, 
increase production. We had been working it out in the 
engineering department since '55 or '56. I put it on a six-year 
presidential period, with a little bit for each president to 
satisfy him and increase the revenues. By the end of that term, 
they had already spent that, and you had to have something for 
the next president in the basket. We put it on the gantt chart 
and just programmed them- -something for each president. A gantt 
chart is a planning chart, where you put down critical path 
methods; it's an engineering tool. 

Mr. Milliken came down in the '56, '57, '58 period, and he 
said, "You know, we have a tremendous ore body here, but we're 
not really working it to its potential. It could generate much 
more." We were around 160,000 or 170,000 tons a year of copper. 
He said, "Why don't you put something on the board and see what 
you can devise. Let your imagination run away with you, even to 
dumping waste into the Pacific, 150 kilometers away, and see 
what alternates there are." 

Swent: Why would that help? 

Haldeman: If you expanded so big, there was no place to dump in the 

central valley, so you had to get out. Anaconda was dumping 
tailings in the ocean up north anyway. You have to get rid of 
them, and you can't put them on farm land. 

That was a think-tank arrangement. 
Swent: Bra ins terming. 

Haldeman: Yes, just to see what we could do. We had a lot of things on 
the board. Kennecott 's board of directors said, "Maybe it's the 
time we just take the step forward and make a bold move and 
present a very bold program to the government. Get our tax rate 
down and increase production, let the government have more 
revenues to keep them happy, and get some more profits out of 
the property." We worked out the figures. 


*  Jorge Alessandri, President of Chile*


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*The Guggenheim Philosophy of Increasing Capital Value *



Haldeman: Since the Guggenheims took it over, they didn't take a dividend 
out for the first twenty-six years. They plowed everything back 
to build up the property. If you take that period of time from 
the beginning until about "55 or '56--I had somebody make a 
study for me--the return on the amount of money invested in 
dollars (not in present value) was something like 6 percent a 
year average. The Guggenheims were people like that, who would 
plow back and build a business. They weren't interested too 
much in the profit; they were interested in increasing the 
capital value. It's a different philosophy. Today you have the 
present value of money, and you want to get your cash out, get 
it back in, and roll it over again. Who's right and who's 
wrong, I have no comments on. 

Swent: Just different. 
Haldeman: It's entirely different. 



*Solomon Guggenheim, Presdent of Braden Copper from the time Kennecott purchased it in 1915:*








*Solomon Guggenheim with the model of the proposed Guggenheim Museum in 1945:*


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*The Codegua Plan to Modernize the Mine *



Haldeman: We devised what is called the Codegua plan. Codegua is a little 
town just a few miles north of Rancagua, the rail terminal. Why 
was it there? That was a natural valley. It went up and almost 
connected with the valley where El Teniente mine was. If you're 
looking north-south, Codegua was just about west of the mineof 
this little canyon that went up there- -but never connected over. 
To get to our mine, you went from Rancagua, went south, looped 
up El Teniente canyon, and back north to the mine. 

We were mining from Sewell, going in from level Teniente 5 
and going up. It's an upside mine. All the ore that we mined 
up above, we dropped in the ore passes, which was a primary 
crushing operation in itself. It went out to the concentrator 
here, and the concentrates were shipped by an aerial tramway to 
Caletones, about twenty kilometers down. 

We knew that by mining here by this method and bringing the 
ore out to this town, where we had paternalism, high costs, and 
people with social problems, the unions had everybody captive 
there. Socialists and communists dominated this union. People 
couldn't run away; they couldn't go out and spend a weekend at 
the beach, like they can living in Rancagua. They're held 
captive. If they want to have an assembly, they would knock on 
doors, get everybody out, and vote for a strike. It was a 
wonderful method. 

We figured that maybe by the year 1980 we would be pressed 
to feed this concentrator. We would be mining just about this 
level, and there was a tremendous reserve of a billion or two 
billion tons of ore below this. Sooner or later, sometime in 
the future, somebody has to go down to a lower level. You can 
go down in another level, from 7,000 to 5,000 feet, but if you 
went to Codegua you went to 2,000 feet, and there you had mining 
beyond the year 2100 if you wanted. 


 Click for larger image of Google map


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

So we engineered a scheme wherein we went from the valley 
floor and ran a thirty-kilometer tunnel. We would go right 
underneath and hook it up and bring the ore out to almost the 
valley floor, with a concentrator there. Our smelter was an 
antiquated thing; it's still working today, but it was a 
shambles . We would put in a modern smelter that would capture 
the gas, acid, and so on, at about the 3,000-foot elevation, 
very close to the mill. We would walk away from all the town 
sites, all paternalism. From that town of Codegua to Rancagua, 
which was a large open city, we would build government -financed 
housing. We would put up the money, the workers would assume a 
long-term mortgage, and then they would pay the government. The 
thing was a very nice way to get out of your housing problems up 
there. 

It would take you about thirteen minutes to travel by bus 
from the city to the tunnel at Codegua, another thirty minutes 
into the mine, five minutes up the shaft. In fifty minutes, 
you're at your working face. As it was then, it took you four 
hours just to get from the city down, and from the working face, 
five-and-a-half or six hours. Because of the concentration of 
people of up there and the limited ability to move passengers on 
that narrow-gauge railroad, we calculated that every family had 
an opportunity only once a month to leave the camp. We just 
didn't have any more transportation facilities. When there was 
a snow slide, we were locked in for three or four days until we 
dug it out. 

We presented that plan to Mr. Alessandri in 1959. One of 
the conditions we required was that we had some guarantee, say 
for a twenty-year period- -they call them an ad referendum 
contract, in which you sit with the government and say, "I want 
nondiscriminatory treatment on exchange rate, pay the same taxes 
as the Chilean companies." In other words, don't discriminate 
against me; let me get into the community here and pay the same 
as everybody else pays, guaranteed for twenty years. If taxes 
go up for everybody, I'll go up; if they go down, I go down.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: At this point were you paying discriminatory rates? 

Haldeman: Yes. We were at 65 or 70 percent, and of course they can diddle 
you all the ways they want --exchange and everything. 

You negotiate that and get an agreement with the president, 
and then the president sends it to the Congress and says, "Take 
it or leave it. Don't negotiate and start to change commas and 
this and that," which they will do a little bit, but it's a 
package deal. 

We went over and talked to the president and told him what 
we had in mind. 


*Presenting the Plan to President Alessandri *


Swent:
Did you talk directly with the president? 

Haldeman:
Oh, yes. Mr. Milliken, Michaelson, and myself. Milliken didn't 
speak any Spanish, and Michaelson said, "You talk to him, Bob." 


Swent:
You weren't speaking with his representatives? 
speaking directly with the president? 

Haldeman:
We went directly to him, and he congratulated us on our bold 
plan. He was an engineer himself, and he realized it was a bold 
plan. At the time, 1956, we estimated the cost at $200 million. 
If you take inflation and put it in present value, as the 
economists do, that's about a $1.2 billion investment. 

The president appointed the minister of finance, 
Mr. Figueroa, to strike a deal with us. Well, '57 passed, '58 
passed, '59 passed. We just couldn't seem to come to an 
agreement. What really was behind it was that Mr. Alessandri 
didn't feel he wanted to take that package to the Congress. 

I refer you to a book, [Frederick B.] Pike's Chile and U.S. 
Relations, 1880-1962, Notre Dame, 1963. This tells you why the 
Chilean leading class doesn't like the United States, by names. 
It's very understandable. Don't forget that Chile at that time 
was an agricultural country. All of the gentry had big farms, 
were absentee landlords, and paid miserable wages to the people. 
They left the mining to the foreigners, the gringos. Of course, 
anything that upset their apple cart, they had to tax the 
gringos. Remember President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, 
which ended in Frei's expropriation of large farms.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Alessandri just didn't feel he wanted to take our package 
to Congress, so in about 1962 we threw in the sponge and figured 
there was no need to talk any more about it. 

Swent: You must have been terribly disappointed. 

Haldeman: Yes, very disappointed. When I had to leave the country, I had 
to leave so quickly that I didn't have time to go into the 
files. I don't know where that report was. I know somebody in 
the Copper Corporation has it in the government, but I can't get 
my hands on it. 

In 1962 the government was scrounging for money. They had 
problems with the copper price fluctuations- -every thing. Of 
course, no new investments. I became aware of the fact that now 
Mr. Allende is gaining more ground politically on the fact that 
they should take over copper. Well, we hadn't done anything for 
the government, but it wasn't because we didn't want to; we just 
couldn't. The political pressures were coming, and I could see 
the handwriting on the wall. I talked to Mr. Michaelson. I 
said, "Mike, time is limited. Like Gypsy Rose Lee, you have to 
find a gimmick to stay alive."


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Haldeman: At this time Mr. Ibanez, who was a businessman, one of the chaps 
I invited to lunch from time to timethe coffee you had today 
is Nescafe; he started the Nescafe business in Chile. A 
landowner, a very charming person. He founded these Almac 
stores, a chain that you see everywhere. Today the poor fellow 
is a vegetable in bed on his farm. He must be eighty-plus. He 
called me over to his office one day and said, "Bob, I want to 
give you a little personal advice. Time is running out. As you 
know, you are a foreign company, and the political pressures are 
on. You people in copper are just too important to the nation's 
economy. When the price of copper goes down and there's too 
much inventory on the market, New York--both your companies- 
decide they're going to have to cut back production," which they 
did at one time when I was in the mine. I was the general 
superintendent in '52, and Mr. Stannard came down. Our prices 
were at rock-bottom; we were getting along with practically no 
profit at all. He said he couldn't see much future for the 
world business of copper, and they were on the borderline of 
deciding to shut down the mine, the whole property. That was at 
a tuxedo dinner at the Teniente Club.   *The El Teniente Club still stands at the ghost town of Sewell. All traces of the American compound behind it were destroyed. *
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k...orporation_Worldwide/SewllOldClubTeniente.jpg


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

"When the prices go down, you people curtail production, 
fire 30 or 40 percent of your people, and at the end of the year 
hire them back again. How can we Chileans plan a budget for our 
country when you make the decisions without advising us?" It's 
true, and they had no other sources of income of exports. 
Nitrate was a sad business; it was just barely alive. He said, 
"You've got to incorporate yourself more in the Chilean scene of 
business here. Why don't you think of becoming a Chilean 
company. You don't have to lose your control of the company, 
but offer shares in the local market. Get some shareholders, 
get Chileans involved with you so that they can defend your 
position. When your dividends go down or the government wants 
to tax you, I don't protest. But if I had a block of shares in 
the company, I'd certainly make a fuss. And have your board 
here, a local board, where decisions are made, and you have 
Chilean representatives on the board who have shares on the 
board. They don't have to have control. They're going to get 
the message over to the government that this is a business, and 
you just can't treat it any other way. It has to hurt our 
pockets a little bit before you get some help and defense." 

I thought it over, and he made an awful lot of sense. I 
went back to my office with my two lawyers and sat down and told 
them what I thought. They didn't disagree. They were aware of 
it, but nobody wanted to really bring it out. 

Swent: Were these Chilean lawyers? 

Haldeman: Yes. But to think, at that time, of a Chilean lawyer to tell a 
100-percent owned American company that they should incorporate 
and sell shares on the market never-never land; they wouldn't 
dream of that. 

Swent: It doesn't sound strange now, does it? 



Haldeman: Well, the world has changed. 

I said to the lawyers, "Let's get to work. I want you to 
educate me on all the legislation in regards to corporations," 
which I never had to bother about because we were a wholly-owned 
subsidiary in the U.S. We worked three, four, five months I 
guess it was. I put together a whole presentation, a whole 
package of what I proposed to do--to have a Chilean board, et 
cetera. 

I made enough dress rehearsals that I was absolutely sure I 
could present this myself, and I became very convinced of the 
thing. We would get this nationalistic feeling off our backs. 
And if you want to share the profits, share them. Sometimes 
it's better to be a pig, not a hog. A pig just eats a little 
bit, but the hog eats it all. 

I talked to Michaelson, and I told him what I had in mind. 
He said it sounded good, but what I had to do was convince 
Mr. Milliken (President of Kennecott at that time --RS)
on the thing. He said, "Look, if you want to come 
up, I'll arrange for a meeting. You come up and sell your plan 
to him."


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Presenting a Plan for Chileanization to Frank Milliken, 
President of Kennecott* 



Haldeman: So he arranged a meeting, and I went up to New York and sat down 
with Mr. Milliken-- just the two of us. "Frank, I want to tell 
you something, what I believe and what I think," and I started. 
It took an hour and a half or two hours and a couple of cups of 
coffee. 

He sat there with his lower chin out; he pouts all the 
time. When I finished, he looked at me and said, "Bob, you have 
a problem." What's that? "The trouble with you, Bob, is that 
you have been working in Chile too long. Do you realize that if 
I took this to the board of directors they would fire me?" 

"No, Mr. Milliken." 

"Well, thanks a lot. When are you going back? Why don't 
you come over for dinner tonight." 

Frank R Milliken, 1914-1991: Milliken was chief executive officer at Kennecott Corp., which he headed 
for nearly two decades, when he became Copper Man of the Year. A mining engineering 
graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Milliken began his career in 1935 as a 
metallurgist for Peru Mining Co. in New Mexico.








Haldeman: So I came back to Santiago with my tail between my legs. 
Swent: He didn't offer to sponsor it at all? 

Haldeman: No. That was the end of the conversation. I came back, put it 
in the file, and that was the end of it. 

Meanwhile, we had better get back to the management side. 
We left Mr. Grant in 1956, and now it was 1962, 1963. 

Swent: Grant was still there? 

Haldeman: Grant was still here as the second man. When we started this 
thing out of a payroll of about 7,000 people, about 400 were 
expatriates, mostly Americans. By this time we were down to 
about 180 Americans, the other jobs being replaced with 
Chileans.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*The Payroll System and the "Gold Roll" *

Haldeman: 

I have to tell you about the payroll. The payroll was divided 
into three sections. The top jobs were called "gold roll", the 
second jobs were "empleados [employees] on pesos," and the third 
jobs were "obreros, or workers, on pesos". The Chileans could 
get up to the "empleados on peso" roll, but the gold roll, of 
the 400 maybe there were only four or five Chileans. 

Why do they call it gold roll? Because when they first 
started the operations in 1915, Braden Copper Company smelted 
down to matte and sometimes to blister, and the only source of 
people who really knew the smelting and some concentrating, 
which were air cells, were in England. They wouldn't come out 
for Chilean pesos, but they came out for penigues, or gold 
coins. That's how you get a converter foreman or a smelter 
foreman or a flotation foreman, usually Welsh or English or 
Cockney--you pay them in gold coins. That became the "gold 
roll". 

Later they stopped paying gold and paid them in United 
States dollars. And, of course, for years we had a black 
market, where the official rate was 30, and you could go out and 
get 150. If this fellow earned 50, and that one earned 100, and 
this is 150, actually he was earning AGO or 500 if you went on 
the curb marketthe black market. 



Swent: Did they ever pay in dollars in the States? 
deposit your pay in the States for you? 


Haldeman: Oh, yes, they deposited it in the States, and then you'd cash a 
check or you could charge. For years, until 1955, I lived on 
chits and never used any American currency. 

