of one incline can be seen below in External links.) The southern side of the inclines was called the 'Company Side', as that was the side the company offices were located on; the northern side of the inclines was called the 'Donkey Side'. The system did not always function as intended and collisions, derailments and runaways were not unknown. The remains of several wrecked wagons still lie beside, or even some distance from, the incline formation. The Denniston incline fell a total of in 1,670 metres (83 chains or 1.04 miles), with some sections having gradients steeper than 1 in 1.3. The short-lived Koranui Incline on the other side of the valley was higher, with a total fall of , and over twice as long as the Denniston Incline, with a length of . Wagons could be delivered from Denniston to Conns Creek at a rate of 12 to 18 wagons per hour. The track gauge was the standard NZR track gauge of . The railway wagons used on the incline were mainly the common "Q" class hopper wagons, the hoppers of which could be detached from their wagon bodies and lifted by wharf crane over the hold of a ship, and the bottom discharge doors of the wagons then opened manually to discharge coal into the ships' holds. (Two images of a crane lifting a hopper out of a wagon and over a ship's hold can be seen below in External links.) The mines and roperoads The mines on the Denniston Plateau included the Banbury, Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, Whareatea, and Sullivan mines. The first mine was the Banbury, which began production in 1880. A double track gauge 560-metre long horse tramway was built from the top of the incline to the Banbury Mine above the Waimangaroa Gorge to carry coal from the mine to the top of the incline. Later, horse-power was replaced by a steam engine-powered moving endless rope to which mine tubs were hooked by chains for their journeys to and from the bins at Brakehead. By 1889, the double track tramway (now called a roperoad) had been extended through and beyond the Banbury Mine, past the Ironbrook Mine and on to the Coalbrookdale Mine—a distance of about . The roperoad system was renewed along a partly new alignment between 1900 and 1904. (An image of one of these roperoads can be seen below in External links.) In