John Creedy's One Plant Snaps!

[Michael Alexander]

Here are a few more historical Snaps of 1 Plant. Somewhere else on this forum we were discussing the "other" power station in the area...well thanks to John we have a snapshot of it....

"I took all these photographs in 1973.  Delete what you don't need. Number 1 Plant.  Superintendent was John Mac and later Ronnie Potgieter .  I was the Plant Section Engineer"

[Michael Alexander]

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[Michael Alexander]

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[Michael Alexander]

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[Michael Alexander]

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[georgswa (Georg Ruf) (RIP)]

Now we only need my screen 17 a and b where i collected my Agates

Thanks to John

[Malcolm Bertoni]

If you look in the first photo you can just see the screenshop roof sticking up behind the tailings dump conveyor.  That was where I worked from 68-73. It was great.

The sump pumps photo was the A3 milling section and pumped the fines and waste (-1.5 mm I think) from the 6 ball mills out to the sea.  They ALWAYS gave trouble and blocked continuously due to the length of the line. The transfer chute photo was also in the A3 milling section.  This chute ran on a rail and could be moved between the 6 mills with their feed bins. Worked quite well. You can see five of the six ball mills in another photo.

The Push Feeder was from the A1 primary crusher section that fed the big stockpile that you can see in the very first photo. There was a short 12-15 ft 6 ft wide conveyor under the push feeder that fed a long conveyor going up to the stockpile.  This conveyor snapped with monotonous regularity as it couldnt handle the load and I spent many a long night feeding the conveyor back through all the rollers and splicing it.

There was a metal detector situated before the secondary crushers in the A2 section- in one photo you can see the open impact crusher.  They previously had a big magnet until they discovered that ripper tips and some of the nickel alloys werent magnetic and didnt get picked up by the magnet.... destroyed a few crusher liners until it was changed.

There were 2 impact crushers and one cone crusher that handled the finer material that the impact crusher couldnt crush fine enough. The A2 secondary crusher section worked quite well, except that they always tried to push more ore through it that it was designed to do.

A lot of the other photos are from  the A4 processing section where the heavy media cyclones were.

I think the one photo named "1 plant screen top view" might be a screen that was under the secondary crushers that fed the A3 milling bin.  I think there were 4 dewatering screens in the A2 section.  Georg: is this 17A and 17B screens?  Or were they the A4 tailing? I cant remember.

Great photos John (although I cant remember you-old age) and I can still picture the plant quite clearly.  Keep the photos coming - I'm sure there's lots more out there.

[georgswa (Georg Ruf) (RIP)]

@ Mbertoni

I dont recognize the 17 A and B screen

I started on 1 plant in Mai 1973, you had left by then.....

[Gordon Brown]

Few small holes in the roof appeared after conglomerate shower hit the plant in 69 / 70?. Not from outer space but from mine site south of 10H where learner blasters Brown, de Jaeger et al were learning their trade under the mentorship of Bruce Woodcock. Humble and belated apologies.

[Malcolm Bertoni]

Gordon

You dont want to know what a crazy b****d Bruce was. The mad Welshman almost killed us all at Affenrucken a few times, playing around with his Cordtex, detonators and dynamite.  I didnt know he had taught you - you are lucky to have survived.

Its all in my upcoming book.

[Michael Alexander]

Ol' Jim Murray was talking to me about some nutter up at affenrucken that blew up something, pissed the chef of, as all his pots and pans and half the kitchen got wrecked in the explosion...Ben, were you the chef at the time?

This was in the 60's...

[Malcolm Bertoni]

Bruce and a lot of us experimented with Cordtex and almost blew up the footbridge crossing the ravine between the mess and the single quarters at Affenrucken- we were damn lucky.

That was around 70/71.

[Gordon Brown]

Looking forward to reading your book Malcolm.
Best wishes and kind regards
Gordon