Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum
After the closure of Eldon sidings all clay exports were via lorry. For several years the clay was carried from the mines across the A351 by trains to the "Lorry Drop". It was realised that the lorries could take the clay directly from the mines and the cost of maintaining a railway system avoided. The transhipment buildings were raised to accommodate the lorries beneath them and in the early 1970s the railway system sold partly into preservation and the rest scrapped. Use of narrow gauge railways continued underground at Norden No 6 & 7 mines until all mining operations ceased in 1999.
Mining industry of Angola
Angola is also rich in several other mineral resources that had not been fully exploited by the early twenty- first century . These include manganese, copper, gold, phosphates, granite, marble, uranium, quartz, lead, zinc, wolfram, tin, fluorite, sulfur, feldspar, kaolin, mica, asphalt, gypsum, and talc. The government hopes to resume mining in the southwest for crystalline quartz and ornamental marble. It has been estimated that 5,000 cubic meters of marble could be extracted annually for a period of twenty years. A state-owned company mined granite and marble in Huíla and Namibe Provinces, and in 1983 it produced 4,450 cubic meters of granite and 500 cubic meters of marble. Since then, the company has ceased production in order to re-tool with modern machinery. Quartz production, however, was suspended indefinitely because of the military situation in areas near the extraction sites in Cuanza Sul Province.