Up at the Denniston Incline

Our plan today was to move 22km up the road to a Low Cost Park closer to the road to the Denniston Incline.   Pauline and I thought we might have a go at he Denniston Mine Experience which takes you, all kitted out in your mining gear, down into a mine where you can sample a bit of what the miners had to go through every day.   The others were going to join a tour to the Stockton Mine.  Unfortunately both tours were full and we decided to just drive up to the Denniston Incline and maybe catch the tours on our return from Karamea in a few days.

The Denniston Incline took coal from nearby mines and from 1879 to 1979 an estimated 12 million tonnes of coal travelled down the famous Denniston Incline track.   It plunged 510 meters over a distance of 1.7 kiometres at a gradient of 1:3.   The wagons loaded with 12 tonne coal hurtled down the incline at 80kmh.

Originally the coal was transported to the incline processing plant by skips along a surface road and dealt with by young fit “clippers” who used to unclip the skips to load the bigger wagons.   It was so cold during winter they plunged their hands into buckets of hot water in between skips to keep them from freezing.   The surface road system was replaced eventually by an aerial system until the whole system was shut down in 1967.

  

            The Aerial Skips and remains of the Tensioning System

Large pieces of the Incline workings have been preserved and a large collection of information boards give a background to the area with anecdotes and stories of life up on the Flat.

              Wagon at the Top           Same Wagon from below on the slope

View Down the Incline (Telephoto Lens)

It’s hard to capture the steepness of the incline, as one full wagon hurtles down the hill an empty is towed up the other side.   A middle point on the incline transfers the wagons  to the next rail section on a flat area before they continue on down as the topography wouldn’t permit a straight run to the bottom.

The Top of the Incline

A fascinating look into the past which would make the OSH Inspectors hair curl !