Royce Howland

Conveyor of History

The briquette processing building at the abandoned Brazeau Collieries mine operation processed crushed coal and tar into briquettes. These were run over 4 huge conveyors into a storage building, awaiting loading onto rail cars. Not a lot of folks now remember the days of coal furnaces in the home, or coal-fired locomotives. The conversion of the latter to diesel spelled the rapid end of a phase of the coal mining industry that included the shutdown of this mine. Coal was instrumental in opening the West, but this setting conveys for most a piece of history that we’re now removed from.