A National Historic Site | Britannia MIne Museum

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Moving Through Time: Transportation

“Probably no feature of mine operation is more responsible for economic results than transportation; and certainly no mine in this country had its transportation system so highly developed as at Britannia.”

Marilyn Mullan

Transporting anything in a rugged landscape is no easy task.

The deep water of Howe Sound worked in Britannia’s favour as people and supplies could come and go by boat. Boats were the only way to access Britannia until the rail and roads were constructed in the late 1950s.

In the Mine’s early years, residents reached the camps by hiking with boots or using snowshoes to traverse the deep snow high up at the mine. At Britannia, horses were used to haul heavy supplies, including pipeline materials and concrete for dams.

Built in 1905, the aerial tram was the first major ore mover in Britannia and brought ore down 5 km from the mine to the Mill at Britannia Beach. It worked in conjunction with other transport methods until 1926 when it was stopped.

In 1915 the train system was built including underground, surface and incline railway to move ore. The underground rail was kept in use until the mine closed, but by 1928 the surface and incline railway were only used to move people and supplies between the Mount Sheer Townsite and Britannia Beach.

As the mine grew, it increasingly used gravity to move ore. The incline railway was replaced with underground chutes which the ore could be dropped down. Some ore was mined lower than the top of the Mill and it needed to be hoisted up and then hauled to the Mill. The Mill used gravity to transport the ore from one level to the next with chutes and slides.

Methods changed over the years – from shovels to haul trucks. With these changes the owners of the Britannia Mine were working towards one goal – to transport ore as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Cargo ships were a common sight at the freight wharf. While over the years many forms of transportation changed, ore always left Britannia by boat.Boats were the only way to access Britannia until the rail and road were put in in the late 1950s. However, boats continued to be crucial to the Mine’s operation until the Mine closed.After stopping at Britannia Beach, the Union Steamships headed north-west across Howe Sound to stop at Woodfibre. They would then go to Squamish before turning back and reversing the route.This steamship is at the Customs wharf in Britannia Beach. This was an official customs station and a point of entry into Canada.The original freight wharf was one of the most impressive structures at Britannia. Train cars were rolled out on the trestle to load processed ore into boats.Unlike many other aspects of the Mine, the freight wharf became more modest as time went on. While the structure got smaller, its capacity to load processed ore onto barges grew.
A dock and horse trail were the first pieces of infrastructure built at Britannia. Horses were used for years to transport supplies up the mountain to the developing mine.There were years of heavy snowfall, especially at the Mount Sheer Townsite and high mining camps. Snowshoes were often the best way to get around in winter.Steam donkeys were used to drag logs out of the woods. The wood was burned to produce steam. The steam was used to power the winch, which wound the cable and hauled the logs.Machines with rubber tires were used in the later years of the mine both underground and in the newly reopened Jane Basin open pit.Hoists moved ore up from deep in the mine and also moved men both up and down.The aerial tram was the first major ore mover at Britannia. It operated from 1905 to 1925. It stayed standing for another 14 years before it was decommissioned.
By 1915 a surface train system was in operation moving ore and people. Within two years it was the main ore moving system, exceeding its predecessor, the aerial tram.The incline railway, or “Skip” was built for moving ore but by 1923 it was only moving people up and down the steep tracks on their trip between the Mount Sheer Townsite and Britannia Beach.The train tracks were vital to life at the Mount Sheer Townsite so they needed to be kept free of snow. A wedge snow plow was introduced in 1927 to clear the tracks.Underground, small locomotives were the main way of moving ore and people for most of the life of the Mine. The trains were electric, drawing power from overhead trolley lines or batteries.Rails were the quickest way to move around underground. The men would ride a locomotive on their way to and from work. If they were injured, they were brought to the surface in an ambulance like thisIn 1950 a snow blower was built to clear the tracks, but it had so much power that it would sometimes shatter windows. The company quickly fitted houses with shutters to prevent this.
In 1956 the PGE railway was completed connecting Vancouver to Squamish and beyond. The road followed two years later and changed the isolated nature of the area forever.“The road from nowhere to nowhere” was built in 1947, connecting Squamish to Britannia Beach.Howard Blake’s car was one of the first in Britannia Beach and one of the first to drive the road to Squamish.When the high school at Mount Sheer closed down in the 1950s, students were driven to Squamish for school each day on this bus run by the East Howe Sound Stage Company.By the 1960s, cars were an everyday item at Britannia Beach. From this point on many people lived in other communities and drove to Britannia to work.By 1966, a road connected Britannia Beach to the top of the mine and Jane Basin. Instead of moving the rock underground as was done in the past, trucks hauled the rock to the Mill.

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