tarboat's photos with the keyword: spoil

Panorama of the Lijing Colliery at Hengshan on the Jixi Coal Railway. It always seemed to be cold and windy when I visited this one.

A long lost scene from the now closed Beipiao mining railway. Spoil from the washery at Yijing was taken a short distance to be tipped on this siding, whence it was removed by a loading shovel. The train is about to cross over before reversing into the tip which was off to the right. The usual quota of Chines poles is visible.

A closer crop of the view of SY 1437 on the Xinghua tip on the Jixi Coal Railway.The sheer number of people picking through the waste was remarkable.

SY 1437 has brought another load of spoil to the Xinghua tip on the Jixi Coal Railway and the locals are picking through the waste for any coal remaining. This site was remarkable for the sheer number of pickers involved.

The afternoon passenger service passing one of the spoil heaps at the Fuli mine on the Hegang Coal Railway. The figure on the top is one of the coal pickers who make a living sorting through the waste as it is tipped.

The collection of small pieces of coal and semi-coal from the waste material has been developed into a highly organised activity on the Xinghua colliery tips. Every trainload of material is sifted by the picking gangs who operate not only on the level summit area but also on the steep and dangerous slope on the other side of the tracks. There was a constant stream of people wheeling away sacks of material balanced on the crossbar of their bicycles.

Spoil from the washery at Yijing is taken a short distance to be tipped on this siding, whence it is removed by a loading shovel As the wagons are tipped the local coal scavengers sift through the material and remove the tiniest bits of coal that are to be found amongst the waste material. The person second from the right is carrying a sack filled with small coal that has been collected here, whilst just off centre adjacent to the tipped wagon can be seen the backs of the pickers who are working fast before the loading shovel returns.

One of the last batches of SY class 2-8-2 locomotives to be built in the very late 1990s is seen here leaving Qiaonan Jct for Wangqian on the Tiefa mining railway. Large spoil heaps dominate the coal mining landscape in this area.