Dominion Atlantic Railway Digital Preservation Initiative - Wiki
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Oak Island Ballast Pit
Oa Island Ballast Pit
Mile 55 from Windsor Junction on the Halifax Subdivision (Mile 70.7 from Halifax) at New Minas
New Minas was also the location of several ballast pits used by the DAR. The most important was the Oak Island Ballast Pit located beside the Cornwallis River in New Minas. It was named after a gravel hill in a bend of the Cornwallis River called Oak Island (not to be confused with the famous treasure island in Lunenburg County or another Oak Island at Avonport). It was served by a spur on the south side of the mainline from an east facing switch at Mile 55.[1] A new ballast pit in New Minas opened not far away at Mile 52.2 in the 1960s.[2] The Joseph Fritz scrap dealer was located just above the Oak Island Pit and used it to scrap equipment in the 1960s, including Crane No. 3, the old Kentville yard crane.[3]
