Recovery of a Side-Tipper Wagon from Kutviken

The Discovery

During a kayaking trip in the summer of 2022, I discovered a mine wagon – a side-tipper – on the bottom of Kutviken, which lies within the northern part of the Högberg field nature reserve. Side-tippers were formerly a commonly used type of wagon on the haulage railways at mine fields and on various construction projects around the world.

Planning the Recovery

After several dives it was established that there was a reasonable possibility of salvaging the wagon. I then contacted the County Administrative Board of Värmland to find out what regulations applied to a salvage operation within the reserve.

An application for ”exclusive rights to salvage sunken property” was submitted to the County Administrative Board of Dalarna, which handles this type of matter. The application was made in collaboration with the community association ”Vi i Persbergsbygden” (We in the Persberg District), with myself as project manager.

Attempts and Recovery

Summer 2023: we carried out a trial lift of the wagon (image 1) to test the equipment. The wagon proved not to be as heavy as I had initially thought, as it had largely sunk down into the bottom clay.
Summer 2024: the wagon was salvaged and transported by water to Malmbergsviken, where Johan Knutsen met us with his crane lorry and drove the wagon to Tallnäsvägen, where it was washed and treated against rust.
Autumn 2025: the wagon was transported back to the Högberg field and placed in the Tilas adit as a memorial to all those who over the centuries at the mine fields of the Persberg district found their livelihood, and to those who there met a violent and early death.

The Wagon

Image 6 shows a side-tipper of the same construction as the salvaged wagon.
The load body of the ”Kutviken wagon” is missing.
The wagon has brakes on both axles. At the rear there was a platform where the brakeman stood and operated the braking using the hand wheel.
This type of wagon was common on the chute railways that existed at the Högberg field.
In image 3, at the end of the wagon nearest the camera, a piece of a torn rope can be seen, which may be a clue that the wagon was used on a chute railway. How it ended up in Kutviken we will probably never know.

Historical References

Harald Carlborg, in Persbergs Malmtrakt p. 371, writes about the chute railway at Krangruvan, most likely in 1856:

”It was single-track and the empty wagon was hauled back up by a counterweight pulled upward by the descending loaded wagon.”

This description corresponds well with Anton Sjögren’s drawing, a design that was most likely also used at the mines of the Högberg field. Image 7 shows the drawing of the chute railway, held at Värmlandsarkiv.

Further Reading

Follow the link and read about the Krangruvan railway, on pages 1–5. It makes for interesting reading about the problems with braking the loaded wagons, perhaps an explanation for the torn rope on the wagon.