As we replaced these jobs in the gold roll (they've cut out 
the gold roll, because it's nationalized, and they couldn't do 
that; that was an Ugly American habit), they earned dollars, and 
we paid them the same salary at the job they replaced. Of 
course, the Chileans who got up into that position just became 
rich; they could buy a car and this and that. Work? Oh, my 
gosh. Eight hours? That wasn't the shift; the wives would call 
them up and tell them to come home. And you built loyalty with 
a lot of pay and the fact that they were recognized as equals.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

In some of the areas, like the smelter, you had a bunch of 
bohunks who were running the converters and the reverberatory 
furnaces and the roaster building. The first time I put a 
Chilean in the converter section, the whole converter 
group- -Americans and Canadians (and these were not university 
graduates; they were practical men) got word to the 
superintendent: "You tell Haldeman, that new man in the 
management, that we're going to quit if they put the Chilean in 
the same job as we are." 

I told the superintendent to ask them when they wanted 
their plane tickets to go home; I'd have them delivered to them. 
Two of them picked it up, and I filled the jobs immediately. 
Everybody became quiet; they suddenly realized that I wasn't 
fooling around. They had a Chilean engineer, a college 
graduate, in there running the shift. He ran it much better 
than the bohunks--the practical men. 

That started the thing going in management. About this 
time we had a tremendous breakthrough, and the remaining 
expatriates realized that they had to compete with the Chileans. 
It made a very healthy atmosphere [for the Chileans] to get up 
the management ladder, because they had really worked their 
tails off. The Americans figured they were down for three 
years, and they could do almost what they wanted. No way.
 
So it was very helpful. Then it became the place to go for 
the Chilean engineer, and we then had requests of the best 
people around to get on the dollar payroll. We started to 
hand-pick the people out of the industry [laughs], and we picked 
up an excellent team. I'll get to that later on. 

Swent: This you could do on your own authority? The board in New York 
didn't know what was going on? 

Haldeman: I didn't consult them; I told them. 

There was myself and Mr. Grant, and then we had a manager 
of operations, manager of service departments, and manager of 
personnel. We had the equivalent job in purchasing and 
accounting. Accounting was always held with an American under 
Kennecott's American accounting system; they have the hands on 
the cash box. I don't have any problem with that; that's 
perfectly right. But the fellow they had down there went along 
with us and hired Chileans under him. 

About '63 or '64, we had an opening for a manager in the 
service departments. I didn't have anybody I could put in that 
I would be satisfied with who could compete with a Chilean 
fellow, Nelson Pereira. He had been educated at the University 
of Illinois in the United States and at one time was 110-, 220- , 
and 440-meter AAU track champion. A Chilean! 

So we made him the first Chilean gerente. Well, that was 
earth-shaking. [laughs] Then he turned around and married the 
daughter of my Mr. Casarotto, and they had four children. Their 
daughter is the girl who married a son of my friend who worked 
in the Bethlehem Steel mines. Small world, eh?


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Now we're drifting to '63 and '64. The political scene became 
very intense. Mr. Frei was one of the candidates, and Allende 
was another. There was another candidate, but he didn't have 
any votesa Perot, you might say, as far as attracting votes. 
Frei's Christian Democrat Party had built up quite a bit of 
reputation at this time, and they were real good politicians out 
in the boondocks . They went right to the little towns and 
established offices, and they had a lot of hard workers, 
how they consolidated their vote basis. 








*Eduardo Frei Montalva, President of Chile, 1964-70* Mr. Frei started to talk about Chileanization of copper, 
with a lot of political gobbledy-**** that I didn't quite 
understand. The copper companies were asking, "What is this 
fellow after?" He'd make some statements, but they were 
semi-vague and broad. They wanted to have a voice and a vote in 
their destiny in copper. Well, if you're worried, that means 
taking it away from you, whatever it is.

Just before elections, in July or August of '64, I arranged 
for a meeting through my Mr. Illanes. I said, "I want to talk 
to Mr. Frei and understand exactly what he means about this 
thing." So we went to see Mr. Claro, one of the directors up 
there [in a photo], the guy sitting down on the left, the bald 
fellow. He was married to one of [President] Gonzalez Videla's 
daughters. He was in the [political] party of Frei. 

Swent: What was his name? 


Haldeman: Jose Claro. Jose said, "I'll arrange to have Mr. Frei over at 
my house for a drink." 

Swent: The picture is interesting, because it's directors of-- 

Haldeman: That's the first board meeting of the company when we sold 
51 percent. I'll get to that later on. 

So I had a drink at his house and Mr. Frei was there. I 
asked him exactly what it was he wanted. He had had lunch 
before at my office, and I knew him very well. He was a 
senator, and one of the invited men, so I knew him by first 
name. That's how those things pay off. He said, "Bob, let me 
explain it to you. We have to have something to say in the 
industry," and he more or less repeated what Ibanez (my advisor) 
had told me, who was not a Christian Democrat; he was extreme 
Right. But it was the general feeling. 

Frei said, "I call it Chileanization, but what it is 
really there are two things that I would like and am going to 
ask the companies for. One is that you kick up production, one 
way or the other; I need more revenues. The second thing is 
that I want to buy some equity. I don't want to be given 
anything; I want to buy in the company, be on your board, and be 
able to give our opinions on what is happening to the industry. 
Because, after all, 70 or 80 percent of all of our foreign 
exchange comes from these companies . "


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Cerro de Pasco Company; Andina Mine and Robert Koenig *



Haldeman: By this time there were three companies. Cerro de Pasco in 

Peru, in 1958 and 1959, decided they were going to open up the 
mine called Andina in Los Andes. It's about 80 kilometers north 
of here. The ore body was known for years, and they got the 
property claimed and bought it out. The mill is underground; 
it's way up, at about 3,500 meters but in an area that is very 
precipitous terrain, a lot of snow and snow slides and 
everything. Well, they decided they would go underground, and 
they built the mill underground. The mine is block caving like 
El Teniente; it all goes to the surface. It has been quite 
successful. 

Bob Roenig, the president of Cerro de Pasco, was just 
coming on stream with his property at that time. He was the 
only thing that Mr. Frei could show of a new investment. He 
said, "There were two companies, and now there are three- - 
Rennecott, Anaconda, and now the Cerro de Pasco Andina mine. 
I'm going to talk to all of you, and if I am elected- -which I 
know I will be--" as they all say. He said, "I hope you can 
understand me and help me out. I don't want something for 
nothing . " 








That was fine. I understood it very clearly. What he was 
saying was that in the long haul, in each presidential term some 
guy is going to want more and finally get control of the company 
and buy it out. That was perfectly all right, because if 
Allende got in, we would be taken over immediately. This might 
be Gypsy Rose Lee's gimmick to keep you alive a little bit 
longer. 

I reported this to New York, and I also said that we had 
some alternate schemes of expansion. The Codegua plan, that 
enormous thing, would now have cost about $700 million. We took 
a plan wherein we went in an intermediate level, at the smelter 
level--5,000 feetand made a tunnel in there. From there down 
we made a highway and got rid of the railroad. We abandoned the 
camps of the smelter and Sewell and opened up from the smelter 
down to the public; it was wide open. And of course we opened 
up another thirty or forty years of ore. 

The next step, whoever has it some years from now, will go 
down to where we were at Codegua and do something, because it's 
too costly to raise all that rock up and get it out to the 
concentrator. 

So it was a half a Codegua, if you want to put it that way, 
which came out to about $240 million in cost. We had that plus 
other things on the fire. But New York said, "No, we don't want 
to go to the Codegua. To put in a billion dollars nowwe just 
can't see the country that stable for that long a time to get 
our money out." We were turned down once, so if they want it, 
they can come back and ask for it. 

We come to the elections, and Mr. Frei was elected by a 
majority over 50 percent of the popular vote and he was put 
into office. 

Swent: He still didn't control Congress, though, did he? 

Haldeman: No, he didn't control Congress. But in the way of things he had 
enough splinter groups there that he was able to get major 
legislation through without modifying it too much.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Now the government had a problem: how were they going to 
tackle the copper companies in what manner and with whom? So 
the president elected two people: Raul Saez, a brilliant 
engineer who just passed away last year, who had worked his way 
up. The highest job he had before he moved up was as the head 
of Endesa, the power company. He was an excellent engineer, 
capable, and a big thinker with a lot of international 
experience. 


If you remember, in 1955 they legislated and made this 
auditing group, the Departamento de Cobre . It was a watchdog on 
the copper companies. The man who was the vice president of 
that group was Javier Lagarrigue, the second man elected by 
Frei. He was a Christian Democrat and a nice fellow. I had 
known him for years, and he knew the copper business pretty 
well. I think he had been in that -department since 1955, and we 
are now up to 1964. 

Frei said to the two of them, "I want you to tackle the 
companies and see what you can do." 

Well, they sat down and figured out, "We've got to go first 
where we can get the most out of the softest and the easiest." 
They decided the order would be from the easiest to the hardest, 
and the easiest was Bob Koenig. Bob had Cerro de Pasco in Peru; 
he had Latin experience, and he couldn't care less. He knew 
that you had to go along with the political current and tides. 

We know the last is going to be Kennecott, because "they 
are Peck's Bad Boy; they're the hard nuts, and we're quite sure 
we're going to get nothing out of them. So we'll take number 
two, Anaconda, because they have all their eggs in the Chilean 
basket." They had no other income outside of Chile, an inside 
board of directors, re-elected their own president and their own 
directors every year, and gave themselves all a raise every 
year. They were sitting in this little copper-tinsel world with 
no other source of income. 

They called in Mr. Koenig, and the conversations started. 
After a couple or three weeks they struck a deal where they, the 
Chileans, would buy in 25 percent of the company. It was based 
on asset and liability the value of the company, everything 
above board payments. Bob Koenig was very pleased with it and 
satisfied.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Anaconda Company; Chuquicamata Mine. Charles Brinckerhoff *


Haldeman: Now they called on number two, Anaconda. Well, Anaconda just 
couldn't pay dividends if they didn't have 100 percent of the 
cash flow from Chuquicamata and El Salvador. 1 

Swent: Who was here with Anaconda at that time? 

Haldeman: Charles Brinckerhoff , who had been here for years as the head of 
Anaconda, had just moved up to be president, not chairman of the 
board of Anaconda in New York. Another fellow, Richard Sims, a 
controller, came down. He had been put in to operate it until 
they got somebody else the Chuqui mines and so on. Actually, 
Brinckerhoff didn't really relinquish too much control over the 
operations of the property. 

The Chileans started to talk to them. Anaconda couldn't 
afford to give 25 or any percent of those two mines, but they 
had this ore body which was called Exotica, about ten kilometers 
away from Chuqui. Chuqui was leached over the years, and part 
of the solutions trickled, ran under the gravel blankets, 
deposited out in the basin, and formed this secondary enrichment 
body, Exotica. They had grades of 2, 3, or 4 percent copper, 
but they were all exotic minerals all acid solubles, no 
sulfides, nothing primary. They had stumbled across the darned 
thing when they were digging a shaft in a drift to drain the 
tailings deposits, and they found this ore. 

They started to work on the metallurgy of the thing, and, 
along came Mr. Frei. So they said, "Well, we have a new ore 
body here; we'll open it up. It's high grade, and you'll have 
25 percent in that. And we will pledge to increase the 
production at Chuquicamata by X percent, El Salvador by 
Y percent, and we will help build new port facilities at 
Tocopilla. We'll open an exploration program down in the 
southern part of Chile to satisfy a couple of senators down 
there." All of these things were window dressing and icing on 
the cake, and Chuqui and El Salvador were still 100 percent in 
Anaconda's hands, and the tax rates on the companies who went 
along were reduced to be 50 percent maximum tax. 

After a lot of fuss, the government accepted that. So we 
were called. Of course, Frei had pretty well been convinced by 
this time that he didn't want to force this on us and become an 
enemy of the United States for investments, and in the world of 
copper, too. He probably figured he would try and get the best 
he could, and the next round, when his party was elected six 
years later, he could take another whack at the companies.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Our Mr. Milliken and Mr. Michaelson came down. I was 
called by Mr. Saez, who said, "Bob, we'd like to have a meeting 
with your men next week," so I set it up. He said, "I don't 
want to have it downtown; the reporters are all over the place." 

I said, "I'll take care of it. Don't worry." So we went 
way out to Las Condes and rented a house. We brought the cooks 
from our director's house in Sewell, two girls who had worked up 
there for forty years and could cook the most wonderful meals. 
Nobody knew. We had a telephone put in, and nobody knew the 
number. So we were to meet. 

My bosses came down, and I met them at the airport and got 
them to the hotel on the morning before the day of the meeting. 
We had lunch, and they hemmed and hawed. Then everybody took a 
little rest, and in the afternoon Frank called me in. He said, 
"I want to let you know what we're going to do tomorrow. We've 
come to the conclusion that 25 percent is just the same as 
having 1 percent, and 49 percent for them is the same as having 
1 percent; they'll always be a minority. At 50-50 you can't run 
a company. So we're going to sell them 51 percent. And this 
project of yours, going to a tunnel out there"--! called this 
the 280 Project; it was 280,000 tons of copper a year, and we 
were producing 180,000 tons. 

He said, "That idea, 280,000 tons per year, are you sure 
it's going to work?" 

I said, "Yes, it's going to work." 
Swent: This was the half-Codegua plan? 
Haldeman: Yes. He said, "We're going to propose that." 

They had done their homework and had never told me a single 
thing about what they were doing. I said, "That's fine, Mr. 
Milliken. Go right ahead." Here was this guy who told me that 
if he took it to the board they would fire him, and now he was 
telling me we were going to do it but in a spectacular way. 
Fine. 

We got to the meeting the next day at ten o'clock. We sat 
down and had a coke and a cup of coffee and so on. Raul Saez 
was master of ceremonies. He knew Milliken and Michaelson from 
before, as did Lagarrigue, so we were all on first names. Saez 
made a little pitch about what had happened before with Andina 
and Anaconda and what the president wanted, that he was not 
asking for something for nothing, blah, blah, blah. 

Javier went on about, "If you incorporate yourself, 
hopefully we could get some sales to be made by the companies in 
Chile, and they become Chilean companies. And we have your best 
interests at heart," and all this stuff and so on.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*A Bold Proposal for Chileanization *


Haldeman: Frank said to Mr. Saez, "Raul, we've been thinking it over and 
we come with the following in mind. Twenty- five percent to us 
is just the same as 1 percent; in the same analogy, 49 percent 
is a minority and is just the same as 1 percent or 25 percent. 
We just don't think that solves any problems for you, much less 
for us, because that will always be a bone of contention. And 
50-50- -we don't want to have an arbitration court to manage the 
company. So we would think that the best thing for you, for the 
country, and for us is that you buy 51 percent of the company." 

Saez never flicked an eyebrow, and Javier Lagarrigue 
fumbled for his cigarettes and couldn't get one lit. Michaelson 
was smoking and gave him his Zippo lighter. Raul said, "Fine. 
How much do you put the value at on the property?" 

Milliken said, "We had American Appraisal assess this and 
it was assessed at $200 million; so 51 percent would cost $101 
million. Call it $100 million. We have the appraisal, and it 
does not include the value of the ore." Okay; fine. Yes. 

Frank said, "Furthermore on that, Bob has engineered a 
program. Bob, you explain it," and I explained what it 
involved this tunnel and so on--in very few words. I didn't 
have any maps or anything like that. I said it would increase 
production by 60 percent. 

Raul said, "That's wonderful. How about the corporate 
structure?" 

Frank said, "I don't think we should have a big, numerous 
board. We should have- -not an executive committee but, say, 
seven or nine on the board, of which you would have the 
majority." 

