Around 1860, The Vizcaya and Santander Mining Co. Ltd started to work the San Julián and Amalia Vizcaína mines near the village of Kobaron (Muskiz, Bizkaia). But it was the company of the Scottish engineer José Mac Lennan which a decade later began to exploit and market the mineral on a truly industrial scale. In order to take its production of limonites and siderites to market, the Mac Lennan mining company built a metre-gauge railway, 2.6 km long, between Kobaron and the coastal loading facility at Campomar, where it was shipped to Durham (England). The original animal traction system was replaced by steam locomotives in 1895, whose sheds, water tanks and bunkers were located at the station at Kobaron.
Later a second, unconnected stretch of half-metre gauge railway would be added The railway, known as the Carrascal Railway, used to carry the mineral ore from the San Francisco and Consolación mines, in the Carrascal area, to the station at Kobaron, where the ore would be transferred via two 20 metre inclined plans onto the Campomar Railway. In 1963 all mining activity was wound up and the loading facility loaded its last shipment.
One of the most outstanding features of this route is the Campomar ore washing plant, which was remarkable for two reasons: the iron ore arrived via an aerial tramway system from La Orconera (La Arboleda), 8 km away, and the water used to wash it was sea water extracted by two powerful pumps located near the La Socorro chapel. It was impossible for the Orconera Iron Ore to install modern ore washing facilities on the site of their mines in the Triaño hills. The project presented a great many problems. It was necessary to find a way to ensure that the washing water did not contaminate the streams and that the pipes did not cross land belonging to rival mines. Legislation in force at the time was starting to become strict. Also, the necessary water had to be raised by pumps from the sea to the mines, which were at a height of 400 metres. The cost of installing pumps for such long pipes was very high. For this reason the Orconera company built their ore washing plant at Campomar and installed its corresponding aerial tramway in 1910. This costly infrastructure was designed by Adolf Bleichert & Co., of Leipzig, while the metal components (pylons and stations) were built by La Basconia of Bilbao. The tramway had 8.1 km of dual cableway to transport the ore from the Carmen VII mine in the vicinity of La Arboleda to the washing plant. From Campomar, the washed ore returned to the interim station at Putxeta, 4.3 km from the previous one, and from there was carried by a secondary line, 1.8 km long, to the loading facilities that the company’s railway had at Gallarta. The aerial tramway, which was in operation up until 1945, was considered in its day to be the most important of its kind in Europe, both for its technical perfection and its enormous scale. Nowadays all that remains are the concrete bases that used to support the pylons. |
