Looking Back: What’s in that Building?

That building is a remnant of the old Greenhill Tipple complex as most of us are aware but what’s inside it is rather amazing. Within its walls is a sophisticated mechanism that was used for dumping coal cars, called a rotary dump. Rotary dumps were a common thing at most mines way back when but this one is very unique and could be the last of its kind around. It is called a Phillips crossover dump and how it works is pretty cool.  

 But before I tell you about this dump how about a somewhat connected story.  I want to harken back to my first experience with a rotary dump at the Vicary Mine north of Coleman, an underground mine that ran from 1957 t0 1979.  My very first job was as a spragger and I almost lost my mind (and a thumb) doing it. This is how it all worked at Vicary. The loaded coal cars that came out of that mine were a combination of two inside smaller trains of cars put together and then brought to the entry by the big Hudswell diesel locomotive driven by Spike Matcovcik. Well actually he stopped short of the entry by about a quarter mile inside and then gave all 34 cars a big shove so that they rolled down the graded track to the outside on their own.

This is where it got tricky.  They were destined for the rotary dump which was about 100 yards outside of the entry. The thing was that they all had to be stopped before they got to the dumper otherwise there would be a helluva mess.  That is where I came in.  I could hear the rumble of them coming pretty fast (which was terrifying) and as they broke out of the entry it was my job to get them stopped. 

A spragger uses fresh cut pine pieces about 14 inches long and about 4 inches in diameter. They are bluntly tapered at both ends and sit in a pile at a strategic spot about half way out of the entry by the tracks.  The technique to stop them is to insert a sprag into the rolling spiral spoked wheels of the coal cars as they pass you. The spinning wheel carries the sprag up against the underside of the car and locks it up. You needed to hit the next four or five cars in a row to finally bring the trip to a halt. The coal car wheels are spinning pretty good so it was nerve wracking to get that train stopped.  It really takes a knack to be able to do that tricky move in sequence.

Then the dump man would take over and systematically begin uncoupling and dumping one car at a time by manually rotating it upside down with the rotary dump. Then when it spun around upright again he pushed it out and down a sloped track and through a track switch so that when it rolled back it was below him. And so it went. Needless to say I had nightmares about missing!

Getting back to the Greenhill dump, like I said. it is a very large scale setup, much bigger than most dumpers like Vicary.  The cars that rolled out of the Greenhill Mine entered the north end of the building on a main track line to the rotator.  It had a chain feed system that pulled the cars into the dumper. Unlike Vicary, this dumper was twice as big, mechanical driven, and was operated from a control room to the west of it.  Each loaded car was moved up by chain drive and then clamped into the rotator and spun.  The coal tumbled underneath onto a preliminary angled bar screen that helped break up the lumps.  In a similar fashion as Vicary the emptied car were then rolled down a short track incline and then up another short one that stops it impetus and sends it rolling back.  They call this a kickback. The car is redirected with a switch (frog) that sends it either left or right alongside the rotary dump. Those left and right tracks are also equipped with a drive chain system that would drag the empty cars up an incline past the dumper and into a lineup that eventually went back into the mine. 

 It’s kind of like a roller coaster set up. There are a lot of large mechanical moving parts involved in all this and so attached to the east side of that building was another one with a power plant in it.  I cannot imagine for the life of me what it was like in there during operation with the noise and the dust. It is also interesting to note that a smaller rotary dump exists immediately west of the control room and it still has a car in it. This smaller side operation was for dumping rock removed from inside the mine.  I have seen old rotary dumps on display at the Atlas Mine in Drumheller and at the old Nordegg Mine west of Rocky Mountain House. The Greenhill rock rotator would perhaps make a lovely addition to the interpretation process at the Bellevue Underground Mine.

To see the grand daddy of all rotary dumps one must travel to Roberts Bank Superport on the West Coast about 35 miles south of Vancouver. This is where the metallurgical coal produced by Elk Valley mines is stockpiled for shipping overseas.  The unit trains that roll into there have rotating couplings at one end of each car so the trains that pass through that rotary dumper are never unhooked.  That is one big rotator unloading them and it must always be on the move. The logistics of this size of operation are a bit mind boggling.  In the Greenhill Mine’s total lifetime here they mined and unloaded 14 Million tons of coal. Last year Teck shipped 24 Million metric tonnes of coal via unit train. At say 100 tonnes a car and 120 cars in a train that is, wait for it! - - 2,000 unit trains that year or about 5 1/2 trains a day. 1175 km to Roberts Bank one way through the mountains, 365 days a year.  It is rather amazing actually. The Greenhill rotary dump is a rare and important piece of the coal mining story here and the Historic Resources Management Branch is seeing to it that this historic remnant is preserved.