Raul said, "I think nine is too much; seven is better. 
When you get nine, you get a lot of political hacks who want to 
get in. Four will be enough for us, because we can fill them 
with people who are capable and know the business." 

Okay, so we would have three, and maybe we would have one 
alternate each. "Yes, that would be fine." 

Saez said, "Frank, who's going to manage the company?" 
"The board, and you have the majority."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Saez said, "Frank, let me congratulate you. This is 
absolutely breathtaking. We never thought of this. It's 
brilliant. Two things come to my mind. Because of the bold 
move you have taken, I think you should have a tax rate lower 
than the others. And $100 million is just like a $100 suit; a 
$99 suit is much cheaper. I'll lower the tax rate so that we'll 
put the price of this down to $80 million, and you'll pick it up 
in the first two years of operation in your profits with the 
lower tax. Is that all right?" 

Frank said, "Fine." 

Raul said, "We're not set up to operate the property. 
Would you have a problem if we let Bob run it?" 

Frank said, "What do you want?" 

Raul said, "I'll tell you what. I have full confidence in 
Bob. Why don't you let Bob and me work out a management 
contract?" 

Frank said, "Anything you guys work out is fine by me. 
It's approved ahead of time." 

Lagarrigue was staying in the background, and Frank said, 
"Javier, do you have something to say?" 

Javier asked, "Who's going to sell the copper?" This was a 
great thing who sold the copper. That politically was the 
thing. 

Frank said, "The board of directors is going to call the 
shots, and you have the majority." 

Javier asked, "You'll be responsible for sales?" 

Frank said, "The board will; it's not 'we'; it's 'you.'
You are going to be a shareholder on this thing."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: He wanted an advisory contract? 

Haldeman: An advisory contract with Kennecott sales [division] to help 

them for the first couple or three years until they could get an 
organization set up. 

Frank said, "Fine, Raul. Any other questions?" 


Raul said, "No." Mind you, we started at ten o'clock, and 
it was now eleven-twenty. 

And you've sold $80 million. [laughter] 


Haldeman: Raul said, "Frank, I'm sorry; I've got a meeting downtown at 
noon. Can we get together tomorrow at the same time here?" 
Sure, that would be fine. "Would you mind if we make Bob 
recording secretary? You and I will talk our agreements, and he 
will write them up. You type them out for me, we can both look 
at them, and I will take them over to the president in the 
afternoon." 

Frank said, "Fine. Bob, set up the meeting for tomorrow." 
I said, "Yes, sir." 

Lagarrigue said, "I have to go; I have to get to town." He 
decided he didn't know what to do, so he went out, got his car, 
and went right down to the La Woneda, the presidential palace. 
He walked in and said, "I have to talk to the president." 

The president was told that Lagarrigue was there and said, 
"Have him come in right away." 

Lagarrigue went in and said, "Mr. President, we've finished 
with Kennecott." 

The president said, "Oh, God, what happened?" 

Lagarrigue said, "They offered us and we bought 51 percent 
of the company." 

Frei looked at him and said, "This is my viga maestra, my 
master beam of my structure--the copper business." That famous 
phrase is in history books.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Fascinating story, is it not ? Perhaps we will continue with this tomorrow. By the way, THIS is historic politics--not such a bad thing as _some_ would characterize the word. You are reading the _actua_l account of what happened to the Braden Copper Company in Sewell, Chile, not all that long ago.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Haldeman:
The next day we met at ten o'clock, and I took the notes 
down. It didn't quite fill two pages, double- spaced, and that 
was the agreement we struck for a $240 million business. We 
sold 51 percent of the company, and I was managing it for them. 

Swent: When exactly was this, Bob? 

Haldeman: It was between January and February of 1964. That memo was 
given to the president, and they immediately made a press 
release of the results of the agreements with the three 
companies. He said, "I have drafted legislation that I needed 
enacted to make these things become effective." 


Swent: These three companies were all announced simultaneously? 

Haldeman: Yes. The word leaked out a little bit, but then the president 
went over national radio. 

Swent: And you had heard what the results of the other two meetings 
were? 

Haldeman: The next day, when the president went over the radio, the phones 
started to jingle. Anaconda called up: "You s.o.b.'s. You 
dirty so-and-so's." 

Bob Koenig called up and said, "Congratulations. I think 
it was brilliant. I should have thought of it myself; I could 
have gotten some cash out of this investment." [laughter] 
Anaconda was furious. 

Swent: Had you been aware of what Anaconda and Koenig had done? 

Haldeman: Yes. Chile is a large country, relatively speaking, but it's a 
small one--Peyton Place; you know what that means. 

Swent: How had you heard? 

Haldeman: There are leaks of information all over the place. It's very 
hard to keep a secret in Chile. I knew in general what they 
were talking about. 

Swent: Was there a club where you met people and this sort of gossip 
was circulated? 

Haldeman: No. A fellow like Mr. Illanes and some of the Chilean 

supervisors that I raised up into key positions have an awful 
lot more information sources than a foreigner. They pick it up 
at cocktail parties. It leaks around. Then they can report to 
me. I needed those; I didn't have the ears. My intelligence 
service. Everybody had it. 

Swent: I was just wondering if there was a country club or a downtown 
club. 

Haldeman: No, nothing like that. Oh, there are, but usually they don't 
leak it to you there. They wouldn't have said anything to us. 
Of course, it took them by surprise; it took everybody by 
complete surprise. It was very bold and very good. 

At that time Michaelson and I were talking, and we came to 
the conclusion that this would probably last two 
administrations- -Frei and the following. Twelve years. 


Swent: They never gave you credit for having thought of this? 
Haldeman: Let's wait until a little later to talk about that.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

So we figured maybe twelve years. It was now '64, and 
during the twelve years we figured the legislation would get by 
in two years, '66, but it took three years. To build a plant 
would take three or four years and would be done before Frei was 
finished; we'd have the first six years and get our money out. 
After that, if we made a profit, fine. We'd get $80 million in 
cash for the assets--51 percent of the assets which is better 
than nothing. Anaconda didn't get anything out of their assets. 

OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation] , who insures 
United States investments abroad, gave guarantees of 
expropriation exchange and all of that stuff. Kennecott had 
been talking to Eximbank, and they put up $100 million. We put 
up the $80 million that they paid us and reinvested it back into 
the company. They had to print the money to do it, but we 
didn't put up any fresh cash. 

Then the Copper Corporation put up the other $20 million, 
so that made the $200 million. Later on it inflated up to $240 
million, and I had to go and get some loans from the Japanese. 
Then we went over and got a loan from the French-Italian Bank in 
Italy. They were selling against copper contracts futures 
contracts. It finally cost $270 million, but it was completely 
financed.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*MANAGING A CHILEAN COMPANY *

April 12, 1967. Legal Constitution of the Company 

Haldeman: Mr. Simian, the minister of mines, who got the legislation 
through from '64 to "67 to be able to make the joint ventures, 
resigned as minister. 

The president said, "Mr. Simian, you can't leave me. I 
want you to be president of the company. You know Bob, and 
he'll be vice president. I want the two of you to run the 
company. " 

That's the way the thing was structured. On April 12, 
1967, the company was legally constituted. We had the first 
board meeting, and all of the transfer of titles, shares, and 
assets were made. [looking at photo] You have here Mr. Simian 
at the head of the table. On his right is yours truly, on his 
left is Mr. Grant, and these are all the board of directors and 
the alternates. 

Swent: Eleven people. Maybe we can get a copy of that picture. 
Haldeman: I'll get a copy for you and send it to you. 

In April, just before this was signedalmost 

simultaneously--Kennecott was in OPIC offices and the Eximbank, 
and their loan agreement was signed by U.S. government agency. 

Swent: Where were those offices? 

Haldeman: In Washington, D.C. The Chilean ambassador at that time, 
Radomiro Tomic, was present and signed for the Chilean 
government at the same time we were down here signing. At that 
meeting, the head of Eximbank gave a little speech, the Chilean 
ambassador gave a speech, OPIC gave a speech, and Mr. Milliken 
gave a speech in which, among other things, he said, "The man 
who is responsible for the whole idea of this joint venture is 
not with us today, and that's Bob Haldeman. He's in Chile at 
this moment, signing the papers and setting up the first meeting 
of this company. It was his idea." 

Swent: So he did give you the credit 

Haldeman:
But never to my face. [laughs] I don't care, 
perfectly fine by me. We got what we wanted.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

How much difference did it make in your management? 

During the period from '64 to '67, I had to sit down with 
Mr. Saez. Raul was a very, very busy man, and we'd meet a 
couple or three times a week, or maybe jump a week, and meet for 
an hour or two. He said, "Bob, I'm going to talk to you, and 
you have to draft it and write it up. Then send it to me, and 
I'll call you when we can meet again to review the draft." 

I said, "I have done some work on it myself with my 
lawyers, so I'll give you a framework." 

He said, "That's fine and dandy. Let me take a look at it. 
But I want you to have one thing clear. When I was general 
manager of Endesa," which is a government-owned company, "I 
wanted to do several things in the company, things that a 
general manager should do, because it was in all my powers-of- 
attorney vested to me as I took over the job. I couldn't do 
them because I had political restraints on me. So I want you to 
draft this up so that you don't have any restraints; you will 
have all of the full powers of the general manager, because 
you'll be responsible in front of the board, and you can be 
fired if you don't do it properly. I don't want you to be able 
to duck out and say, 'I couldn't do it because I had restraints 
on me'. That's what I wish I could have had when I was manager 
of Endesa." 


So we drafted it up that way. We never took it out of the 
file in the short time from '67 to '71 that I managed the 
company. It never was referred to once. When you have a good 
agreement between the parties and you draft it up, you don't 
have to go back and look at the files on the thing. 

And it worked out absolutely fine, though many things 
happened to it. We had to present our budget the following 
year, in "68 and the rest of '67. I had a contributions and 
public relations budget, which all American companies had-- 
donating books to libraries, making pictures of the company, 
radio time, and all that stuff. The first thing that was 
criticized on the budget was when one of the members on the 
board said, "Bob, what are you doing with all this money? The 
government controls the TV station and the radio station; we get 
free time, so take it. Don't spend the money on that. The 
library? We have a budget for libraries; there's no need for us 
to give our money to them. We want the cash in here; we want it 
as dividends." 

So there were no contributions, no public relations, and no 
donations budget; we ran a mining company for profits! It's 
entirely different when you put it on the other shoe [put the 
shoe on the other foot]. [laughter] 

Simian and I became an executive committee. The board just 
decided that they wanted Ed and me to make the major decisions. 
They told us that we could let them know; they had trust in both 
of us. They knew perfectly well that Simian would not give 
anything that was not good for them, and I wouldn't give 
anything that was not good for us. So they decided that was a 
pretty nice way to have major decisions made.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Selecting Bids for the Mine Expansion 
*


Haldeman: We had to choose an engineering construction company, and we had 
three companies bidding. (I won't mention the names of the 
companies.) Each of them was associated with local Chilean 
companies . 

Swent: That was for this new half-Codegua plan? 
Haldeman: Yes. 

Now came the big political pressure through the Chilean 
associates of these companies to try and get the job. We got 
the bids in, and all my people evaluated it. I called Mr. 
Simian and said, "Before we have a board meeting, Ed, 1 want you 
to go over all these numbers with me." He's an engineer and 
understands all this. I had two of my staff there, and we went 
over and over it. The lowest bid was not the best. The highest 
bid was the best. 

Swent: Best in what sense? 

Haldeman: It had better people. Their way of determining their costs was 
absolutely crystal clear. The other one had all these hidden 
costs and threw charges on this and that; it was vague. You 
went through it, and you couldn't find out exactly who was going 
to be responsible for something and if there were overhead. 
They included things in general overhead, which shouldn't have 
been in overhead, at 60 percent. Right off the bat you know 
you're going to have to sit there and go to arbitration and 
chisel all the time. 

The highest bidder had a super team of professionals in the 
business of mining, smelting, concentrater, and electrical, 
which were the principal components. We were getting an awful 
lot of flak from the lower bidder. He had a lot of political 
clout with the president and the Congress, and he was in the 
Christian Democrat Party. He put a lot of pressure on the 
government members of the board. He said, "We know we have the 
lowest bid." I knew we were going to have fireworks. 

We went over the bids for a couple of days, and Ed finally 
became convinced that the [higher] bid we were going to take was 
the proper bid to have. I said, "After all, too, I have to be 
responsible for it, because I have the management contract. And 
Kennecott is responsible; it's not just me alone." 

Ed said, "All right, let's have the board meeting." 

At six o'clock that afternoon we had all the board in, and 
my project manager, Mr. B. B.. Smith, made the presentation. He 
was an excellent chap. We put all the numbers up on the board, 
and his number-two man, Mr. Samuelson, went through the details 
on it. I said, "So the management recommendation to this board 
is to pick Group A." Silence. 

Then, "What was that cost again?"


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Nobody said anything, so I said to Mr. Simian, "Mr. 
President, do you think we could have a break now?" 

"That would be wonderful, if you don't mind, Bob." 

I got up, high-signed all of my people, walked into the 
other room, and closed the door. I left him with his 
representatives. An hour and a half later he came out and said, 
"Bob, these guys want to have the meeting tomorrow." 

I said, "Ed, it would be a dead dog. By that time they'll 
get to La Moneda (the presidential palace)." 

He said, "I know it. They wanted me to come out and ask 
you if you are absolutely sure that you are willing to stake 
your reputation, blah, blah, blah, and aren't you making a 
mistake?" 

I said, "Ed, you can tell them, or do you want me to go in 
and tell them?" 

He said, "Well, no, I'll tell them." He went back in the 
room, and later someone said to come back in, and the meeting 
went on. You can imagine the faces in there. But they awarded 
the bid. 

Oh, boy, the flak flew the next day all over the place. 
Mr. Simian went over to see the president, and he said, "Mr. 
Frei, I want to tell you what happened. We went over the 
numbers, and I go along and share the responsibility with Mr. 
Haldeman. You don't always get the best job at the lowest 
cost." 

Mr. Frei said, "If you people are responsible for it, and 
that's what you want, so be it." He stood up for it. Imagine! 
No political pressure on me. You couldn't have asked for any 
better relationship. 

Swent: It wasn't a Chilean versus ****** split on the board, was it? 

Haldeman: The four directors from the government were all Chilean. 
Swent: Were the three others non-Chileans? 

Haldeman: No. There was myself, Mr. Grant, and Carlos Tolosa, the Chilean 
business manager. And the replacement was a Chilean, too. 

Swent: So it wasn't a strict ******-Chilean split? 
Haldeman: No. 

So we got off to a very good start. We started to build a 
plant, and it went along just like clockwork. We had a really 
fine team of people there, and the contractors complied up to 
the last comma and dot. Everything went excellently. 

Swent: Were you able to get your production up to what you had 
predicted? 

Haldeman: Well, now we come up to '69, and elections are in '70. We get 
back into the same atmosphere of political things, and we are 
about 70 or 80 percent along on our construction job. All the 
pressure we were putting on was all we could do to get this 
inaugurated before Frei left office. Of course, that's what he 
wanted for his candidate, Mr. Radomiro Tomic, the Christian 
Democrat and ex-ambassador who was running.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

By this time, 1970, we hadnot including the construction, 
which were mostly foreigners--in our operating organization six 
expatriates, and all the rest were Chileans. The general 
manager of operations, the general manager of the service 
department, the manager of personnel, purchasing, and all down 
the line were Chileans. A top-flight team, really doing a 
wonderful job. 

