I love the conveyors. Every mine I've seen with in-decline...

I love the conveyors. Every mine I've seen with in-decline conveyors winds up with whacking great piles of rock at the transfer points or bends (hint: 1:7 around a bend on a conveyor doesn't work) and expensive downtime. This lasts for as long as the miners are prepared to put up with it or until the conveyor is wiped out by a truck (deliberately?), at which point the mine reverts to trucks.

Successful conveyor declines are dead straight and are really only economic at production rates >2Mtpa, which this joint's never going to do. Try $15,000/m capital for the conveyor plus the incrementally larger decline against production rate and see what happens.