Melba Flats is a railway siding on the Melba railway line east of

Zeehan Zeehan is a town on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia south-west of Burnie. It is part of the West Coast Council, along with the seaport Strahan and neighbouring mining towns of Rosebery and Queenstown. History The greater Zeehan a ...

that served as a terminus for trains carrying

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

ore from the

Mount Lyell Mining & Railway Company Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company was a Tasmanian mining company formed on 29 March 1893, most commonly referred to as ''Mount Lyell''. Mount Lyell was the dominant copper mining company of the West Coast, Tasmania, West Coast from 1893 to 1 ...

West Coast, Tasmania The West Coast of Tasmania is one of the regions of Tasmania in Australia. It is mainly isolated rough country and is associated with wilderness, mining and tourism. It served as the location of an early convict settlement in the early history ...

, once the

Emu Bay Railway The Emu Bay Railway was a Tasmania, Australian railway company. The railway was significant during full operation, in that it linked the Tasmanian Government Railways system at Burnie with that at Zeehan that further linked to the Mount Lye ...

ceased services into the Zeehan townsite. The section of line near Melba Flats was operational by December 1900. The Rosebery to Zeehan connection closed on the 14 August 1965, however the Rosebery to Melba Flats section re-opened on the 15 January 1970. The Mount Lyell company had trucks deliver the ore along the Queenstown to Zeehan road to this siding, until 1994. The Melba Flats area is the site of numerous historical workings; hand workings and hand constructed mining shafts dating back to the 1880s.

Lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

zinc Zinc is a chemical element; it has symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic tabl ...

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

and

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

have been located in varying quantities in the area. Allegiance Mining in the 2000s investigated open pit mining of

niccolite Nickeline or niccolite is the mineral form of nickel arsenide. The naturally-occurring mineral contains roughly 43.9% nickel and 56.1% arsenic by mass, but composition of the mineral may vary slightly. Small quantities of sulfur, iron and cobalt ...

and

pentlandite Pentlandite is an iron–nickel sulfide with the chemical formula . Pentlandite has a narrow variation range in nickel to iron ratios (Ni:Fe), but it is usually described as 1:1. In some cases, this ratio is skewed by the presence of pyrrhotite ...

, copper, gold and platinum minerals from small deposits on Melba Flats. Melba Flats loading facility is currently mothballed by its current owners TasRail. TasRail has also placed the railway line north of the Melba Flats loading facility to Rosebery into care and maintenance, till a new customer for the loading facility is found.

Notes

References

* * * Whitham, Charles. ''Western Tasmania: A Land of Riches and Beauty.'' * Rail yards in Australia Railway stations in Western Tasmania {{Australia-railstation-stub