Do you want to say who did get the bid? It's a matter of 
record. 

Haldeman: McKee, Bechtel, and Utah [Mining and Construction Company) had 
to split it up because of their specialties. 

Swent: So they had a consortium. 

Haldeman: Yes. One didn't have smelting experience, and the other one 
didn't have mining experience; so we decided we would pick out 
those things, and they would have to get together on it. It 
turned out excellently. We were under time and slightly over 
budget, but financing came very easy.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Inaugurating the New Operation, August 8, 1970 *


Haldeman: In August we had the inauguration of the new operation, and we 
organized a big show. The president just loved it. We had 
buses in front of the La Afoneda in the central plaza downtown, 
and we had four or five hundred people invited, all the 
dignitaries in all sectorspolitics, business, church. 

Swent: And you bussed them all the way out to Rancagua? 

Haldeman: We bussed them all in a big convoy with a police patrol in front 
of it, and we went up and had a big lunch in the warehouse at 
the smelter. We took the president and a group, and even the 
archbishop of the Catholic Church went along, too. 

Swent: To give it a blessing. 

Haldeman: Yes, that's right. We took him underground and showed him 

around, and we took him up in a cage with the brand-new hoist, 
where you could lift two railroad cars loaded up to the levels. 
He was very impressed, and he enjoyed it--oh, gosh, the ribbons 
and all that kind of stuff. 

Swent: It must have been a great day for you, too. 

Haldeman: Yes. On the way back on the bus, here was the head of the 
church, the members of the board, senators, deputies, and 
representatives of the area. All of us were tired. It was 
about six o'clock in the afternoon, and we were coming down the 
hill on the new highway. We were just about into the central 
valley, and the president stood up on the bus, turned around, 
and said, "I make a motion that we all give a big round of 
applause to Bob Haldeman for the wonderful job he's done." A 
good politician. [laughs]


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Next Up: Salvadore Allende & [/b]
The Communists Take Over in Chile[/b]


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Here is a brief background before we continue:* S*alvador Isabelino Allende Gossens[/b] June 26, 1908 – September 11, 1973) was a physician and the first democratically elected Marxist socialist to become president of a state in the Americas.Allende's involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race (about 39,000 votes. There is evidence that the Marxists found a way to rig the election just enough to get Allende installed into office --RS) 



Allende established a Marxist regime in Chile.His economic policy resulted in inflation which exceeded 300 percent a year. He adopted the policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization. His policy of collectivization resulted in seizure of lands and crop production dropped. Protests were held in Chile against Allende's rule. The Supreme Court criticized Allende for subordination of the judicial system to serve his own political needs and the Chamber of Deputies requested the military to restore laws in Chile. After this request by the Chamber of Deputies, General Augusto Pinochet removed Allende from office in an U.S.-backed coup d'état on September 11, 1973 and this ended the Popular Unity government. During the air raids and ground attacks that preceded the coup, Allende gave his last speech where he vowed to stay in the presidential palace. He gave his last speech from the presidential palace with the sounds of gunfire and explosions clearly heard in the background. A dedicated Marxist to the end, these were his words: 
_"Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!" _(September 11, 1973). He was found dead in the palace. His death was officially ruled a suicide. 








Salvador Allende and the general who would ultimately depose him, Augusto Pinochet


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*November. 1970; the Election of Salvador Allende *



Haldeman: That was in August, and all was fine. The elections came in 
September, and then came the beginning of the end. Allende won. 
It was by the skin of his teeth. It was split in thirds again, 
and I think he won by 34.1 percent. The next man, the 
Conservative, had 33.7 percent. Usually you had to go to 
Congress for a second round; if a person doesn't get 50 percent 
plus one, Congress decides. 

Well, we all knew what Allende was going to do; there was 
no doubt in anybody's mind. I happened to be in Buenos Aires on 
election night. My eldest son and his wife, my first grandson, 
and my third son had come down for summer vacation in September. 
I had invited them down for our twenty- fifth wedding 
anniversary, and we went to the beach. Then we took a trip to 
Buenos Aires, and we were going to go up to Rio [de Janeiro]. 
Then the kids would go home, and I would come back with my wife. 
I thought the Christian Democrats would win- -not by very much, 
but with all the political machinery they had--. 

We were in the Hotel Plaza in Buenos Aires on election 
night, listening on the radio. The vote returns were coming in, 
and faces started to get longer. The grandson was getting tired 
and wanted to eat. I said, "I'm losing my appetite," so we had 
them send up two big tureens of chicken stew, called cazuela de 
aves, and a couple of bottles of wine. We sat there, and by 
twelve o'clock at night it was very obvious what had happened. 
So I had to get back to Santiago. Oh, it was horrible.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

We had tickets to leave the next afternoon to go to Rio. I 
told the kids, "You go right ahead. Here's the money, and you 
make the rest of the trip. I'm going to stay." I got a couple 
of seats for my wife and myself on a flight around noon. We got 
into the airport--it 's the day after the election and it was 
empty. [In Santiago] we got in a taxi, and usually the taxi 
drivers are full of beans, but there was absolute dead silence. 
Gloom fell over Santiago. We drove through the middle of town, 
and there was practically nobody out. People were scared. 

Then we had to go through all the rigmarole of waiting for 
him to have his session with Congress. Naturally Congress 
approved of Mr. Allende's election. Then all of the morale fell 
apart. We were just one part of a general panic situation in 
the country. Strikes started up, labor indiscipline, groups of 
students running down the street shouting and throwing bricks 
here and there. People were threatening to go out and take over 
the private homes. 

Allende was up on the balcony, waving and shouting, 
"Corapaneros, I'm going to put legislation in the Congress to get 
peoples' courts and turn out the judges. The judges are no 
good; we'll have popular tribunals." All of the propaganda. I 
even have a little book of his program that they sold on the 
street. I had bought it six months before he was elected, and 
four months after he was elected he followed the book perfectly. 
People didn't believe it. 

Chaos happened. People started to scramble. The Chileans 
who had money figured that it was the end of their life here. 
You could go out and buy a brand-new car- -they would give you 
the keys for a thousand dollar bill. 









Allende giving his victory speech at Santiago


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*THE ALLENDE REGIME, 1970* 



*A Scene of Chaos in Santiago* 

Swent: So you could buy all sorts of things- -houses, rugs, everything? 

Haldeman: Yes. It was a scene of chaos. We had a house on Costanera 
Street, the one you walked across today. 

Swent: By the river? 

Haldeman: Yes. In fact, it was just a couple of doors up from the street 
you went up. I had bought the house. It had an 18,000-square- 
foot lot, and I had 8,000 square feet of house, servants. I 
paid U.S. $54,000 for it. Before the election I probably could 
have sold it for U.S. $100,000. The election came and Allende 
took over, and I figured, "I'm going to have to leave the 
country sooner or later." A bill had gone to Congress for 
expropriation of the mining companies. In February I sold the 
house for U.S. $5,000. Four years ago they purchased it and 
tore it down to put up a building. It went for U.S. $500,000. 

People were panicking. You could have bought beautiful 
homes. Some people did buy four, five, or six homes, and 
they're millionaires today. They took a chance on it. It was a 
gamble. Nobody had any faith whatsoever that we weren't going 
to become another Cuba and Allende pledged that.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*"Things Started to Unravel at the Mine" *



Haldeman: Things started to unravel at the mine. We had this new plant 
starting up, and now we got sabotage. The pump would shut down, 
and we'd open it up and find bolts and nuts in it. The 
thickener rakes. stopped in these 325-foot thickeners and were 
all bent over; somebody had thrown a railroad tie about four 
feet long in the bottom. It caught the rakes and doubled them 
up. 

At Anaconda, the workers decided they were soon going to 
take over management, and they were led by their political hacks 
and the union leaders, who in copper mines were in the majority 
--socialists and communists-- left-wingers. In Chuqui, on one 
shift in the afternoon, the union showed up with two lambs. 
They shut down the converter and turned it over on its side. 
You've seen what a converter is; that's where they put in the 
matte and blow the air through it. They turned it over so that 
the mouth was alongside the floor and set up a barbecue rack. 
Production shut down, and they all had a barbecue and got drunk 
on that shift. Anaconda still had the property. 

It was just absolutely chaos. In February or March they 
dug up out of the files an ancient law; I think it was enacted 
in 1887. For some reason, at that time it said that in vital or 
basic industries in the country, if for any reason the 
government feels they are being mismanaged and go against the 
interest of the country, they can appoint interventores, or 
watchdogs, overseers, for those key positions to make sure that 
the people in those positions aren't destroying the operation of 
the country, the economy, et cetera. They dug that law up.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The next day I was advised that the government was sending 
over six people: one for my job, Grant's job, the three 
managers, and the controller the cash. We had to report to 
them, and they were privy to all information and had to sit in 
at all meetings. They could sit in my office and watch what I 
did all the time; I had to make office space for them. 

I got an interventor by the name of Mr. Arancibia, an 
economist, twenty-eight, and a socialist. Mr. Grant got an 
engineering student from the university, a communist. The 
lawyer got another student, who brought his girlfriend as 
secretary. They locked up at three o'clock in the afternoon and 
made love on the sofa. [laughs] It was just chaos. You can't 
imagine. 

Mr. Simian left his post as president, and he went to 
Ecuador. Mr. Arancibia took his office and took this [points] 
picture down off the wall and put up a 5 x 6-foot picture of Che 
Guevara right behind his desk. 

Then the Congress started a bunch of investigating 
committees, because they were saying that we were sabotaging; we 
were putting the nuts and bolts in the pumps, and it was our 
fault that the production wasn't up. [They said that] it was 
Anaconda's fault that their copper production was going down. 
Well, the guys just didn't want to work and shut the mine down 
for barbecues and so forth. It was absolute chaos. There were 
incidents in the street- -rock throwing and the like. It was 
horrible.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: Were there threats against your life? 

Haldeman: Not against my life. This fellow Arancibia--we were having a 
meeting out in Rancagua--he said, "Take me along with you." 

I said, "Fine. Come along." Going out to the meeting, I 
said to him, "You know, you fellows are destroying the 
organization. The Chileans, your own people, are leaving the 
key posts (I didn't have any foreigners in key posts). Your 
labor force is not making any effort to keep the production up. 
What are you after? This is going to destroy the economy." 

He said, "No, you have to understand. Our system that 
we're putting in is an entirely different system. It's not a 
capitalistic system. The most effective way is that you have to 
destroy everything that's in there and start to rebuild the way 
we want. We understand what we're doing. We understand the 
loss we're causing the country, but that's just the price of 
going over to our type of government . " 

That's fine; it's up to you.

Swent: That's the classical Marxist theory, isn't it?


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Personal Harassment 



Haldeman: Yes. I was now renting a home in Santiago. I had decided I 
would send my furniture out in my boys' names; if it was in my 
name, I'd probably have trouble at customs getting it through. 
So I sent all the furniture that I wanted to keep through 
German diplomatic pouch to Frankfurt, Germany. After wards it 
was transshipped to New York and put in Bekins 1 warehouse. I 
had three or four hundred paintings, and I sent them out to the 
airport to be shipped. 

Swent: These were paintings you had painted yourself, as your hobby? 

Haldeman: Yes, my own. The fellow at the airport said, "You can't export 
these; these are national treasures." [laughter] "The only way 
you can export them is if you get a stamp of the National 
Museum, from the curator, saying that these are such-and-such 
and can be exported." 

This young lady, Blanqui, who is now my wife, was a 
secretary of the legal department at Braden. I had a secretary, 
Amala Grassau (she has since passed away), and had the two girls 
take care of all of these things. Blanqui was a friend of the 
curator. She went over and had him stamp all of these paintings 
and register them: "Landscape II, Still Life 14 and 17." She 
was going to ship them to New York, and they got out to the 
airport. They were going to go on air cargo. This guy opened 
up the box, and the bill of lading said "Haldeman." He said, 
"Half of these won't get out," and just threw them in a 
wastebasket. 

Swent: Paintings you had painted yourself? How awful! 
Haldeman: Yes. Even my name was on it!


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Then I found that my telephones were tapped. We had 
telexes at that time, and those were intervened, tapped. My 
desk was being rifled every night. So I got a hand cradle. It 
has one crystal cut in half. The other half went up to 
Michaelson in New York. You put the telephone in this cradle, 
and the crystal will scramble it on the crystal's frequency. 
The current that goes through every crystal is different. He 
had the other half of the crystal, so we could talk in it; but 
if you were listening in, you couldn't make it out. You can't 
decipher it, because there are billions and billions of wave 
patterns, and each crystal is entirely different. 

And how do you scramble a telex? If you sent a telex, you 
type it out on these little strips of paper with holes punched 
in it. Then you feed it into the machine, and it goes dit, dit, 
dit. You get an attachment, and you make a dummy tape and just 
go over the keyboard any way you want. You make a copy of that 
and send a copy of the dummy up to the States. You keep the 
dummy down here and call that roll II. If I sent a message, I 
put on it, "Message to Mr. Michaelson, roll II." They put the 
two together, and both tapes go over; they're scrambled. When 
it gets up there and his secretary puts roll il on, it will 
print the other tape; it decodes it.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Showdown with the Government Copper Corporation 



Haldeman: Now it was June, and I was called to the Copper Corporation by 

the minister of mines and the head of the Copper Corporation. I 
was to be over at the Copper Corporation office at 10 o'clock in 
the morning. I met them, and they took me into the board room. 
In the board room there are eight or ten young guys with boinas 
[berets] on--Che Guevara style--all sitting around. I didn't 
know who they were; they were political hacks. They were all 
smiling and talking among themselves. I went with my lawyer, 
Mr. Valdivieso, and one of the three gringos, a Britisher who 
was head of the accounting department- -the controller--Mr. 
Aggleton. Mr. Grant was out in Coya now, still there trying to 
hold things together as best he could. 

We sat down, and the minister said, "Mr. Haldeman, I'm 
sorry I had to call you in, and I'm also sorry that I have to 
tell you that there have been these acts of sabotage, Chileans 
have been leaving the company and you have been paying them 
severance pay in dollars," which legally I was entitled to. 
They had a whole list of things. He said, "Those are very 
serious matters." 

He looked at me, and I said, "Yes, they are, sir." 

"Well, I have to tell you that we are going to file suit 
against you for infraction of the civil and penal codes for all 
of these violations." 

Swent: A personal suit? 

Haldeman: They were all smiling. My lawyer started to speak, and I kicked 
him in the shins. I told him quietly, "Shut up. Don't say 
anything." I looked at the minister, and he was smiling. I 
said, "Yes, Mr. Minister, that's very serious. I just don't 
know what to say." He didn't say anything. Nothing happened. 
It was a showdown, and I didn't defend myself. 

The head of the Copper Corporation repeated some of the 
charges, and I said, "Yes, I understand that they are very 
serious." 

He said, "Yes, it's very serious."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

You've heard of Pavlov's dog and conditioned reflex? In 
any meeting where you are the one invited, if you stand up to 
leave, everyone stands up. I said, "Is that all, Mr. Minister?" 

He said, "Yes." 

I said, "Mr. Vice President, is that all?" 

"Yes." 

I stood up, and everybody stood up. I said, "With your 
permission, I'll be leaving." They all collapsed. 

I walked by the minister, and he said, "Bob, just a 
minute," and grabbed my hand. "I'd like to talk to you." 

I said, "Wait a minute [for my lawyer]," and he said, "No, 
just you alone." 

Two of them took me in and sat down. "Do you want coffee?" 

I said, "No, thanks." 

