The Mine

The planned On30 layout runs through the Parachilna Gorge to the small town of Blinman, where there was a copper mine. I have modified history a little by building a railway (in real life, this was proposed but never built) and therefore extending the life of the mine

With very little room to work in, I am currently trying to determine how to represent the mine. My first thought was to model loading bins like these at Williamsford, terminus of Tasmania's 2' gauge North East Dundas Tramway. In this case the mine is remote, with ore being delivered to the bins by a haulage, but I could certainly build myself some ore bins and locate them beside a single siding somewhere...
However, these bins served a Lead-Zinc mine, and most likely would be inappropriate for a copper mine. The mine at Blinman had smelters as early as the 1860s, apparently because of the difficulty in transport by bullock cart to long distance to Port Augusta. Indeed, as far as I can tell, most Australian copper mines built their own smelters (or had smelters built in the immediate vicinity) because of the costs of transporting ore long distances.

As I see it, there are three possibilities when it comes to shipping product from the mine: