City of Virginia

In the morning I was taken for a tour of Virginia and its surroundings. We started with an old Iron ore mineshaft that nowadays is filled with water. After being regarded as ugly for many years’ people of today see the beauty in the old water filled shaft and we visited a newly built area where the houses faced an old mineshaft just for the beautiful view. We also went for a walk in the centre of town and saw all the old buildings there. At lunchtime we met up with the Virginia Rotary club for lunch and we made a team presentation.

During the afternoon we went for a guided tour at US Steels iron ore mine, Minntac. Minntac is a company with 1200 employees and is very important for the economy in Virginia. We were guided by the Plant Service Manager Rob Tommasoni how made a god job explaining the process of Iron ore mining to us. The most interesting thing was being able to go up in a 240 ton truck. The truck is 21tf 9in high, 23ft 3 wide and 43ft 8in long. Just the tier is 10ft 7in high and the maximum speed is 38 mph. You felt really small standing on the ground looking up at it and being up in the driver’s seat didn’t make it look any smaller! It was also very interesting to see the amount of railway wagons that left the plant every day, 140 wagons five times a day!

We ended the day and our time in Virginia with food and social at the Coats Hotel. As always we were served really good food.