"These are very serious charges." 

I said, "Yes, very serious." I agreed with everything, and 
he was becoming more frustrated. I said, "I'll just have to go 
back and see what I can do about this. Can I ask you a favor?" 

"Anything you want . " 

"This is so serious that I would like it if you would give 
me forty-eight hours to leave the country." 

He said, "No, that's not the idea. That's not the purpose 
of all this." [laughs] They wanted to put me in a kangaroo 
court. 

I had a group of Chileans who still stuck with me. They 
were loyal, and they wouldn't take any orders from these 
overseers, managed the company the way we wanted to and it was 
frustrating them. The Anaconda people just melted away and 
practically turned it over to the overseers before the 
legislation came through. 

I said, "Well, I'll be in touch with you." From the Copper 
Corporation you walk a block down, and there is the U.S. embassy 
in the same block as the office building. I walked in there to 
see Ambassador Kerry. I said, "Mr. Haldeman to see Mr. 
Ambassador." 

He said, "Come right in. Bob, how are you?" 

I said, "I'm horrible. I've just come from the--," and he 
said, "Don't say a word."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*"James Bond Stuff" *



Haldeman: He went to his desk and got out a little pocket radio. He said, 

"Let's go over to the coffee table." We sat down, and he put 
the radio on the coffee table and turned it up as high as he 
could. He said, "I am not too sure if I am bugged in this 
place." 

I gave him the story. I told him that they wanted to put 
me in the clink and damn me in a kangaroo court. 

He said, "Bob, the only thing I can do for you is send you 
cigarettes to the jail. You better call your head office and 
arrange some way to go to the States." 

We finished our meeting, and I left and went to the office. 
I got on my scramble machine and explained to Mr. Michaelson 
what happened. I said, "Mike, you have to send me a telex." At 
this time we were out of cash in the company. They had frozen 
the exchange rate, and the government representatives were 
telling us that we, because we had the management contract, had 
to put up the deficit money to meet the payrolls. I said, "We 
just don't have any. We usually get a loan from your local 
banks. " 

They said, "No, no, no; they won't give you credit." We 
were in this hassle. 

I said to Mike, "Make the tenor of the telex that you want 
me up for this important meeting of Kennecott board to decide 
how we're going to finance meeting the payrolls and so on." I 
knew it would be intercepted. Let's say this was a Wednesday, 
so I said, "You want me to leave tomorrow, Thursday, to be at 
the board meeting at noon Friday at Kennecott," and so forth. I 
got off the scramble, and in came the telex. 

I went home that evening and talked to my wife. I said, 
"You better start looking around the house for what you want, 
because we're going to make a trip tomorrow night to the States, 
and I'm going to limit you to one grasshopper suitcase." Fine. 
We had arranged a coding on the thing, something about going out 
to dinner at nine o'clock, because I knew my phone would be 
intercepted. 

I also had my drawers opened, and I couldn't avoid these 
guys and have special meetings with Mr. Grant without them 
present. So I would leave a note in the drawer, "Call B. and be 
in Coya tomorrow at 11 o'clock; meeting with Grant." I would 
close my drawer and put two thin strips of Scotch tape on it. 
In the morning I would come in, and they had already opened the 
drawer, and Mr. Arancibia would be on the way to Coya for the 
meeting; and Mr. Grant would cross him on the road to Santiago, 
[laughs] That was the only way I could get a meeting alone with 
him. It was James Bond stuff. They changed the locks on the 
office building, and I got locked out. They didn't give me a 
key.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: Was Grant being threatened, too? 

Haldeman: No, but he was worried. But the Chileans are not violent in 
this sense. It's all right to hassle you to the maximum degree, 
but physical injury-they 're not that kind of people. They're a 
cut above. In Peru it might be a little bit different. 



*Leaving the Country *



Haldeman: I went to the office the next day, everything normal. Last 
night I had called a lady in a travel agency here who I had 
known for years. She usually arranged my tickets through the 
office in Rancagua--the company. I had all these clerks who did 
this for me and got my permit to leave the country, the 
salvoconducto. Of course everybody in the company would know I 
would be leaving that night. So I asked the travel agent 
directly, "I want you to get my tickets, and don't let the 
company know. Here is my credit card; charge it to that, and 
I'll bill the company after wards. You get me my salvoconducto 
[police safe conduct permit], and don't let anybody know." I 
explained to her, "I'm in trouble." She got it all ready. 

Usually three or four times a week I would invite two 
lawyers and another fellow in the office to a men's lunch bar, 
shoot liar's dice, have a good lunch, a lot of good wine, and 
then come back to the office. That day, my last day in the 
office, I went through all my normal routine. I called up the 
boys and said, "Let's go and have lunch," and we walked out of 
the office. I took a little folding leather briefcase that you 
carry under your arm--it wasn't one with a handle with the few 
papers I wanted to keep. I left everything in the office just 
exactly as it was, and we went over and shot the dice. I 
couldn't play very well, and the lawyers knew exactly what I was 
doing. Mr. Grant knew; I had advised him.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I went from there back to the office and called my wife to 
tell her about the "dinner engagement" we had. That morning I 
had told the two secretaries, my secretary and Blanca, and asked 
the lawyer, "I want permission to have the two girls go out to 
the house and make an inventory. My wife said she wanted to 
give things to charities down here." I had a basement full of 
liquor; I did a lot of entertaining. I had told these girls in 
the morning to take their notebooks and go over to the house- - 
not tell anybody where they were going; just say they were out 
on sick leave. They went over, and all morning they were with 
Doris. In the afternoon I got there, and they were pretty well 
finished with their job. I had all these records and tapes, and 
I said to Blanca and Amala, "You girls can have all the whiskey 
and food that you want." They said they didn't drink that much, 
and I told them to give it to their friends. 

They left about six o'clock. I had a chauffeur, who had 
worked for the company from time to time, come and pick me up 
under sworn secrecy. I got to the airport, got through security 
police with no problem. My two lawyers were out there, waiting 
for me. They were watching as I went through International 
Police. I walked out to the plane, walked up the little steps, 
and got in the plane. It was wintertime, clear, a moon, 
snow-capped mountains (that was the last time I saw them for 
about three years). I sat down in first class, and the girl 
asked, "Can I offer you something?" 

I said, "You better bring a double whiskey, and when you go 
back, bring another one." 

I had a nice whiskey and sat back. One motor started, and 
then another motor started up. They pulled the steps away and 
closed the door. They were just about to rev up and move the 
plane, and all of a sudden, as I looked out the window toward 
the terminal, I saw two guys in white shirts, black hats, and 
black pants. They were Braniff employees with some documents in 
their hands. The pilot slowed the motors down, and I thought, 
"Oh, mother of Christ. Now what happened?" 

I called the stewardess and said, "Give me another 
whiskey." I thought it might be the last one I would have for a 
while. They put the ramp up again, opened the door, the guys 
came in and looked up and down the aisle, and they went and 
talked to the pilot. Apparently they had forgotten to transfer 
the proper papers into the plane. They went out, closed the 
door, the motors revved up again, and the plane took off. 

Well, that ended twenty-nine years in Chile.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Swent: How had you let Grant know that you were leaving? 

Haldeman: Over the scrambler, and we had talked about it before. This was 
about a week or ten days before the bill had to be voted in the 
Congress for expropriation in July. Grant knew exactly how to 
handle it with the lawyers. But we figured it was better not to 
have me in a kangaroo court. Grant, working out in the plant, 
wasn't known. He wasn't a political target; he didn't mean 
anything in the whole political picture. I was the fellow they 
were after. That's the trouble with being famous, I suppose. 

Anyway, I got to New York and called up Mr. Michaelson. He 
said, "Where in the **** are you?" 

I said, "What do you mean? Christ, I'm in New York in the 
Hotel Barclay." 

He said, "Well, an awful lot of people are looking for 
you. " 

I said, "What do you mean?" 

He said, "The Chilean foreign department called up 
Washington State Department and demanded to find out how in the 
**** you left the country, who gave you permission to leave the 
country, and where are your papers." 

Braniff's manager, Carlos Brunson, sent a telex and said, 
"Bob, I need all your documents and everything. The government 
is after me." I sent a telex that said, "Carlos, tell them to 
go to ****. Best regards, Bob." [laughs] 

I snuck out under the wire. Just made it. My wife 
unpacked the suitcase, and she said, "Good heavens. You know 
what happened? I forgot to bring underwear." [laughter]


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

So we just left everything as it was. 
Swent: You did get some of your furniture out? 

Haldeman: That was out ahead of time, the nice pieces that we wanted to 
save. I left all my clothes. 

Swent: It doesn't matter at that point, does it? 

Haldeman: Nope. 

Swent: Did they ever go after Grant? 

Haldeman: Yes. The bill went into Congress in what they call the sesion 
plenaria, a joint session of the Senate and the House of 
Representatives. Everybody of all political parties showed up; 
there wasn't a single absentee. Every vote was for 
nationalization, from the Right to the Left. There wasn't one 
person who abstained or who walked out. There are your 
political parties for you. Some of those people who voted for 
it are alive today. You ask them, "Why didn't you vote against 
it?" 

Swent: "Well, Bob, those were political times, 
think--." What are you going to do? 


Haldeman: The bill went through, and the government took over. I was 
now in New York in an apartment at the Beekman Arms, and there I 
stayed from July '71 until April '72. I participated with some 
of the staff preparing white papers--our legal actions taken 
against the Chilean government for its expropriation without 
compensation or indemnification. We spent a lot of time on it. 
I don't have a copy of the set of books, but they were very well 
documented from history and told the whys and wherefores. We 
wanted just compensation for the expropriation.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

*A Disappointing Farewell to Kennecott *


Haldeman: As the months rolled by, Kennecott had nothing for me. From 
time to time I said, "Mike, what's with me? What are we going 
to do here?" 

He said, "Take it easy. Relax. You work on these papers. 
We'll find something." It really worked out that by March of 
1972, I realized that there was nothing for the bright boy from 
Chile. I was being frozen out. In fact, they put me in an 
office, well furnished by office standards, of somebody who had 
left. I figured out who it was. Over the following months they 
took out everything except one desk, two chairs, and a coat 
rack. Then they took the direct dialing off the long-distance 
telephone. 

So I said to my wife, "This is not for us. I don't want 
any part of it. What do you want to do? You've been following 
me all of these years; I'll follow you." 

She said, "I'd like to live in a warm clime. I like 
Florida." We had some friends who were in the U.S. embassy who 
retired from the State Department and took up living in 
Sarasota, Florida, on a small island, out in the bay, called 
Bird Key. 

Haldeman: So I said that was fine. I talked to Mr. Michaelson and said, 
"Mike, I have a personal problem, and you people don't have 
anything for me . " 

He said, "Be patient." 

I said, "I don't think that's the issue. Let's not get 
into that. I've got my wife here, and I'm going to do what she 
would like to do for the time that she has left. I think it's 
only fair to her." 

He said, "You can do what you want to, Buster "--that ' s the 
way he always talked--"it 's up to you." He was nice with me. 

I said, "According to the Chilean law and my work contract 
in Chile, had I stayed on the payroll, under law I would have 
had certain severance pay proportionate to the number of years." 
Because I didn't qualify for the Kennecott retirement program. 
I wasn't a Kennecott employee; I was a Braden employee. 
Furthermore, at that time, in "72, I was fifty-four. From 
fifty-five to sixty you had to be dying to get early retirement 
for health purposes with reduced benefits. From sixty to 
sixty-five it was if they wanted to give it to you; and at 
sixty-five whether you liked it or not, you were out. I didn't 
qualify for any of those things.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Mike said, "We'll see if we can't get you under the plan." 
At this stage, I really didn't want to argue too much; I Just 
wanted to leave the company. I was very disappointed that after 
thirty years I got this kind of treatment. 

So came April 1, my last day. No gold watch with 
engraving, no farewell dinner. Michaelson said goodbye to me, 
and Milliken didn't. I knew he caught the commuter out to 
Darien, Connecticut, at four o'clock, so I called his secretary, 
Melba, about three-thirty, and asked, "Is your boss going to 
leave?" 

She said, "He'll probably take the three-fifty-five." 
I said, "At three-forty I want to talk to him." 
"What about?" 
I said, "I just want to talk to him, Melba." 

She called me back and said, "He'll receive you at three- 
forty." 

I walked in at three- forty and said, "Frank?" 
"Yes." 

"I want to thank you for everything you've done for me 
after these years. As you know, I'm leaving today." 

"Yes, yes. Well, wish you luck." 

I just wanted to make sure I was more of a gentleman than 
he. That's what I got from Mr. Milliken for twenty-nine years 
of service. 

Swent: Did he shake your hand? 

Haldeman: Nope. He was at his desk; he was busy. 

I told my wife years ago when I got into management, "One 
thing about companies: they're cold, and you always must assume 
that you are expendable at any time." Another thing, too: you 
can't make any friends with any of the people who work under 
you, because you have to be ready to fire anybody at any time. 
The same way with the people above me. 

And we started to prepare our own little retirement 
program, which today I am living on--not on Kennecott. That was 
the end of my days in Chile and with Kennecott. 

Swent: Then you went to Florida. 
Haldeman: So we went to Florida. 





O


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 01 Feb 2010 01:45 AM 
Swent: Did he shake your hand? 

Haldeman: Nope. He was at his desk; he was busy. 

I told my wife years ago when I got into management, "One 
thing about companies: they're cold, and you always must assume 
that you are expendable at any time." Exactly! I had 8 years of experience with the company. I was as dedicated as anyone there. But when business fell off due to the poor economy, I was just a number. An expense they could easily cut.

They could have offered me a lower position. They could have said they were going to cut my salary. They did neither. They kept workers with less than a year seniority and cut workers that were number 4 and number 5 on the seniority list.

Companies want and expect their employees to be dedicated and give their all to the company, but when they need to layoff people, you're nothing more to them than a number. 


Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Receiving the Orden al Merito, Bernardo O'Higgins, Comendador[/b]

Swent: We got the story of the first medal but not the second one.Haldeman: The first medal was in 1957, Orden al Merito, Bernardo
O'Higgins, the rank of Oficial--official. There are four ranks:Oficial, Caballero, Comendador, and Gran Cruz. Comendador isthe highest recognition they give to a foreign citizen.Diplomats are given the Gran Cruz. I got the Oficial in 1957when I was the vice president of Braden. The government thoughtI should have some recognition.Now we come to 1993, the first days of September. I wastaking a shower in the morning. My wife called in and said,"Telephone call for you."I said, "Take the number; I'll call back."She said, "I'm not taking any numbers from this. This isthe minister of mines, and he wants to talk to you."Oops! I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me. Thesecretary said, "Mr. Haldeman?""Yes.""The minister would like to talk to you." This was Mr.Alejandro Hales, the same man who was minister in the last yearsof Frei's government in "68 to '71, whom I had had conversationswith and finally reached an agreement on the overprice ofwindfall profits of the business, which brought the wrath ofAnaconda on us. Now he was back again as the minister.He came on the telephone, and he said, "Robert, goodmorning. How are you?" He's a wonderful politician."Very fine, Mr. Minister."


