The COMILOG Cableway was one of the longest

cableway Cable transport is a broad class of transport modes that have cables. They transport passengers and goods, often in vehicles called cable cars. The cable may be driven or passive, and items may be moved by pulling, sliding, sailing, or by driv ...

s in the world, until its closure in 1986. The

ropeway conveyor A material ropeway, ropeway conveyor (or aerial tramway in the US) is a subtype of gondola lift, from which containers for goods rather than passenger cars are suspended. Description Material ropeways are typically found around large mining conc ...

ran for 76 km from Moanda in the

Haut-Ogooué Province Haut-Ogooué is the southeasternmost of Gabon's nine provinces. It is named after the Ogooué River. It covers an area of . The provincial capital is Franceville. One of its primary industries is mining, with manganese, gold and uranium being ...

of south eastern

Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the nort ...

to Mbinda in the Republic of Congo. In 1954, the

Compagnie Minière de l'Ogooué The Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué, or COMILOG, is a manganese mining and processing company based in Moanda, Gabon. It is a subsidiary of the French metallurgical group Eramet. The company is the world's second largest producer of manganese ore. ...

(COMILOG), a French-American company formed the previous year, decided to begin

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

manganese Manganese is a chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a transition metal with a multifaceted array of industrial alloy use ...

in the Gabonese town of Moanda. The town lay deep in the rainforest, and

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is an ...

of the metal was a problem. The nearest reliable transport route was the Congo-Ocean Railway, but this lay more than 250km away, across difficult terrain. George Perrineau was charged with constructing a transport link between the two. It was decided to construct a cableway from Moanda to Mbinda, and then branch of the Congo-Ocean Railway to Mont Bello, from which the existing railway would link to the

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

of Pointe-Noire.Ya Sanza
Dossiers spéciaux: COMILOG
pecial Dossier: COMILOG/ref> The conveyor was routed via the small town of Bakoumba, which became the centre for the maintenance of the structure. The mine opened in 1957, and the Cableway was opened in 1959, the link finally being completed when the Congo-Ocean Railway branch opened in 1962. The Cableway consisted of ten sections, and had 858 supports of between 5 and 74m in height.Seilbahnen
able cars/ref> One tonne cars carried the manganese twenty-four hours a day.Bakoumba et la SODEPAL
akoumba and SODEPAL/ref> The government of Gabon was keen to ship the valuable manganese ore through its own ports, and routed a new railway, the Transgabonais, from the national capital Libreville to Moanda, and on to Franceville. When this opened, in 1986, the cableway was closed. While Moanda continued to prosper, Bakoumba and Mbinda suffered from the withdrawal of their main industry. COMILOG funded the creation of the Lékédi Park at Bakoumba to encourage the development of a tourist industry, but some groups in Congo felt that unemployment there was not addressed.

References

External links

Map of Gabon showing the route of the COMILOG Cableway
{{coord missing, Republic of the Congo Transport in Gabon Transport buildings and structures in the Republic of the Congo Transport buildings and structures in Gabon Buildings and structures completed in 1959 1986 disestablishments in Gabon Aerial tramways in the Republic of the Congo Aerial tramways 1986 disestablishments in the Republic of the Congo 1959 establishments in French Equatorial Africa

See also

References

External links