God afternoon my lovely gal fiends and guys:

As a minor challenge in imagination on the type of things that Jim may be called upon to solve, It was posted

-->As for moving equipment may I ask you, and the others, a simple question. How do you transport 2000 + ft of thick hoist cable on mules and humans?

Since only Lucky Lou responded for the cool glass of fresh lemonade, I assume that the others weren't interested or found it a bit difficult thinking in modern techniques and methods.

It is simple, merely coil up 200 lbs of cable, load it on a mule, then link another mule with the cable, load 200# on him and so forth. You now have a no of mule linked together carrying your cable in a very flexible, snake like manner

'O' - 'O' - 'O' - 'O '- 'O' - 'O'

On the Palmarejo Mine near Chinapas, a tremendous silver mine, they decided to build a narrow gauge railroad. They closed down during the revolution and never reopened .

When I was rained in up at Chinapas in the early 50's , the old office still existed and their papers were scattered all over. Being a nosey gringo, I spent quite a bit of time reading them.

Among them I found the correspondence fight they had to get two narrow gauge Steam engines designed to their specifications.

The first was from Baldwin Locomotive Works in the US. Baldwin flatly wrote, "If we need advice on mining we will come to you, in designing an engine we will tell you l what can be done. This is why you came to us".

Palmarejo's letter to them was "Gentlemen, we are appalled , we specifically mentioned that every part has to be carried over mountains ranges etc by human and mule power. We specified that no piece could weigh over 200 lbs. thank you very much for you trouble".

They eventually found Leeds in Britland that cheerfully did the impossible. Every piece, even the drive wheel, was in sections, the joining together of each was by matching combinations of letters, numbers, marks, including the bolts,washers and nuts.

Even someone incapable of reading or writing could easily assemble all of the parts. the main drive wheels were in three sections. A beautiful bit of imaginative engineering.

Such was life in the earlier days.

Don Jose de La Mancha