A brief history lesson describing Atlas Coal Mine #3 and #4.

Atlas Coal Mine, East Coulee, is in the east central part of Alberta, in what is known as the Bad Lands--a dry, arid, semi-desert landscape.

Chasing chickens.

Playing in the coal slag.

Our engineer is giving everyone the heads-up on proper passenger etiquette.

During the wait for our rail tour some extra practice is in order.

Our turn is coming up for a authentic coal car ride, on a narrow rail gauge train tour. Following our train ride, we will join others for a tour up the gantry and into the hillside, coming out at mine shaft #3. Our exit point from the gantry is at the small shed with the green roof.

A little mist is helping keep folks cool. Not!

All aboard and ready to go.

The engineer and some enthusiastic young volunteers are making a rail switch.

In railroad terms, a rail switch is referred to as a frog. On hills or curves, the switch is called a dangerous frog.

Relics of yesteryear are scattered alongside the tracks.

The exposed sedimentary rock layers on the hillside, are referred to as the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. Black layers are coal seams, dark grey layers are mudstone, and lighter grey layers are sandstone. As these layers erode over time, fragments of dinosaur bone, petrified wood and other fossils are exposed.

Our next adventure is a tour up to mine shaft #3 byway of the gantry.

Not your typical miner I would imagine.

After everyone was outfitted with their individual headlamps and battery packs, our guide gave us a very brief history of the extraction of coal from the mine, and its journey down to the coal cars waiting at the tipple below.

Heading up the gantry steps.

Waiting for everyone to lighten up.

It is very dark inside the gantry. Time to turn our headlamps on.

The coal conveyor belt.

When there were injuries inside the mine, by far the quickest and most efficient way to get the injured miners back down was to transport them by the way of the conveyor belt.

More than just a pretty face.

It was huge!

Heading back down.

Coal, once it left the mine by the way of small gauge rail cars, typical of the ones we were riding in, was unloaded onto a conveyor belt inside the gantry. The coal then travelled down the gantry and into the tipple.

East Coulee and the Red Deer River.

This tipple's purpose was to load coal arriving from the gantry onto waiting railway cars. Tipples may also be designed to sort, store, and treat coal. This Atlas Mine tipple is the last industrial/wooden tipple in North America.

More old treasures of the past.