100-year-old wagon on rails emerges from a Cornish cliff

[editor]

This is great stuff:

Walkers enjoying their daily exercise at a beach in Cornwall have recently been noticing a strange object jutting out of the cliff.

Like a fossilised scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, what looks like an old mine cart on rails appears to be emerging from the rock face, 40ft up from the sand.

In fact, this wagon, which is probably close to 100 years old, is a rusty remnant from an ambitious operation to extract tin-rich sand from Gwithian beach near Hayle between the First and Second World Wars.

Although it has perched on the side of a cliff since the tin sand works closed in the late 1930s, a precarious clear-up of vegetation covering the cart two years ago, combined with some more recent cliff erosion, has made it more visible than it has been for decades.

A 100-year-old cart is emerging from a Cornish cliff

It's like a fossilised scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

www.cornwalllive.com

 

[Clair De Lune]

That's very cool

 

[davesgcr]

This is great stuff:

View attachment 254691

A 100-year-old cart is emerging from a Cornish cliff

It's like a fossilised scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

www.cornwalllive.com

Get Voley on the case !

 

[StoneRoad]

Well spotted, that's quite a cool find ...

 

[two sheds]

Not for the first time

 

[Voley]

Get Voley on the case !

It'd be stretching the current 'exercise locally' restriction for me a bit, Gwithian, but I will pop along and have a look at some point.

 

[Voley]

I think I'm right in saying that the beach at Gwithian has a village buried under it too.

 

[passenger]

Only 100 years old? will be great to learn more, really nice find.

 

[Ground Elder]

Someone pointed out the remains of the pylon bases to me a while ago, but I hadn't seen what they actually looked like before this article - I shall go for a proper look soon.


There's been a few bits of history revealed around here lately - the last storm stripped the sand from the beach at Long Rock, near Penzance, revealing the remains of WWII anti-invasion defences and some ship wrecks from 1893 and 1865

 

[two sheds]

Someone pointed out the remains of the pylon bases to me a while ago, but I hadn't seen what the actually looked like before this article - I shall go for a proper look soon.
View attachment 254744

There's been a few bits of history revealed around here lately - the last storm stripped the sand from the beach at Long Rock, near Penzance, revealing the remains of WWII anti-invasion defences and some ship wrecks from 1893 and 1865

Which article are you referring to with that image? There's the remnants of one of them near me and it's taken me years to work out how the buckets can get past the pylons without falling off, and I still haven't quite managed it I presume there's a wheel going over the rope but I'd have thought the bump would just bump it off.

 

[Ground Elder]

Which article are you referring to with that image? There's the remnants of one of them near me and it's taken me years to work out how the buckets can get past the pylons without falling off, and I still haven't quite managed it I presume there's a wheel going over the rope but I'd have thought the bump would just bump it off.

It's from the Cornwall Live article editor linked to, but there's more here

 

[two sheds]

I'm even more confused the more I look at how it might have worked. If it was like this below, then I'd have thought the buckets would accelerate to some insane speed and as I say bounce off when it hit the fixing point to the pylon. Or would the rope have moved and the buckets be attached to it? In which case I'm still not sure how they'd get over the fixing point to the pylon.

Clever buggers those miners

 

[WouldBe]

I'm even more confused the more I look at how it might have worked. If it was like this below, then I'd have thought the buckets would accelerate to some insane speed and as I say bounce off when it hit the fixing point to the pylon. Or would the rope have moved and the buckets be attached to it? In which case I'm still not sure how they'd get over the fixing point to the pylon.

Clever buggers those miners
View attachment 254762

Confuses me too but cable cars manage it.

 

[two sheds]

Confuses me too but cable cars manage it.

That's a very good point. The descriptions I've just looked at are remarkably shy about saying how it's done though. From



it shows the cable moving and apparently there's a gripper that grips the cable on cable cars, so that must just pass over the wheel. I'd have thought it was a bit bumpy ride though.