Salt railways

Tonymercury · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003 1:05 pm

[quote="freightgate
Much appreciate the update. While we are on the subject, are there any other known salt mine sidings in Australia?[/quote]

"Light Railways" has had a few articles on salt tramways in SA.

Tony Bailey
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allan · Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2003 1:35 am

South Australian salt works have all been surface affairs, either scaping the salt out of dry lakes, or taking sea or salt lake water and evaporating off the water by solar power.

Salt traffic on the mainlines originated at Locheil and Whyalla, and I cannot think of any private lines that were set up for salt traffic.

The lines at the foot of York Peninsular (Marion Bay and Stenhouse Bay), and, I think, the line from Kevin, were/are for calcite, also scraped from dry lake beds, and used to make plaster.

I have not found any information to sugest that salt from the HUGE Penrice salt fields at Dry Creek (next door to the Motive Power Centre and the Dry Creek Yards) has ever found its way onto rail: rather, it is used locally for chemical manufacture.

Allan Lees

ninthnotch · Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 10:25 pm

Cheetham Salt had extensive 2' gauge salt tramways in their now-developed over Laverton site, operating up until the late 1980's. Alexandra Timber Tramway & Museum saved a couple of locos from there.

That's an attention-getter!

duttonbay · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2003 10:32 pm

Up until relatively recently, salt was transported from Kevin to Thevenard, in addition to the gypsum traffic. Alas the salt traffic was lost to road.

In older days there were many salt workings across Australia, and many of these has 2' gauge tramways involved. Mostly to transport the salt from the "lake" to a refinery (or storage) but some of them were used to get the salt to onwards transport. There was a series of articles in Light Railways covering the Cheetham Salt operations across Australia - Price (SA) in April 93, Lochiel Oct 93, Kangaroo Island (SA) Jul 93, Other SA Jan 92, Vic April 91. There was also Lake Mulgundawah Salt Tram (South Australia) and The Port Gregory Salt Tram (Western Australia) ... and lots of others, I am sure.

John Dennis
Home of the Dutton Bay Tramway
http://members.optusnet.com.au/duttonbay