A few years ago we did a post-TCA Pittsburgh Convention swing that included time in Cincinnati where we were privileged to visit Bill Bramlage and his layout. Bill’s layout was (he has now taken it down as he is moving to a new house) a mixture of spectacular buildings, stretching from the floor to ceiling, and detailed scenes full of humor. One that really struck Mary Jane was a tunnel populated by hard working aliens.

On my layout, there was an area right under Rock Springs that always had shown promise for mineral deposits. Since mining is still a major industry in Arizona, I decided to hold this area open for future development and left an opening in the fascia below Rock Springs for the potential mine.

So, after seeing Bill’s workers, it dawned on me there might be an economically feasible way of developing a mine on the Seligman and Paulden lines. The idea lay dormant until the summer of 2005, when on the way home from the TCA convention in San Antonio, we spent a day in Roswell, NM. As you probably know, Roswell’s claim to fame is that it is the site of a crash of a space ship shortly after WWII. That means that there are lots of alien exhibits and more important, alien connections there. We were lucky and were able to make contact with a company who was interested in exploring the possibility of a mine on the S&P Lines and who was happy to contract for a workforce consisting of miners and supervisors - for a hefty fee, of course.

The early exploration crew set up shop in Rock Springs and luck was still with us. The test borings actually found a significant vein of Kryptonite right under Rock Springs where we thought something might be found. As you probably know, there is little market for Kryptonite on planet Earth, but it is in great demand in various locations throughout the Universe. For the S&P, that was good news as we were now going to get a long haul contract for the ore, shipping all of it off line to the space station in Houston.

My Martian contractors quickly recruited workers and started development work at the mine site.  Because of the tight confines under the existing town, I had to make sure the mine was portable and could be removed for maintenance when needed. Also, a separate power supply was brought in to power lights, a mine train and the mining tools. All is controlled from the Rock Springs control panel.

A necessity for operation of the mine is a mine train.  So off we went to find a suitable "narrow gauge" mine train - actally an HO scale set which works well for narrow gauge in O gauge.  Fortunately Baughman had a nice set which could be adapted to include an ore car and for the needs of its operating crew.

Although the mine goes deep into the ground and it is difficult to see all in a photo, you can see that the off-worldly crew has located the veins of Kryptonite and production is in full swing. It may seem like a rather large crew for such a mechanized operation, but my contract is for production amounts only.  So if the Martian’s want to employ half the planet, it is no problem for me.  In fact the bar owners in Rock Springs are pretty happy with this arrangement!

The only problem they tell me is that the sounds of jack hammers and daily explosions are pretty jarring in town.  But the folks there are getting used to it (and the wages being spent in the local businesses!).  Meanwhile the new mine offers great views for passengers on the limiteds traveling through the tunnel on the S&P lines.

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