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

He said, "I'm just calling you on the possibility that you
might be coming into town today."
I said, "Mr. Minister, I am coming into town today."
"Tell me, would you happen to be in town, say around noon?"
I said, "Mr. Minister, it just so happens I'm coming into
town today and will be in town at noon."
He said, "Will it be too much trouble for you to come by my
office?"
I said, "Mr. Minister, I will be in your office downtown
today at noon."
"Fine, I will wait to see you."
What has happened now? Have I done something wrong?
Peck's bad boy again? I can't understand why the minister was
calling me. I got down to the secretary's room a little before
twelve, and at twelve o'clock the buzzer rang. She goes in and
comes out, "The minister will receive you."
I walked in, and Mr. Hales said, "How are you, Robert?
Nice to see you again. Come over here and have a seat. Can I
offer you some coffee?" He's -a Lebanese, and he likes Turkish
coffee. It's a custom of these people to have it, and it's
really very good coffee.
I said to him, "Mr. Minister, I'd rather not, if you don't
mind .
"
He looked at me with wide-open eyes, and he said, "What's
wrong?"
I said, "Minister, twenty-three years ago when I came into
your office the last time, you offered me a cup of coffee, and I
took it. When I left the office, you had taken away from me
part of my price of copper."
He looked at me and said, "I forgot all about that. You're
perfectly right. Well, you drink this coffee, because it's not
going to cost you a thing." In talking, he finally got around
to saying that the government was very proud to tell me that
they were going to decorate me with this honor of Bernardo
O'Higgins and so on and so on. He sat back and smiled; it was a
very nice thing for him to do to me.


----------



## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I thanked him profusely, said I was eternally grateful, and
this and that. "But I have a problem."
"What's your problem?"
I said, "I've already received the medal."
Oh, his face fell open. He clapped his hands, and he said
to get him what they call the secretarial administrative officer
of the ministry; they call him the Jefe de gabinete. "Get him
in here right away."
The young man came in, and he shouted, "Get the Foreign
Office on the phone. What the devil is wrong here? This fellow
has already received the award. Don't they know what they're
doing over there?"
The young man ran over and grabbed the telephone, dialed,
and said, "I've got Mr. Prieto on the line."
He said, "I don't know any Mr. Prieto there. That's not
the answer."
He was getting furious, so I said, "Mr. Minister, just a
minute. Let me solve your problem. I would be just delighted
if you could give me the same decoration but with the rank of
Comendador. "
He stopped, looked at the administrative jefe de gabinete,
and said, "Tell him it's a Comendador."
The fellow talks on the phone, and he says, "Mr. Minister,
Comendador. " [laughter] So that's how I was decorated. It
took him completely by surprise that I had already received it.
I think I am probably one of the very few, if there are any, who
have received the same medal twice in their lifetime.
Swent: Surely the only American.
Haldeman: That's exactly right.
Swent: Are you the only foreigner who has gotten the Comendador?
Haldeman: No, there have been several othersSwiss and Germans who have
been down south for years and have done a lot for German and
Chilean relations and the likes.
Swent : It's a wonderful honor and a beautiful medal.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This was the introduction to the interview taken in 1993, of which the full title is:

Robert M. Haldeman, "Managing Copper Mines
in Chile: Braden, CODELCO, Minerec,
Pudahuel; Developing Controlled Bacterial
Leaching of Copper from Sulfide Ores;
1941-1993," an oral history conducted in
1993 by Eleanor Swent, Regional Oral
History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1995. 

INTRODUCTION- -by Pedro Campino
Mr. Robert M. Haldeman's accomplishments and realizations during a
lifetime of dedication to the mining industry are responsible in many
ways for the enormous and unprecedented prosperity of the Chilean copper
mining industry over the last few decades.
In 1962 after graduating from the University of Utah as mining
engineer, I first came in contact with Mr. Haldeman in the underground
workings of the El Teniente mine. At that time I was a young trainee
engineer in the early days of my professional development and the day I
met him, it was in a ventilation level, over a grizzly at the foot of an
ore pass. He was the president of the company and he was accompanied by
a group of Braden Copper Company executives. He was an impressive
individual as he is today, tall, with piercing green eyes, wearing a
miner's hard hat slightly tilted to one side, rubber boots, a black
plastic raincoat, and a carbide lamp over his left shoulder. He was
indeed a very impressive individual firstly because of his position, also
because of his appearance, and thirdly because of my very junior
position. He came up to me, he shook hands, and he told me: "Pedro, I
understand that you are doing very well but remember that you could do
better."
Thirty-two years later as I look back through his accomplishments in
life and also at my own professional development it becomes vividly
apparent that his "live motive" in life was powerfully driven by exactly
that very same thought. That is, that as individuals or corporations we
might be doing things well but there is always room to do things better.
Bearing that in mind, Mr. Haldeman has played a decisive role in the
development of the most fundamental aspects of the Chilean mining
industry which in recent years has also extended beyond our borders into
the international mining industry.
Mr. Haldeman is beyond a shadow of a doubt the father of a
particularly capable and successful generation of mining executives.
Over the last thirty years, through his lessons and teachings he
developed a generation of distinguished mining people that today are
responsible for the successful management of world-class mining
operations in Chile and abroad.
In my opinion, Mr. Haldeman's most far-reaching lesson throughout
life was that related to moral and ethical principles. He taught me from
early in life that there are principles that simply are not negotiable no
matter what the circumstances are. Among these are the principles
related to justice, equity, responsibility, tolerance, and mutual respect
among individuals. These principles were so deeply seeded in the minds
of his disciples that today they have become a way of life in the
prosperous mining operations managed by those who had the privilege to
belong to his school of thought. Indeed Mr. Haldeman has been a master
teacher throughout life and his lessons and teachings will continue to be
harvested for years to come.
Likewise in the technical aspects of the copper producing process,
Mr. Haldeman became disenchanted with the conventional process of copper
production: that is, mining, concentrating, smelting and refining, which
up to the recent past was the conventional and most common way to produce
metallic copper. The conventional process was capital intensive, high in
operating costs, and environmentally unacceptable. For example, copper
concentration is responsible for the generation of tailings which are
difficult to handle and environmentally undesirable. In addition,
smelting pollutes the air by emissions of sulphur dioxide and dangerous
contaminants such as arsenic. Very early in his career Mr. Haldeman
concluded that there should be a more economical, efficient, and clean
way to produce copper. After painful and persevering research he
developed the thin layer bacterial leach process which produces copper
cathodes of great purity (99.997% Cu) by means of leaching, solvent
extraction, and electrowinning. This new process avoids concentrating
and smelting thus eliminating tailings and air contamination. Because
the thin layer leach process is not capital intensive, is simple to
operate, is low in operating costs and is environmentally most
attractive, the world copper industry is currently adopting this process
as a most desirable alternative towards low-cost production.
Mr. Haldeman's key to success and to a lifetime of long lasting
accomplishments are in my opinion his privileged intelligence, his
stubborn determination to rebel against the past in an effort to find
better ways to do things, his firmness, and his nearly unbelievable
capability to analyze situations. Undoubtedly those are remarkable
qualities of his character. During his first marriage, his wife Doris
was again an inspiration and counsel that we all learned to admire and
appreciate. She was indeed a queenly lady who by her presence and
personality drove us all to follow in her teachings and distinction.
After her death Mr. Haldeman married Blanquita, again an inspiring and
lovely lady of great talent and remarkable dedication. Her firm
character, love, and devotion were instrumental in many ways to guide and
to help Mr. Haldeman through a particularly difficult period in his life
resulting from the nationalization of the copper industry in Chile
followed by Doris' death. It was through her guidance and foresight that
they adopted lovely little Alicia who has illuminated their lives and has
once again brought happiness and joy to Mr. Haldeman's new life.
In summary, Mr. Haldeman has been through life a born leader. He
has been admired by followers and detractors . Through his guidance and
teachings he is undoubtedly the father of a highly successful generation
of mining executives. He is responsible as well for the development of
new processes that have allowed the world mining industry to succeed in
this highly competitive market, allowing operations to survive in
conditions where otherwise they would have failed. His contribution to
the industry, to the environment, and to Chile as a mining community have
simply been monumental.
From a personal standpoint, his teaching and his guidance through
life, always under the theme of "doing well but could do better," have
developed me from a young trainee engineer in the underground working of
the El Teniente mine to the highest positions that a person can hold in
the mining industry. I owe to my wife and to Mr. Haldeman all of my
appreciation and gratitude for their guidance, support, and understanding
during every step of the way throughout a highly successful career in the
mining industry.

Pedro Campino
President, Compania Minera Cerro
Colorado Ltda.
October 1994
Santiago, Chile


  Robert M. Haldeman, 1967, with his Chilean mining board formed to control the El Teniente Mine following the deal with Kennecott which enabled the Chilean government to purchase majority control, is third from left on bottom.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This just popped up on my Accuweather page, so that time must be drawing near. It makes no difference here. Spring can be defined in different ways here in the interior.  Some people see it as when the ice goes out on the Tanana (or the Copper, Klutina, you pick your favorite interior AK river . . .).   For me it is more when the ice melts off the model railroad tracks such that I can run the trains again. Last year that day was April 11. I am betting it will be slightly earlier this year. Let's go for April 5 and see what happens . . . 
  

click above for the relevant accuweather site. The above Accuweather link is regularly updated, so you never know what  you will get . . .


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Speaking of Accweather, this is the latest 15-day forecast for the Copper River Valley. It could be a lot worse. We up here will willingly take this. It _could be_ into the _minus 50s_ right now. As you can see, we won't be doing any camping or swimming up here any time soon. 









No outdoor model train running, either.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Temps in the low to mid thirties here...with low to mid level overcast (no snow or rain yet, though) ::crosses fingers::


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

You might have wondered, upon reading the Robert Haldeman interview, why Kennecott was so quick to offer that 49-51 partnership, in favor of the Chilean government. Here is the answer (pt 1):






Kennecott had always drawn on its Chilean mine, El teniente, like a rentier draws income from a fixed property.  Mining capacity in the mid-1960s was only slightly higher than the levels of the mid-1930s.  Gross investment had amounted to only $53 million over the twenty-year period from 1945 to 1965.  Company policy consisted of investing only enough new funds above depreciation each year to maintain operations at the mine.  No serious efforts were made to explore or develop new properties in Chile.  The company controlled huge reserves of low-cost copper in the United States, and although operations at El Teniente in the mid-1960s accounted for about 30 percent of the parent's total production, they produced only thirteen percent of total earnings. Kennecott's top management did not come up through Chilean opeations, and expanding production in Chile was not a prime corporate objective. 
 
Anaconda, however, had actively expanded its Chilean mining properties, its volume of output, and its claims on potential reserves in Chile.  The company's gross investment in the post-World War II period (1945-1965) amounted to $347 million, including a large sulfide plant in 1948, a major new mine in 1955 (El Salvador), and another smaller mine (Exotica) to come on-line after 1965.  By the mid-1960s, Anaconda's annual copper output from Chile averaged over 350 thousand metric tons, accounting for 51 percent of Anaconda's total production and 67 percent of the company's total earnings.  Anaconda's mines in the United States were of lower quality and higher cost than those of Kennecott. Anaconda's top management had come up through the (North American management) ranks in Chile.  Chilean mining had always been and continued to be considered the center of Anaconda's corporate operations.
from the  International Political Economy of Natural Resources I


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 2: 






For the period immediately following the Second World War when foreign expertise was indispensible in running the Chilean copper mines and foreign capital was indispensible in modernizing and expanding operations, Anaconda's aim was to demonstrate to as many domestic politicians as possible that the largest aggregate returns would accrue to the country through favorable treatment of the company's Chilean subsidiaries.  Since Anaconda was willing to expand investment and production in return for lower taxes--while Kennecott was not--Anaconda did the bulk of the maneuvering and bargaining.  
Kennecott then received the benefit of being taxed under the same mining laws as Anaconda.
 Anaconda clearly was willing to bring more and more of its corporate resources to contribute to the growth of the Chilean mining sector.  Kennecott clearly was not.  With mounting demands in the late 1950s for more vigorous performance to generate revenues and foreign exchange to fuel the country's development, Kennecott perceived the increasing vulnerability of its position.  Resentment against the company's lack of dynamic contribution to Chile--especially against Kennecott's failure to respond to the generous incentives of new mining legislation in 1955--was growing.  From the time he became head of Chilean operations for Kennecott in the mid-1950s, Robert Haldeman recalled that he considered it only a question of time until the Chileans nationalized El Teniente.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 3: 


The prospects were complicated for Kennecott in the late 1950s because the El Teniente mine began to experience mounting problems in the attempt even to maintain production at former levels.  The company's management in New York faced the choice of seeing output steadily decline or making a large lump-sum investment to expand into adjacent ore bodies.  Feasibility studies for a project that would increase the life of the mine and raise output from 189 thousand tons to 280 thousand tons per year were very encouraging, but Kennecott was wary of committing funds in a politically sensitive industry where the company already had a "poor public image" and where the domestic ability of the host country to run operations on its own was rapidly increasing. Therefore, Kennecott management decided to go through with the huge expansion project only if a satisfactory network of trans-national alliances could be constructed to protect the company's position.


In the absence of an option to have the United States government intervene militarily to maintain physical possession of the Kennecott mine, what could a "strategy of protection" for the company's position mean in operational terms?  First, a strategy of protection would mean subjecting as little of the corporation's own capital to the risk of nationalization as possible.  Second, it would mean lining up, from as many directions as possible, international supporters who would automatically share the Kennecott parent's outrage in case of nationalization.  Third, it would mean raising the cost to Chile of nationalizing the Kennecott mine as high as possible.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 4: 


Eduardo Frei's demand for "Chileanization" in 1964 gave the Kennecott management the opportunity they were looking for.  To the surprise of Frei's negotiators, Kennecott (but not Anaconda) offered a plan to enlarge El Teniente, sell a 51 percent interest in the huge mine to the Chilean government, and run the operation through a management contract.
 
Under the Kennecott plan, not one dollar of new corporate funds would be brought by the company to Chile, nor one escudo in new obligations contracted for in the parent's name in Santiago.  The bulk of the expansion plan would be financed from the proceeds of the sale to the Chilean government of the 51 percent equity interest ($80 million) and from a loan to the ew joint venture from the Export-Import Bank of Washington ($110 million) would would be paid back over a ten-to-fifteen year period while Kennecott managed production.  The Chilean Copper Corporation also contributed $24 million to the new project. 
 
Consequently, the capital for the El Teniente expansion would be supplied with no new financial risk to the Kennecott parent while, at the same time, the worth of Kennecott's Chilean holdings would be substantially increased.  Kennecott demanded a special reassessment of the book value of the El Teniente property (from $69 million to $286 million), demanded a special reduction in its tax rate (from over 80 percent to 44 percent), and demanded a management contract to run the new operation for at least ten years.  From a balance-sheet perspective, after the revaluation of net worth, Kennecott would still be 49 percent owner of a company worth about for times as much as it had been before.  From a cash-flow perspective, Kennecott would be receiving 49 percent of the proceeds from an operation exporting almost 64 percent more output at a tax rate cut in half. 


