Christian Thams goes electric
Mining at Løkken Verk had its roots back to 1633 when King Christian IV of Denmark–Norway had opened the mine. At this time all mining was a privilege of the king. Later, in the 1800s, the mine was privatised and owned by Løkken Kobber og Kisværks Interessentskab. In 1868 the local farmer and sawmill owner Wilhelm A. Thams and his accountant Christian Salvesen from Leith, Scotland founded the mining company Ørkedals Mining Company and bought a number of small mines around Løkken. In the early 1880s Wilhelm's grandson, Christian Thams returned from Switzerland and took over the running of the mining company. He realized that to make money from mining, he had to purchase the largest mine of the all, but didn't succeed until 1896 when it no longer was feasible to manually pump out the water, and bought Løkken Mine.[2]
Christian Thams understood that for the mine to continue operation, there had to be built an electric water pump in the mines. He also understood that it would then be feasible to build an electric railway between the mine and the port at Thamshavn were the pyrites were shipped out, primarily to Germany. While Thams went abroad to get capital for the new mining company, Norwegian law required that permits to operate railways and power plants only were given to Norwegians. To solve this, a separate company, Chr. Salvesen & Chr. Thams's Communications Aktieselskab (Salvesen & Thams or S&T) was established in 1898 to build the railway, operate the steam ship SS Orkla (1908) between Thamshavn and Trondheim and build the power plant at Skjenaldfossen. By 1904 the mining company had acquired the majority of stocks in S&T and soon owned the entire company. The Orkla mining company has since evolved into the Orkla Group, a Forbes 500-company.[3]
Land was, after some conflicts, acquired or expropriated and construction was started. The construction was completed in 1908 and employed between 200 and 300 people. Originally the plans were to only build the line from Thamshavn to Svorkmo while the stretch from Svorkmo to Løkken was to be operated by a cable car. But Thams soon realised that this was a mistake and decided to extend the line to Løkken. This caused some problems since he needed to get permission from the Ministry of the Interior and was not allowed to operate passenger traffic all the way to Løkken before 1910. The line between Thamshavn and Svorkmo was opened on 10 July 1908 by King Haakon VII while the last section to Løkken was opened on 15. August 1910 by Prime Minister Wollert Konow.[4]
The railway got a unique combination of gauge and electric power. At the time of the construction standard gauge was common in Norway, but still the most common gauge, especially on industrial and branch lines, was narrow gauge. But the Thamshavn Line chose to not build the normal gauge, but instead metre gauge, a gauge only used one other place in Norway, on the Trondheim Tramway some 40 km away. Since the railway was the first to be electrified in Norway there was no standard of electric current and so Thams chose the somewhat unusual 6.6 kV 25 Hz AC, while the rest of the Norwegian (and some other Northern European) railway networks chose. Thams was venturing into an innovative area, since Benjamin G. Lamme had invented the alternating current electric locomotive in 1902 and there was no experience operating the system.[5]
