CHURCHILL FALLS

We did finally arrive at Churchill Falls. The Churchill River is the biggest in eastern N. America and the falls were at one time wider than Niagara with more water flow. The river was diverted to power a hydro electric power station. It is known here simply as the company. The company owns everything here, the houses, the stores, the school even the churches and all the land. No one lives here who does not work for the company. When a employee retires from the company they must move away.
The plant is located 1000 feet below ground in a chamber carved out of solid granite the whole underground area is bigger than 3 football fields. The water from the river drops 800 feet at a sixty degree angle through eleven 20 ft diameter tubes to turn the turbines, to produce the power.
Each of the eleven turbines weighs 400 tons, are were transported to the site on specially designed flatbeds, with a tractor at each end, they travel at top speed of 5 mph and can only be used in winter when the ground is frozen. Even the transformers each weigh 60 tons each.
The plant produces 5600KW at peak and when build was the largest generating station in the world, it is now the ninth largest but is still the second largest underground generating station.
It is truly a engineering marvel when it was built in the 1950's, and was built completely with Canadian technology. Security is very high and we were not allowed to see the control room or anyone working in the area.
We left Churchill Falls for Labrador City, the site of the worlds largest open pit mine, the drive was not as bad as yesterday but still the rain had left this section of 238 Km in just fair condition, however we past at least 6-7 graders working on the surface and behind them the road was good and we could travel at 70-80 k.
We had wanted to tour the mine at Lab city but the next tour was not until Thursday, so we dropped off the satellite phone, spend the night and tomorrow will cross into Quebec and the last 386 km of gravel road to Baie Comeau. Here's hoping the road is good.