COMILOG material ropeway
The COMILOG material cable car was one of the longest cable cars in the world. From 1957 to 1986 it transported manganese ore from Moanda in the Haut-Ogooué province in eastern Gabon over 76 kilometers to Mbinda in the Republic of the Congo .
The Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué (COMILOG), a Franco-American mining company founded in 1953, began preparations for the exploitation of a manganese mine in Moanda the following year. The place was in the rainforest with no significant traffic connections to the Atlantic . It was therefore decided to build a material ropeway from Moanda to Mbinda, a place directly on the other side of the border with the Republic of Congo, where the ore could be loaded onto a railway link to the Congo-Ocean Railway to the port city of Pointe-Noire , which was also to be built . Work on the mine began in 1957, the material ropeway was completed in 1959 and the railway connection to Mbinda finally went into operation in 1962.
The material ropeway had ten sections and 858 pillars with a height between 5 m and 74 m. The 1 ton buckets were on the move 24 hours a day.
With the completion of the Trans-Gabon Railway from Libreville to Moanda in 1986, the material ropeway was closed.
COMILOG is still active in manganese mining and processing in Moanda and has now also taken over the originally state-owned Trans-Gabon Railway.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Obituary for Georges Perrineau, director of the Comilog (French)
- ↑ Note of the World Bank (English)