(it's beginning to make a lot of sense now, isn't it?  --RS)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 5



To line up supporters who would come to the company's aid in case of expropriation, Kennecott began by insuring the amount of the sale ($80 million plus interest) supplied by Chile but committed to the joint project by Kennecott under a United States AID contract of guarantee against expropriation.  Thus, upon entering into the joint venture with Chile, the Kennecott parent had an immediate US government guarantee to pay, in case of expropriation, an amount larger than the net worth of its total Chilean operations had been prior to the reassessment of book value.  At the same time Kennecott demanded  that the sale amount and the Export-Import Bank loan be unconditionally guaranteed by the Chilean state, and submitted to the law of the state of New York.  These arrangements meant that Kennecott would have a general legal claim against the Chilean state in any court should the Chilean operations be expropriated, and that the Export-Import Bank, the Agency for International Development  (AID) and the Congress would feel the effects of any nationalization simultaneously with Kennecott.  The Export-Import Bank would want  its loan repaid by Chile as soon as the Kennecott management contract was broken; AID would object to paying off a huge insurance claim; and these agencies and Kennecott could join in mobilizing support for the Hickenlooper amendment*** in Congress. Washington would not be able to ignore harm done to Kennecott's Chilean operations.  The company's management spoke contemptuously of other corporations who counted on the Hickenlooper amendent's being applied "automatically." The amin of Kennecott was to make any threat of nationalization result unavoidably in a face-to-face confrontation between the United States  and the Chilean governments.






_*NOTE on Hickenlooper Amendment: _

The Act of State Doctrine says that a nation is sovereign within its own borders, and its domestic actions may not be questioned in the courts of another nation.
The doctrine is not required by international law (neither customary international law nor treaty law), but it is a principle recognized and adhered to by United States federal courts. Its aim is not to protect other nations' sovereignty by intervention from the U.S.[citation needed] but rather to protect the US Executive's prerogatives in foreign affairs from being frustrated by a decision issuing from U.S. courts.
The Act of State Doctrine enters consideration most often in cases where a foreign sovereign has expropriated the property of a U.S. national located in that foreign territory (e.g. through nationalization). Rather than pursuing recourse through the courts,  United States nationals are to take their claims against foreign sovereign governments to the Executive so that the government can either espouse the claims of all U.S. nationals as a group or seek recourse through diplomatic channels. The United States employs the Act of State Doctrine more broadly and with more frequency than other countries.
In 1964, the United States Supreme Court applied the Act of State Doctrine in Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U.S. 398 (1964). The case arose when Cuba nationalized its sugar industry, taking control of sugar refineries and other companies in the wake of the Cuban revolution. A large number of Americans who had invested in those companies lost their investments without compensation when the Cuban government assumed control. However, despite the loss suffered by United States nationals, the Supreme Court upheld the Act of State Doctrine by assuming the validity of Cuba's domestic action and therefore rejected the claim of US nationals against Cuba for their lost investments.
The Court in Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino stated that although the Doctrine is not found in the Constitution, explicitly or implicitly, it does have constitutional underpinnings in the concept of separation of powers. The Supreme Court reasoned that because the Executive had exclusive authority to conduct foreign affairs with other nations on behalf of the United States, disputes arising from the official actions of foreign sovereign powers should not be settled by the Judiciary because those decisions could interfere with the Executives' conduct of foreign affairs.
In response to the outcome of the case, Congress enacted 22 U.S.C. § 2370, more commonly referred to as the "Second Hickenlooper Amendment," named after the bill’s sponsor, Bourke B. Hickenlooper, an outraged Iowa Senator. Generally, under the Hickenlooper Amendment, courts are not to apply the Act of State Doctrine as a bar against hearing cases of expropriation by a foreign sovereign. However, one provision of the Amendment instructs the courts to continue applying the Doctrine wherever the Executive tells them to. Essentially, under this Amendment, the Executive has the authority to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the Judiciary has the power to hear a case.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 6


Finally, to assure itself of an international reaction to any threat of nationalization, Kennecott raised $45 million for the new joint project by writing long-term contracts for the new output with European and Asian customers and then selling collection rights on these contracts to a consortium of European banks headed by the Banca Comerciale Italiana ( $30 million), and to a consortium of Japanese institutions headed by Mitsui & Co. ($15 million).  This operation--similar to "factoring" in business finance or the selling of accounts receivable at a discount to a financial intermediary--was designed to bring international pressure on any nationalistic government not to void the Kennecott management contract and not to repudiate the debt obligations of the El Teniente joint venture.  Since repayment of the $45 million to the foreign banks depended upon faithful fulfillment of the long-term sales contracts to the customers, a crisis of confidence in the future production (brought on by any threat to the Kennecott management contract) would provoke outbursts from financial institutions as well as customers in Europe and Asia.


"The aim of these arrangements," explained Robert Haldeman, executive vice president of Kennecott's Chilean operations, "is to insure that nobody expropriates Kennecott without upsetting relations to customers, creditors, and governments on three continents."


Kennecott was trying to carry out a major expansion   project under conditions of great uncertainty at minimal risk to itself, while mobilizing international pressure in such a way as to raise the cost of nationalization as high as possible.  But how high was high?  If Kennecott's strategy were completely successful, the company would have to be kept on in Chile at least until the ten-year management contract ran out.   At a minimum, if the company were nationalized, Chile would be forced to assume all the international obligations of the joint venture, including the obligation to pay full compensation at least for the guaranteed debt owed Kennecott.  That would be a difficult task for any but the most determined and self-confident Chilean government.   
 
 
_from the  International Political Economy of Natural Resources I_


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_Here's an odd comparison for you: _
_Do these two logos look at all similar?_













CODELCO (Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile or, in English, the National Copper Corporation of Chile) is the Chilean State owned copper mining company formed in 1976 from the foreign owned copper companies that were nationalized in 1971, mainly the Kennecott and Anaconda properties. The headquarters are in Santiago and the seven man board of directors is appointed by the President of the Republic. It has the Minister of Mining as its president and six other members including the Minister of Finance and one representative each from the Copper Workers Federation and the National Association of Copper Supervisors.

It is currently the largest copper producing company in the world and produced 1.66 million tonnes of the metal in 2007, 11% of the world total. It owns the world's largest known copper reserves and resources. At the end of 2007 it had a total of reserves and resources of 118 million tonnes of copper in its mining plan, sufficient to ensure more than 70 years of operations at current production levels. It also has additional identified resources of 208 million tonnes of copper, though one cannot say how much of this may prove economic.



On the other hand, for comparison the _proposed_ Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska contains an estimated 40 million tons of copper, 100 million ounces of gold and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum. Now that's not bad--a very favorable comparison, especially for what is effectively ONE mine as opposed to several in Chile.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_Phase III rolling stock?_

Even though it is highly unlikely that I will have any Phase III track laid down this year, I did _just_ acquire these items which fit in with the scheme:

The NG White Pass & Yukon combine and drover caboose (_almost_ like a matched set) are rare LGB items. In fact, I did not know these even existed until I found them on Ebay. I already have some old Bachmann WP coaches that I have been storing for years which I may also use as a part of my WP set-up, but I _really_ wanted these. Trust me, they did _not_ come cheaply. They came by way of Ebay auction through that California Gold Coast store. I am fairly certain the drover caboose is a special run item for that store. The combine probably was as well. There were two other coaches in the auction, but I did not feel I could afford to bid for ALL of them ! As it was, these two approached my uncomfortably high bid. Oh well. They are now part of the system. 

My "scheme" is the Phase III Klondike Mines Railway out of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, but extended as originally envisioned to connect with the White Pass & Yukon Railway line out of Skagway. The WP supplied all the rolling stock that eventually became a part of the KMR, so these pieces will fit into my scheme nicely. Even if Phase III never materializes, they will work just as well on the original CRNW Railway line. 








I had already acquired one of these LGB-Aster brass locomotive models late last year at what I considered a very good price. It went directly to the North West Remote Control Systems shop. First I had Dave replace the motor with a faster-running one. Then he began conversion of the loco to remote control battery with Phoenix sound. The one pictured is not the one I purchased, but it is the same model. I wanted one of these since they were first available, but at the original sell price of approximately $3500.00 I could not justify the expenditure. I acquired one for nearly half the price. It should be out of the shop and up here at Copper Center in time for the start of the tourist season. The two LGB pieces above will go nicely with it. I have not yet decided what else will be included in the consist. Initially, I will run this new train consist on the original CRNW Phase I line.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 01 Feb 2010 06:51 PM 
Temps in the low to mid thirties here...with low to mid level overcast (no snow or rain yet, though) ::crosses fingers:: 
Fortunately for us here in the valley, the minus 20s have at least for the moment moved off. As of 10 PM it is still _above zero_ out here: not bad. No snow and only the remotest possibility of rain (it would take one of those rare Chinooks for that to happen).


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

Bit on the news tonight: State gov is still pushing for the natural gas pipeline to the states, but warns: 

Costs could be 20 - 40 billion, depending on the route (probably not including a rail link, either); and 

this natural gas pipeline won't be anywhere near the money maker the trans-alaska (oil) pipeline was/is. 

Also, pipeline is unlikely to be operational before 2020 (I used to hear 2014-2017, on this, but I might be misremembering).


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By ThinkerT on 02 Feb 2010 01:10 AM 
Bit on the news tonight: State gov is still pushing for the natural gas pipeline to the states, but warns: 

Costs could be 20 - 40 billion, depending on the route (probably not including a rail link, either); and 

this natural gas pipeline won't be anywhere near the money maker the trans-alaska (oil) pipeline was/is. 

Also, pipeline is unlikely to be operational before 2020 (I used to hear 2014-2017, on this, but I might be misremembering). 
I do not expect the TransCanada line to ever be built. I am also more than a little disappointed that the proposed Beluga to Fairbanks project seems to have no wheels, either. Guess what that leaves us--the Pebble Project. Expect gas shortages in your part of the Alaska in the near-future.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 01 Feb 2010 11:23 PM 
_Phase III rolling stock?_











Has anyone else ever seen or heard of these LGB models ? I simply do not recall these until I came across these particular ones.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 01 Feb 2010 05:46 PM . . 
  





Phil Says Six More Weeks! Phil's official forecast as read February 2nd, 2009 at sunrise at Gobbler's Knob: _ Hear Ye Hear Ye Hear Ye On Gobbler's Knob on this glorious Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2010, Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators awoke to the call of President Bill Deeley and greeted his handlers, John Griffiths and Ben Hughes. After casting a joyful eye towards thousands of his faithful followers, Phil proclaimed, "If you want to know next, you must read my text. As the sky shines bright above me, my shadow I see beside me._ So six more weeks of winter it will be.

No surprise there. This has been quite a winter for many of you state-siders. And it does _not_ appear to be over, either ! Of course, this has no effect whatsoever on winter here in southcentral AK. OK. So much for the fun. Back to reality. Oh. Right. This forum is about "toy" trains ! Not much reality here.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

I've really enjoyed the articles on the Chillian mines. 

Your White Pass #73 is a great looking steam engine. It'll look really nice pulling those coaches. 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 02 Feb 2010 10:55 AM 
Your White Pass #73 is a great looking steam engine. It'll look really nice pulling those coaches. 
Randy 
I have never seen any other references to those WP LGB coaches. Have you? There have been articles written about weaknesses in the motor of the WP LGB-Aster , another rare (brass) model, but I have had that one changed out. It turned out to be a little too slow-running, according to my tester. I have yet to see it as it is still in the shop in Kirkland, WA.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 02 Feb 2010 10:38 AM 
  




Phil Says Six More Weeks! 

No surprise there. This has been quite a winter for many of you state-siders. And it does _not_ appear to be over, either ! Of course, this has no effect whatsoever on winter here in southcentral AK. 


Typical February weather: ICE FOG and minus 6 this morning. We remain colder than the official readings for the area because the rivers are frozen over and the cold air has settled to the low areas, including this one (along the Klutina River bank). No running trains today, either !


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

I don't recall ever seeing the coaches listed on Ebay, but then again I haven't been looking out for them. 

Being brass, the loco must be pretty heavy. 

Being a fan of American Flyer trains, I really like the white wall wheels on the 73. 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 02 Feb 2010 11:19 AM 
Ron 

I don't recall ever seeing the coaches listed on Ebay, but then again I haven't been looking out for them. 
Being brass, the loco must be pretty heavy. 
Being a fan of American Flyer trains, I really like the white wall wheels on the 73. 
Randy Posted By blackburn49 on 01 Feb 2010 11:23 PM 
_Phase III rolling stock?_



















The idea is to have _familiar_ rolling stock on hand BUT _not too common_. For instance, instead of using UP rolling stock, I would have _Milwaukee Road_. Or, in this case, where I _could_ use Bachmann coaches, instead you will see LGB (although perhaps with some of the more common Bachmann coaches to enchance the line somewhat). Another wards, I don't want people coming all the way out here to this remote corner of the continent only to see the _same old stuff_ everyone else has or that one would likely encounter most everywhere else. This equipment _has to stand out_ (just like my structures). So there is a touch of the unusual or the uncommon throughout the layout, but not _too_ exotic, either ! I_ definitely_ don't want my model railroad to look like something out of Garden Railways Magazine.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 02 Feb 2010 10:55 AM 
I've really enjoyed the articles on the Chilian mines. 
Randy 
I will be wrapping up _that_ part of this thread shortly. THEN we will return to La*Touche to wrap that one up as well. Meanwhile I will continue the later winter CRD updates (mostly images).


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

I like the White Pass theme for sure. 

Here some more LGB WP&Y coaches on ebay 

http://cgi.ebay.com/LGB-36845-WHITE...wItemQQptZModel_RR_Trains?hash=item45f0ae4ecd 

http://cgi.ebay.com/LGB-33050-US-ST...wItemQQptZModel_RR_Trains?hash=item45f0ae5030


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 02 Feb 2010 07:41 PM 
I like the White Pass theme for sure. 

Here some more LGB WP&Y coaches on ebay 
 item 1 
item 2 It never hurts to look and compare, so I do appreciate the effort. I probably already have some of the WP cars parked up on the CRNW Railway track. Will check on that tomorrow. No hurry on the rest of the WP items as anything else I might need appears to be readily available or already on hand.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

The 1:20.3 Bachmann 45-ton switcher arrived today. It is larger than I had imagined. Great-looking locomotive, but I may not use it as originally intended. 
These are out-of-production and somewhat hard-to-find, so here is one to see up close. 

 Above: I opened one door for this picture


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

While I was in there I took a couple more shots of some of the items in storage awaiting placement in the Cicely town model. Here is the red truck--a twin of the white one. 
The red one will probably be converted to a Budweiser truck (if I don't find a suitable one in this configuration). 

 Here are the two Internationals side-by-side: Very well detailed construction pieces. They probably will form the nucleus for a large project such as a pipeline construction camp.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 01 Feb 2010 07:59 PM 



Pt 6
"The aim of these arrangements," explained Robert Haldeman, executive vice president of Kennecott's Chilean operations, "is to insure that nobody expropriates Kennecott without upsetting relations to customers, creditors, and governments on three continents."
Kennecott was trying to carry out a major expansion project under conditions of great uncertainty at minimal risk to itself, while mobilizing international pressure in such a way as to raise the cost of nationalization as high as possible. But how high was high? If Kennecott's strategy were completely successful, the company would have to be kept on in Chile at least until the ten-year management contract ran out. At a minimum, if the company were nationalized, Chile would be forced to assume all the international obligations of the joint venture, including the obligation to pay full compensation at least for the guaranteed debt owed Kennecott. That would be a difficult task for any but the most determined and self-confident Chilean government . . _from the _ International Political Economy of Natural Resources I 
*CONTINUE from THIS POINT:* (PT 7)





What was the success of the transnational alliances that Kennecott built to protect itself? In 1970 Kennecott did face a determined, self-confident national movement bent on the nationalization of the foreign copper companies. Not only were the Socialist and Communist parties in Dr. Allende's coalition intent on fulfilling life-long pledges to take over the companies, but a constitutional amendment authorizing the nationalization in the name of "national sovereignty" was passed unanimously in a Chilean Congress dominated by Dr. Allende's opposition--Conservatives, Liberals, Christian Democrats, and Radicals. The Christian Democratic candidate for president, Radomiro Tomic, as well as the Socialist Allende, had declared himself in favor of nationalization. Even if the candidate of the Right, Jorge Alessandri, had been elected, the foreign copper companies might not have lasted six years. With such strong pressure for nationalization of the copper companies, even the proposed treachery of International Telephone and Telegraph, if successful, probably could not have reinstated Anaconda and Kennecott with enough domestic support to keep operating in peace. 

