Ore Car Wars: Give Us Your Best...

I’m in an ore car mood. Let’s see everyone’s best ore cars that they’ve found (whether in person or online)… In the comments below, you can post the links to pictures and videos or just tell us the story. Whether you refer to them as ore carts or ore cars, I want to see (or hear about) the best that everyone has!

This video is of the coolest ore car that I think we’ve come across. Now, don’t get me wrong, I dearly love the wooden ore car we found hidden away in the desert and wooden ore cars are exceptionally rare (I’m referring to this one: https://bit.ly/3fWyiRn). However, I feel like the metal ore car in this video is more unique. I have never seen a manufacturer’s plate like the one on this ore car and that seems to give it more personality, if you will.

By the way, does anyone know about the history of George F. Truax and Globe Iron Works? It was difficult to find much reliable information online… As I understand it, Truax originally manufactured the ore cars through his own company (Truax Manufacturing Works) in Denver in the late 1800s. However, he later sold the manufacturing rights to Globe Iron Works of Stockton. It looks like Globe Iron Works was one of the early businesses in California and changed hands a number of times before eventually moving to Sacramento and changing its name to Liberty Iron Works. Both Truax and Globe/Liberty Iron Works seem to disappear from history though and I would love to know the conclusion to their stories.

I did a little research on ore cars while I was writing out this description and was surprised to learn of a number of different names for them that I did not know… How about cocopan, mine trolley or mine hutch? Or minecart, dram or hund? The internet can take one down some interesting rabbit holes, to be sure.

The large, multi-level mines can have some very cool and interesting underground layouts. However, unless they are on private property or are difficult to access, these are usually well-known and, therefore, visited often. As such, the larger mines are often stripped of many of their interesting artifacts and other features.

So, these smaller, more anonymous mines can be some of my favorites because they fly under the radar and can offer some unexpected gems in the way or equipment and artifacts. That video I posted of “A Perfect Abandoned Mine” is, well, a perfect example of this.

Our visit to the area featured in this video was more to scout things out rather than to do serious mine exploring. So, now that we have a good idea of what will be needed in the way of equipment, we shall return and properly explore this mine and the others in the area. Given the blockage in the main shaft (as a result of the waste rock on the surface being bulldozed in), we will require ropes and climbing equipment to explore more deeply into this mine. However, if this level is any indication, that could be quite rewarding.

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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so I’d encourage you to adjust your settings to the highest quality if it is not done automatically.

You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD

As well as a small gear update here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6

You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

Thanks for watching!

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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.

These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.

So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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