Another way coal is extracted – at the Beryozovsky open-pit mine.

Elephant in the room alert!…

Did you notice how at the Nazarovsky open-pit mine we saw zero… coal? Like, we visited this massive coal-mining operation, but didn’t see a single chunk of the black stuff?! What?!

Here’s the deal. The insanely massive mechanism that moves sandy rock from one spot to another was the main attraction – by far. So much so that that’s where all our tour time went – gawping at it, mouths agape! But not to worry, for next up was another open-pit mine – Beryozovsky – where we finally got up close and personal with actual coal ->

The mining here works a bit differently because the layer of non-coal-containing rock (called “overburden”) is thinner – plus there’s way more coal: the coal seam here is up to 60 meters thick:

So, here was our mission at Beryozovsky: get to touch some real coal in a genuine coal mine, and wander around some unique machinery and geek out over it. Spoiler alert: mission accomplished :)…

First, there was this kinda unimpressive-looking (compared to the bucket-wheel excavator at Nazarovsky) machine digging away; we headed over to it…

But if you check out that “unimpressive” machine from another angle, you start to grasp the sheer scale of what’s going on…

And up close? The size of this mining equipment barely fits in my camera’s wide-angle lens!

Check out the LEGO figure in the above pic!

Even these massive machines can only dig (or cut) a coal seam up to 30 meters high. And since the coal deposits here are 60 meters thick, they work in pairs: one cuts the upper layer, the other works below:

This mega-machine is an ERSHRD-5250 – built in the USSR.

Here’s a quick rundown of its specs:

– Weight = 4500 tons

– Height = 51 meters (like a 17-story building)

– Rotor-wheel diameter = 11.5 meters (smaller than Nazarovsky’s 16 meters, but still wow!)

Also: the rotor wheel has 22 buckets, each holding 600 liters. The wheel spins arounbd 40 times a minute. And in an hour this beast mines 4500 tons of coal!

The excavator moves on its own, but not on tracks (like at the previously-mentioned mines) ). It’s got these “metal skis” that press into the ground, lift the whole structure a bit, move it forward, set it down, and reset.

When it’s just doing its job without moving, the mined coal gets dumped onto a conveyor belt that delivers the goods to the folks who need it:

What else is cool? These excavator machines are one-of-a-kind – nobody else in the world makes them, apparently. They were built at the Zhdanov Factory in Mariupol, USSR. Back in the 1980s, when the whole Marxist-Communist experiment was on its last legs, we were still cranking out monster-machines like these. Makes me proud (it’s our history) – and hopeful (we pulled it off back then, so…?!).

Oh, and assembling this beast took a whopping two years.

Naturally, it guzzles electricity – so there’s a room with generators:

And some other views of this wonder-machine:

Now, some aerial shots to see it all from a different angle ->

There’s similar equipment working on the lower level too:

Those thin strips? That’s the conveyor belt system, hauling coal to the consumers: the Beryozovskaya Power Plant and a local coal-based materials producer.

The main conveyor line from the mine to the power plant is a crazy 15km long, and the coal mined at the site reaches the plant in 80 minutes (according to the engineers).

What a wild setup:

The overburden here isn’t too thick, so they clear it with smaller excavators (compared to the one at Nazarovsky) and haul it away in dump trucks.

The graveyard of old equipment. Wow – so much gigantic stuff was built back in the day!

They also told us coal comes in “young” and “old” varieties, with the old stuff being really old: from more than 300 million years ago! When we asked about dinosaur bones and whether they’ve ever found any in the overburden, the miners told us they had. But finding dinosaur bones is a production disaster since the mining stops and the paleontologists swoop in to brush away “one teaspoon per hour” to clear the “dinosaur zone”! Apparently, there have even been cases of “paleontological racketeering”, where respected scientists allegedly block further mining for dubious reasons. Maybe I misheard it, or maybe it’s not true, but the miners seemed to get visibly agitated talking about dinosaur remains.

And a few more nice photos…

Big thanks to the mine’s management for the warm welcome and awesome tour!

And that was that: Beryozovsky – done! Time to be flying back to our Krasnoyarsk Krai “base” – Krasnoyarsk city (this time over endless fields of rapeseed)…

And that wraps up our July whirlwind tour of heavy-industrial sites of the region.

We had a bit of time before flying home to check out the surroundings of the region’s capital. An excursion along the Yenisei River and nearby:

A view of the Mana River, a tributary of the Yenisei:

Over there on the river – dozens of folks rafting, kayaking, and paddleboarding:

And a few random shots of stuff that caught my eye:

And I didn’t come home empty-handed either. Check out my work trousers and jacket and a couple of personalized helmets! ->