Kennecott's strategy did, however, enable the company to expand very profitably in the late 1960s with no new risk to itself and to leave, after the nationalization in 1971, with compensation greater than the net worth of its holdings had been in 1964. 

In contrast, Anaconda, which had not spread its risk or protected itself through a strategy of building transnational alliances, lost its old holdings, lost the new capital it committed during the Frei regime, and was nationalized in 1971 without any hope of compensation. In the face of Frei's demands for Chileanization, Anaconda had adamantly refused to share ownership of any of its major mines with Chile, and, instead, had financed a huge Chilean expansion program in its own name. The company did apply for partial coverage of its new investments through a stand-by arrangement with AID. But after Anaconda was finally pressured into selling 51 percent of its Chilean operations to the Frei Government in 1969, this insurance was apparently allowed to lapse. The notes in payment for the sale of majority interest in 1969 were not made unconditional obligations of the Chilean state but were only guaranteed by the Corporacion de Fomento (Corfo) and the Corporacion del Cobre (Codelco), two sub-agencies of the Chilean government.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 8:

Pressures on the Allende government to assume the international obligations of the nationalized El Teniente company came from all the directions that Kennecott had mapped out in advance. The customers who had bought long-term contracts, were putting pressure, through their governments, on the Group of Ten in Paris to make assumption of the old obligations a condition for refunding the Chilean debt. The United States government, under pressure from Anaconda and Kennecott, and from congressional supporters of the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (which had taken over the AID foreign investment insurance program), was pushing to make immediate compensation a requirement for rolling over the Chilean debt. Kennecott, on its own, was using the unconditional guarantee that the Chilean government had given for the original sale amount to obtain writs of attachment in the United States federal courts against all Chilean property within the courts' jurisdiction, including the jets of Lanchile when they landed in New York. 

In response to this accumulation of pressures, President Allende announced in October 1971 that his government would directly assume most of the international obligations of the nationalized El Teniente company. It would honor the long-term sales contracts to the customers in Europe and Japan, and it would take over the debts thta the nationalized company had contracted with the Export-Import Bank of Washington, with e Banca Comerciale Italiana, and with Mitaui & Co. Payment to the latter two creditors would clearly depend upon faithful fulfillment of the original long-term production contracts to customers in Europe and Asia. But the Allende government simply ignored the Kennecott management provision contained in the contracts and pledged to supply the output itself.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

PT 9:

Finally, four months later in February 1972, Dr Allende went all the way and announced that his government would pay compensation to Kennecott equal to the sale amount that had been unconditionally guaranteed by the Chilean state. Despite the pledge of the Socialists of "Ni un centavo!" in compensation, Kennecott was to receive $80 million plus interest from the Allende administration. Thus, the Allende government successfully unraveled part of the transnational web spun by Kennecott. 

With payment pledged to cover the Chilean state guarantee to Kennecott, the company was obliged to drop the writs of attachment levied against any Chilean property entering or contracted for in New York. This pledge of payment to Kennecott also removed the threat of bankrupting the new Overseas Private Investment Corporation with a huge claim. With OPIC safe and the Export-Import Bank being repaid by Chile, congressional interest dissipated. 

Despite Anaconda's huge losses, the Hickenlooper amendment was not applied. That unhappy company, with writs of attachment only against the assets of Corfo and Codelco, with a disputed claim to any United States government insurance, and with long-term contracts and debts made in its own name, had few options for mobilizing either national or international support. Payments for the nationalized properties of Anaconda were cut off under Allende, and the company received no promise of compensation. The only reasonable course for Anaconda's board of directors--which it took--was to fire the entire top management and hire a new set of executive officers who could do their best to forget about Chile.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Pt 10 (final):

How high, then, was the Kennecott construct of transnational relations able to raise the cost of nationalization? It forced the Chilean government to assume the international obligations of the nationalized company and to make good on the unconditional government guarantee that had been given to the foreign investor. 

With the duplication of Kennecott's transnational strategy spreading throughout the copper industry and into other natural resource industries that have their primary barriers to entry at the production stage, this cost will probably become the minimum base price for nationalization. 

Kennecott was not able to assure itself of maintaining a position of ownership or management at El Teniente indefinitely, but the company was able to give itself enough security to operate under conditions of high risk. Kennecott was able to expand a mine that was enormously profitable for itself and for Chile and then to be nationalized--suffering the worst alternative it had planned for--with a payment in compensation greater than the net worth of its invested capital had been when the project began. 

end of political background segment --RS 

comment:

_I have always admired the political acumen of certain directors of Kennecott. They may be justifiably characterized as cold and ruthless at times, but they certainly were capable men even on the international "playing field." They could and did run circles around politicians on more than one occasion, whether in Alaska, Washington D.C. or Santiago, Chile. There was little doubt they knew what they were dealing with when it came to Allende and his allies from the very beginning. They planned accordingly on a very long-term basis. In the end, in more than one way, Kennecott evened the score and then some. _--RS


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

_*Description of Claim and Mining Methods* from a February 1932 Dept of Commerce report (which I ordered especially for this segment), United States Bureau of Mines:_

The Braden Copper Co.'s property is located in the western cordillera of Chile, 30 miles northeast of Rancagua, 50 miles southeast of Santiago, near th head of the Teniente River, and at an elevation of 7,458 to 9960 feet.


The western cordillera of the Andes forms a sloping dissected plateau. Near the mines the canyons are deeply trenched with long debris slopes and above these tower precipitous cliffs.

The mines are situated on the sttep slopes south of the river, the lowest tunnel being at the bottom of the valley and the uppermost 2,500 feet above that level.

The orebodies lie around the periphery of an explosive vent in the form of crescent-shaped deposits, limited on the inside by the tuff (_volcanic sediment_ --RS) contact, where they are of higher tenor (_the concentration of metal in an ore body_ --RS). 

The upper limit is formed by the bottom of the oxidized zone, 50 to 100 meters below the surface, and the lower limit by the contact with the primary zone (I assume this to mean the bed rock or country rock --RS)

The explosive eruption which formed the Braden vent intensely fractured the andesite porphyry surrounding its periphery. The width of the zone of most intense shattering is uneven, ranging from 100 meters to 600 meters, the widest portions being on the northeast side of the crater.

After an interval in which the crater became filled with bedded tuffs, mineralizing solutions rising about the periphery of the old vent deposited quartz, tourmaline, biotite, pyrite, and chalcopyrite in the irregular fractures in the andesite porphyry and formed large bodies of mineralized material with a copper content in most places of between 0.50 and 1.50 per cent, though locally slightly richer. This was the original source of the Braden ores, but their enrichment by descending secondary minerlization was necessary to raise their tenor to a commercial grade.


The principal primary ore was originally chalcopyrite, but after secondary enrichment the mineralization is divided between chalcopyrite and chalcocite. The development of chalcocite is greatest in the upper part of the enriched zone, and gradually decreases with depth. In the upper part, for instance, the chalcopyrite has in many places been almost completely replaced by chalcocite, with pyrite replaced to a lesser degree. . . 

The hanging wall limits of the orebody are definitely defined by the tuff contact, but the footwall is purely a commercial limit of workable ore. 








An early view of Sewell (1909)
_I realize most of you probably have little interest in mining geology such as this. I am mostly interested in the similarities and the differences between the various Kennecott Mines. This one has similar mineralization to that of La*Touche, but was formed in a different manner and is a low-grade whereas the Beatson Mine was considered a high-grade mine. Chalcocite was the primary mineral at the interior Alaska Kennecott mine whereas chalcopyrite was primary in the Beatson and Girdwood mines of La*Touche. _

(continue)


Like the previous report, this one is not _cut and paste_, but typed by hand from a report. I selected the most relevant parts for inclusion, adding clarification were necessary. If you see mistakes in spelling, they are probably my typing errors. --RS


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

My countdown timer shows only 70 days as of today until April 15--which is not just tax time, but for me it is train running time ! The time is starting to really fly now. It seems like I JUST started the timer but I started it at 99 days (about a month ago). It is definitely cabin-fever time here in Alaska.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 02 Feb 2010 10:05 PM 
While I was in there I took a couple more shots of some of the items in storage awaiting placement in the Cicely town model. Here is the red truck--a twin of the white one. 
The red one will probably be converted to a Budweiser truck (if I don't find a suitable one in this configuration). 

 
It is really too bad that the long-anticipated Greyhound bus in 1:24 scale never materialized, I assume due to lack of pre-orders. It is the ONE remaining item I could use as far as non-train vehicles on the Cicely model. I bought these trucks because it is getting difficult to find them already. Well, I am trucked-up now !


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

It's not Greyhound but still might work for you 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1-32-BUS-FLXIBL...3359b2c55e


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 03 Feb 2010 01:31 PM 

Ron 

It's not Greyhound but still might work for you 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1-32-BUS-FLXIBL...3359b2c55e


Great-looking piece. It would work with #1 Scale, but not with my 1:29-1:24 scale, regrettably.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Some time ago Mark Oles had suggested that I should consider acquiring a 4-4-0 to add to my equipment roster. At the time I dismissed the idea because I did not believe an 4-4-0s had ever existed in Alaska. It turns out that I was wrong about that. AFTER I acquired a Eureka Palisades, a company connected by its major investor to Nevada Northern, which itself was a Kennecott subsidiary, I found that there had indeed been ONE 4-4-0 in Alaska. My latest shelf-queen-- a steal-of-a purchase from late last year:
  The Bachmann 4-4-0 compared to a Bachmann 2-6-0, purchased last year for the upcoming Phase III Klondike Mines Railway project:


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

There is a well-known Tanana Valley Railroad photograph of a mixed TVRR consist over Fox Gulch, somewhere north of Fairbanks. I had seen this image for manyyears because a mural version of it graced the main entry wall of one of the large Fred Meyer stores near the Fairbanks airport.







But it was not until last month that I spotted the distinct wheel arrangement--a 4-4-0. 
  Here I have enlarged the detail so you can see it for yourself:
  

The description I found is as follows: This is TVRR no. 50, built for Olympia & Chehalis Valley as Number One, "E.H. Quimette;" sold in May 1891 to Columbia & Puget Sound as No. 10; sold in 1898 to the White Pass & Yukon as No. 4, renumbered to 54; sold in 1905 to the Tanana Mines Railway as No.50; sold in 1907 to the Tanana Valley Railroad as No. 50; sold in 1917 to the Alaska Engineering Commission as No. 50; Transferred with that same number to the AKRR; retired before 1924 to be scrapped in 1930. By then the old TVRR NG was in the process of being dismantled. So there you have it: There really was a 4-4-0 in Alaska--and not far from where I once lived. 





>


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 05 Feb 2010 01:36 PM 
















I just realized that this picture shows minus 49. This image (not one of mine) had to have been taken LAST winter when the gas prices were somewhat cheaper than now. One of the give-aways for the extremely-low temperature (besides the sign) is the ice-fog. That direction is west, leading toward the airport, which is about one mile away from this Fred Meyer store in Fairbanks.Minus 49 to minus 56 are typical _cold spell_ winter temps for Fairbanks. I should know--having lived there for 14 years. That is also a reason why I don't forsee any outdoor model railroads being built in Fairbanks any time soon (I ask you, how many others could be as crazy as I am to build such a thing--an outdoor model railroad as a garden railway-- under such conditions?)


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By blackburn49 on 05 Feb 2010 01:36 PM 

  

Does the above image look familiar? That is because this TVRR Fox Gulch picture above closely resembles the Klondike Mines Railway Homestake Gulch picture below, which I showed in a previous thread.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

That sure looks like a 2-6-0 to me. Look at the round outline of a driver behind the cylinder. 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 05 Feb 2010 03:13 PM 
Ron 
That sure looks like a 2-6-0 to me. Look at the round outline of a driver behind the cylinder. 
Randy 
Wow. Somebody is actually paying attention. TVRR no.s 51 & 52 were 2-6-0s. It is possible this is one of those (seen below), but other features of the image (above) show it more likely to be No. 50 (formerly WP #4, #54). In any case, thank you for commenting.


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron 

While I may not comment each time I check out this thread several times daily. I do check it, read the articles and pay attn. 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By rlvette on 05 Feb 2010 04:37 PM 
Ron 

While I may not comment each time I check out this thread several times daily. I do check it, read the articles and pay attn. 
Randy 
That was a _good_ observation you made. It DOES _look_ like there _might _be a forward driver there. On the other hand, the domes and light sure make the Fox Gulch trestle shot look like TVRR #50 is the engine. I will continue to look for another photo of #50 (or WP #54 aka #4) that can possibly settle this question you brought up. Meanwhile, it IS verified that #50 (WP #54) was THE only 4-4-0, excluding the WP itself, to have landed within the Territory of Alaska.


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

I did have several more items I was planning to write about. I never did finish up my history of the Braden nor of the La*Touche mines.  However,  the time has come to end this thread. Thank you all for your participation.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Ron, 
Thanks for posting your history lessons, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all of it. 
I look forward to the next lesson! I have an interest in Az hardrock mining and have learned from your efforts. 

John


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## tom h (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron, I guess my history lesson is over, cant wait for the next one









When is the next starting?

Love reading your posts. 


Tom H


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## dawgnabbit (Jan 2, 2008)

Wow! A forty-page thread!

Does anybody know if that's a record?

Thanks for doing, Ron.

Dawg


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Bravo Ron 

Great stuff 

Randy


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## blackburn49 (Jan 2, 2008)

This summer will be the last opportunity to see the ALCANEX and the CRNW Railway in action. The plan is to shut down the operation totally in August and close the property just ahead of winter. There will be no more history-related threads, but it has been interesting.


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## ThinkerT (Jan 2, 2008)

This summer will be the last opportunity to see the ALCANEX and the CRNW Railway in action. The plan is to shut down the operation totally in August and close the property just ahead of winter. There will be no more history-related threads, but it has been interesting. 

...err...what? Your going to give up on the rest of the expansions? Are you selling the place or something?


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## bvdrr (Jan 3, 2008)

Come on ,Ron,don't keep us in the dark. I have followed your postings from the very first when you started with the mine in Alaska and have read every work as well as your book. Don't leave us in the dark. I almost feel like part of a family,as I have shared your dream and could hardly wait for the next edition.
Fred


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Ron. 
Your words welcomed us all into your home, we can't take such a brief farewell.... 

Such a sudden about face means something drastic has happened... I wish you well. 

You will always have a place here at MLS... 

John


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Ron

Whatever catastrophic chain of events that have taken place, which have placed you in your current sitiuation... I, as I believe all the rest of your friends here on MLS... wish you nothing but the very best in your future.

Regardless of what may come, Ron Simpson will always be welcome and have place here on MLS.


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## sheepdog (Jan 2, 2008)

????


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## Allan W. Miller (Jan 2, 2008)

I, for one, am greatly missing Ron's tremendously informative postings. I looked forward to a Blackburn49 post every time I visited this forum. Now there's a very big void. 

I just hope that all is well with him, and I wish him all the very best in the future. 

Thanks for the ride, Ron! It truly was informative and inspirational.


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