Thursday 7th September 2023 - Rumelange, Luxembourg

 

It was a very peaceful night with only the sound of owls to disturb us. The museum didn’t open until the afternoon, so we had the morning to investigate Rumelange. It is a pleasant enough town but not very exciting, with just a few impressive houses, probably from the time of the iron ore mines. We discovered some interesting facts about Luxembourg. It is the wealthiest country by capita in the world and most of its inhabitants speak three languages – French, German and Luxembourgish 20% of the population speak Portuguese as their mother tongue. We certainly heard all three of the major languages being spoken. Since 2020 all public transport in the whole of the country is totally free to residents and visitors. This obviously helps their efforts to reduce carbon production but there are still lots of cars on the roads.
We arrived at the museum just before 14:30 and had a quick look at the small museum before we were called for the tour. Almost all of the visitors were German speaking and so the tour was to be conducted in German. We were given an audio tour in English, which had a section for each stop on the tour. We boarded a narrow gauge mine railway and travelled in the open air, past our motorhome before entering the mine. Unlike most of the UK coal mines, this iron ore mine is entered by a nearly horizontal gallery with side galleries following the seams of ore. The railway line can therefore travel through the main gallery, allowing all of the ore to be taken out by rail wagon. We travelled for over 15 minutes on the train before alighting at a station and starting on the walking part of the tour. We were taken from the early days of the mine when miners used candles and hand tools, up to the days before the mine closed in the 1980’s when large machinery was used. There were many pieces of mining plant all through the mine, from railway locomotives and wagons to a totally automated drilling machine that drilled holes in a pre-determined pattern ready for blasting. It was a very interesting museum and is well worth a visit.
We had noticed that the museum restaurant opened in the evening as well as lunchtime and had good reviews so we booked a table for later. It turned out to be very good although almost all of the dishes came with chips.

Photos: In the early days, wagons were pushed out of the mine by hand, then came horses followed by steam, diesel and electric locos; Here is some of the more modern equipment.