Standing atop the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains at Empire, Colo., and looking across the valley to the Henderson mill reveals the immensity of one of the longest materials handling projects ever attempted.

From the mine to the mill, a route once traveled by railroad cars, a three-stage, heavy-duty belt conveyor now carries molybdenum ore for processing. The second stage, Production Conveyor 2 (PC-2), is the longest single-stage conveyor belt in the world at over 110,000 feet of belting. All three stages cover 15 miles from mine to mill.

A project that immense tests the sales, engineering and fabrication departments of a material handling distributor to the limits. The key to selling and servicing such an undertaking? Planning.

There's never been a conveyor this long, so the company responsible for completing it safely and on time would need to incorporate all the experience and information it could gather.

Conveyor Services Corp., headquartered in Blairsville, Pa., was given the daunting task of not only engineering the conveyor system, but also building PC-2 during the mine's 30-day shutdown period last year. The conveyor replaces 10 miles of underground and five miles of aboveground rail.

According to W. Michael McFerren, director of sales and marketing at Conveyor Services, the rail haulage system deteriorated during its 20-year operation to the point that the mine's owners, Cyprus Climax Metals Co., needed an alternative to costly repairs of the old system.

Since no project this large had ever been completed, the engineering had to be done "from scratch," McFerren said.

"The primary concern was the installation of 111,500 feet of conveyor belt for the PC-2 conveyor. It was determined that the PC-2 belt would be pre-spliced, stacked in three piles and pulled on in three stages," he said.

Crews staged the belt at an angle to the conveyor and pulled it on using high-capacity equipment designed and built for the project. McFerren's company completed the installation of PC-2 in the allotted time using two 12-hour crews.

There are 65 splices on the 48-inch-wide belt. After hauling three huge rolls of belt into position on the mountain, the final three splices were done during the installation and rollout in the field, located at an elevation of about 9,000 feet.

Belt winders pulled the PC-2 belt using 150-horsepower motors and over 120,000 pounds of torque at the shaft. Pulling required over 16,000 continuous feet of 1.25-inch steel cable.

Among requirements vital to projects this large are complete vulcanization and installation services and an in-house engineering department that could respond at a moment's notice, McFerren said. Manpower and equipment levels were increased for the project.

"Henderson was the largest project we've ever been involved in. We are looking forward to future projects that offer the same level of challenge and demand the highest level of expertise and performance," he said.