Slightly off topic, but we had a 2-3 mile long railroad “tramway” like that in our little town. They would extract Feldspar from a mining pit, hoist it up by a steam powered crane, and open the crane into small rail cars just like that. The Feldspar mine was abandoned in the early 1900’s after a fire burned the mining buildings. The tramway was removed, but the evidence of the roadbed and ballast for it remains today. The Feldspar mines are now small lakes.