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Photo: Timothy Titus, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This is a reconstruction of the 19-inch (483-mm) gauge railway that from 1823 brought ore from deep in the mountain. It was hand-hauled at first, then hauled by pit pony, then by steam locomotives from 1877. The mine closed in 1929 and everything above ground was scrapped, but one train was left below and has been restored. Replica locos now shunt visitors up and down the site but don't go into the mine; no point, since the visitors yield more silver than was ever extracted from the depths.
The Great Laxey Mine Railway was originally constructed to serve the Isle of Man's Great Laxey Mine, a lead mine located in Laxey. The 19 in gauge railway runs from the old mine entrance to the washing floors along a right of way that passes through the Isle of Man's only remaining railway tunnel under the 3 ft gauge Victorian Manx Electric Railway and the main A2 Douglas to Ramsey coast road.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Queeyl Vooar Laksey
Laxey and the surrounding hills have ores of lead, zinc, copper and traces of silver. These were mined in a small way from the 13th century but the process ramped up in the 19th, and deeper mines required incessant pumping to prevent flooding. By then steam power was replacing watermills on mainland Britain, but the Isle of Man lacked coal. This huge waterwheel (also known as "Lady Isabella") was built in 1854: at 72 ft 6 in (22.1 m) in diameter it's the world's largest still in use. Water from higher up the hill is siphoned to the top of the tower and falls onto the wheel buckets in a "backshot" design. It rotates 3 times a minute and the motion is conveyed by a 200-m rod to a rocker that drives the pumps. Visitors also explore an old mine adit.