DRBill wrote:I made the initial post about who the Wandering Woodsman was. He has some really nice videos, but I don't think he will be able to answer all of the questions I have.
1. What I would really like is to find a current, or retired miner in the Southern Field. Lykens area or Good Spring? Why slope mines vs. drift mines? Were these guys just going down into old slope mines and extending them. Very few drift mines.
2. The mines went N-S, but the veins went E-W, so how did they determine when and how to blast another hole into rock to get to the next vein?
3. We all know there had to be pillars, but how did they determine where to leave the pillars. How did they get the coal to the slope mine entrance?
Must have been by rail. Where did they get the rail, which is smaller than railroad rail? Muckers? How did they get rid of the overburden of rock to get to the next vein and get it out of the mine. Here in the southern field, I think the overburden is Pottsville Conglomerate. not shale. That's hard rock. Ventilliation? All of this mining is either electric or air powered. How did they get the air lines down and blow out CO2 and methane? Bunch of technical questions that only a miner could answer.
Okay, any miners, retired or otherwise want to comment. This is all the technical stuff about anthracite mining and should not be lost. We've all seen the pictures of abandoned mines, so let's hear it from the guys who worked there.
Bill
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Coming to this late and I sincerely apologize for my tardiness in responding.
(1)Coal was found at the surface near water courses or exposed in rock cliffs and it was hand mined from the exposed outcropping of coal until it was mined out or was no longer safe to mine by hand.
Most coal seams including the deep mined metallurgical Bituminous and Anthracite coal seams Alabama that have huge methane concentrations that are released when the coal is mined.
(2) like most early mines they simply followed the coal seam as it payed out they hand mined deeper this required them to narrow the tunnels and add more timber bracing for supporting the mine roof as the slope drift tunnel became deeper.
The near surface coal seams were affected by the overburden layers of mud that became limestone, slate stone and shale stone that covered the peat bogs and old forests that existed during the carboniforus periods up to 200 million years ago.
(3) experience taught them how large to make the pillars while mining as they also needed to mine a lot of coal. They found that leaving small pillars with narrow tunnels allowed them to mine more effectively and mining more coal in the process BUT this was long before mine engineering rock mechanics became a known science to design room and pillar mining patterns.
The blast holes were hand drilled up and loaded with black powder until compressed air rock drills came into use and after dynamite came into use it made the mining easier and faster to do.
a. core drilling came into favor to explore the earth to find more coal and other ores saving time and money in exploring for coal and other ores as tunneling was the only way to find valued ores from a surface location where coal was found.
As far as the rail used there are and were many sizes of railroad rail for underground mining and surface transportation use and the rail is sized in relation to the size of the steel railroad wheel and the weight of the rail per yard of length. railroad rail was originally made from cast iron and did not last very long and it eventually was replaced by steel rail. Railroad rail comes in 39 foot lengths which allowed the rail to be carried in forty foot gondola cars. I was lowered underground by securing it to flat cars and carried to the point where it was removed and installed by using railroad spikes pounded into railroad ties cut from local timber.
As to how it was removed from the mine face:
hand baskets
wheel barrows
pony carts
mule carts
horse carts
push cars on rails
compressed air powered muckers that were small track drive muckers that were used to load mine dump cars.
eventually battery powered haulage came into being that eventually was replaced by electric powered mining machinery that used track loaders converted from gas or diesel engines to electric motor powered muckers that used medium voltage/high voltage trailing electric power cables to power them
battery powered locomotives pulling side dump cars
electric trolley locomotives powered by medium voltage electricity (600-1000 AC or DC Voltage)
slope mines had single and double drum tugger hoists on the surface that were steam powered then electric powered to pull the coal cars up the rail car slope.
the locomotives were either pulled to the surface to have the batteries recharged or it was done underground in the designated battery room that was also a repair shop.
As far as mine ventilation went there was none until compressed air then electric powered fans came into use to disperse and delete the smoke and methane from the mine face and wood and brick walls were built to direct the fresh air ventilation to the mine face.
The out growth of this became brattice walls made from man made brattice cloth used to create the walls used to direct the fresh air to the mine face.
A further outgrowth of this was brattice tubing that was attached to mine ventilation fans that directed the fresh air to the mine face and also exhausted the smoke and fumes from blasting away from the mine face to the exhaust air tunnels away from the active mining area.
Spun Fiberglass ventilation tubing in long sections is used now as a permanent method to deliver fresh air to mine faces and to also serve as exhaust fume tubing in automotive and rail road tunnels where diesel locomotives are used to move goods and passengers.
I have probably forgotten a few things but I hope I have helped you gain a better understanding of it all.