Nostalgia & History > Copper manufacturing question

Hi Everyone!

I was wondering if anyone might know if there were any Western copper manufacturers.

I know copper was mined in Utah and in Arizona, but it appears their product was mostly sent back east.  Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Daniel Quiat

What about in Montana?

Edit: as in in the BA&P?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/15 20:51 by wabash2800.

There is a smelter in Juarez, Mexico.

Suspect they didn't send trainloads of copper ore
back east. The smelters out west must be
"manufacturing" some sort of copper, but dunno
how pure. Did any western company do
the final refining?

Most of the mines had smeltering. In Utah, the product was shipped as copper anodes.

I'm sorry I guess I should have said processing. That is to create wire, sheets and other types, sorry about that!

Don't know exactly where they go but every now and then I see flat bed 18 wheelers  come eastbound through Ft Worth  with huge copper plates chained to the bed and i will tell you right now, a man can not pick one up!

Lets see, out West, in Neveda, ,Arizona, Montana, Utah , New Mexico and The Lone Star State of Texas

No, no, no! The copper all goes bye bye, I was trying to think of the nearest wire draw
facility and like the closest one I can think of is in Illinois. There isn't much "manufactured"
copper in the Western US.

Out

Prior to 1982, when pennies were 95% copper, the Denver Mint "manufactured" millions of them.

rrpreservation Wrote:
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> Most of the mines had smeltering. In Utah, the
> product was shipped as copper anodes.
>
> I'm sorry I guess I should have said processing.
> That is to create wire, sheets and other types,
> sorry about that!

Anodes from AZ and NM were shipped east on the Golden State Route

tomstp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't know exactly where they go but every now and
> then I see flat bed 18 wheelers  come eastbound
> through Ft Worth  with huge copper plates chained
> to the bed and i will tell you right now, a man
> can not pick one up!

Those are Copper Anodes. 

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm trying to figure out where these anodes went for processing.  The anodes were substantial and had to be loaded by forklift.

That said, they used to move them by rail in boxcars in the 1960s and 1970s and maybe 1980s, but they could not completely load the cars since they were so heavy.

Here's an interior photo of a boxcar that carried them. Notice the steel I-beams at the end of the car to prevent the anodes from crashing through end of the car!!




 

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Is Encore Wire in McKinney, Texas still receiving copper via box car on the DGNO? It looks like some box cars spotted there in the most current Google Maps aerial.

Posted from iPhone

There are three Western copper smelters still active in the US.  One in Utah near Salt Lake City (old Connector), Hayden AZ (old Asarco), and one in Claypool AZ.  The Smelters take material from a concentrator at about 1/3 copper and produce 99.99% copper. The anodes from the smelters are electro-refined producing a cathode.  The last I heard the Amarillo refinery is active.  I believe Salt Lake also has a refinery. Claypool feeds the former PD refinery at El Paso.  They also take copper from other sources when available.  Most copper produced in the US today is Solvent Extraction Electro-Wining (SX-EW) process.  Both refining and SX-EW produce 99.999% pure copper.  Anodes typically weigh in the neighborhood of 800 lbs.  Cathodes are in the 350 lb range.  You do not consume the entire anode in the plating process or you will destroy the circuit.  In SX-EW the copper is leached and then plated on to a copper blank and then stripped.


Historically there were smelters in many locations including the recently demolished Asarco smelter in El Paso, Texas. Phelps dodge had smelter operations in  Douglas,AZ , Bisbee, AZ, Morenci, AZ, and Nacozari.  Kennecott had  Hurley, New Mexico Salt Lake  City and McGill, NV, (the mine was the reason for the construction of the Nevada Northern).  There was the Anaconda copper company that had their short line in Montana and the magma copper company and railroad in Arizona.  Superior AZ had a metal smelter as well as Durango Colorado.  There was a lot of metal movement in the old west.

SP 3420 in El Paso, Texas, rests today in what was once the largest copper copper refinery in the world.  The refinery was built after the lease of the El Paso & Southwestern to the SP.  But the EP&SW was a phelps dodge achievement and phelps dodge gave an EP&SW relic a home.

Typically the anodes arrive at a refinery by rail on flat cars or box cars but the biggest problem is getting either the SP historically or now the UP to deliver.  I had a friend take a Stack train from the Dallas Street yard in El Paso to the Alpha yard with a group of anode flats on the back end for the refinery.  There was some fun train handling there.  Then there was when the SP yard master at Alpha sent the switch crew into the PD copper refinery at El Paso with ASARCO anodes  (from El Paso for Amarillo). Three hours latter the switch crew was back in the refinery to retrieve them.  In the 1990s Asarco typically stacked their anodes across the car while Pd had four stacks on a car,  two on each side.  There was a stopping post at each end of the cars that the anodes were laid against.  When anodes, while in transit were repositioned on the car the result was a lot of choice words for some unknown locomotive engineer!    

In the picture, the steel beams give you a way to stack the anodes.  You typically pick up anodes by the ears.

Dreamer
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/15 22:23 by Dreamer.

I thought there was still a smelter in Morenci.... They don't ship raw ore out as far as I know....

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/15 22:56 by jc76.

I think anodes also go to Cerro Flow Products LLC (formerly Cerro Corp.) at Sauget, Ill., across the Mississippi from downtown St. Louis. For years the plant had a sign out in front on busy Illinois Highway 3 stating that it was the world's largest copper tube factory.

Cerro produces lots of different types of copper tube products for many applications. They were a part of the Pritzker family's Marmon Group in the past, and via Marmon are now part of Berkshire Hathaway. They also have plants in the St. Louis suburb of Vinita Park, and in Shelbina, in northeastern Missouri, not far from Hannibal (on the BNSF ex-Q Brookfield Sub). But I don't recall ever having seen the big anodes except at Sauget.

In the past, I have seen Alaska RR boxcars switched in there, and could see the anodes through the open door driving by the plant as unloading was apparently going on. I think the Sauget plant is switched by Alton & Southern. They also in the past had short, heavy-duty flatcars with steel racks to move the anodes around the plant, but I haven't seen one of those in quite some time during occasional St. Louis visits.

MC
Columbia, Missouri



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/15 23:36 by ironmtn.

San Manuel, AZ had just rebuilt their smelter when BHP bought the outfit and shut it down. What a shame.

Tom

Fort Wayne Indiana was a huge manufactuing center for copper. It had a PhelpsDodge and REA magnet wire factories among others. 
Phelps Dodge received box cars of copper ingots. The cars were always Southern Pacific and weredelivered by the Wabash(later Nand W)
they would get as many as 10 cars a day and sometimes get 2 switches. A large diamond die business deveoped to make wire extruding dies
for all the wire makers   Dick Yager

I used to see them around KC going east on BNSF, in gondolas, three or four big slabs, or anodes per car.

Posted from Android

Here are photos of copper hauling flats, Chile versions.  The first photo is Fepasa (5'6" gauge) with copper bars/ingots or whatever they're called.  The other two are FCAB (meter gauge).  #7354  photo was in 1992;  since then they rebuilt the cars as shown in the other photo from 2008.  But in many cases they reused the arch bar trucks, albeit with modern wheel sets.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/15 13:06 by masterphots.

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