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Oak Island Ballast Pit
Oak Island Ballast Pit
Mile 55 from Windsor Junction on the Halifax Subdivision (Mile 70.7 from Halifax) at New Minas
New Minas was the location of several ballast pits used by the DAR. The most important was the Oak Island Ballast Pit located on th western side of New Minas beside the Cornwallis River. 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 metal business was located just above the Oak Island Pit and used the pit to scrap railway equipment in the 1960s, including Crane No. 3, the old Kentville yard crane.[3]
Gallery
Oak Island Ballast Pit viewed from the old DAR mainline, New Minas July 2012
Old DAR sign on the overgrown spur to the Oak Island Ballast Pit, July 2012
The Oak Island Ballast Pit and spur can be seen just to the left of the "New Minas" name on the Kentville to Hortons Landing topographic map, circa 1956.
