Posts Tagged ‘Coal’
Tour-Ed Mine part 2
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A simple fact, known by most photographers, is that the people and particularly the Coal Miners of Appalachia make for absolutely fantastic subjects, when the question of portraiture comes up. As the saying goes – the map of the world is written upon that face.
That’s Bob, a retired coal miner who was our tour guide at the Tour-Ed Mine and Museum, in Allegheny County’s Borough of Tarentum, which can be found after about 40 minute’s worth of highway driving east of Pittsburgh.
Bob was demonstrating how you’d keep the roof from collapsing in on yourself, were you to find yourself working in a coal mine.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m afraid I just have to get used to the presence of LED lighting everywhere, despite the fact that its garish coloration makes everything resemble the 1990 Warren Beatty movie production of ‘Dick Tracy.’
It’d been a while since I executed any low light photography, as a note. Real pleasure to slip back into the groove down here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob demonstrated several of the mechanical tools used in his trade. A sort of rock drill, various systems that moved coal particles along a conveyor belt, a kind of vehicle that replaced the Donkeys which once hauled the mined coal back up to the portal. It was all pretty neat.
And loud, super loud, especially so in the confined spaces when he activated the equipment. Once again, and the third time I’m saying this, I would not have lasted a half hour at this job.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This gizmo was set into the floor, and there was a conveyor belt which moved towards those two lobster claw looking appendages, designed to sweep coal towards the belt, and fall into a chute that went to god knows where.
Wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob described life on the job to us. He filled us in on how miners communicate in the dusty dark environment, via head motions that move the lanterns on their hats in patterns.
Bob also said this manner of communication got so incorporated into his thoughts that he’d be at home and if his wife asked if he wanted dinner, his answer would often involve him just rotating his head around in a circle so as to say yes.
Bob was very, very good at presenting this material, and it was obvious he’s conducted this tour hundreds of times.
From one guide of unconventional places to another, good show, Bob.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I pulled my usual ‘blind shot’ gambit on the way back to the surface.
Shooting with the camera’s autofocus locked in the dead center of the frame, and hoping for the best. Lots of pictures of motion blurred rocks, but that link will take to iterations of the shots at Flickr if you’re curious.
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself had a great time here, which we followed up with a pretty nice luncheon at a nearby establishment called ‘JG’s Tarentum Station Grille,’ which is housed in Tarentum’s 1913 vintage former train station.
Good stuff, and Our Lady in particular was pleased indeed.
After lunch, well…
Back tomorrow with all that…
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Tour-Ed Mine and Museum, Tarentum PA
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular location has been ‘on my list’ for a while now, and were it not for having shattered my left ankle a while back, it would have already been visited.
Our Lady of the Pentacle joined me for this trip, which involved a not so long drive to one of Pittsburgh’s neighboring communities – Tarentum.
Tarentum is where the Tour-Ed Mine and Museum is found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The conceit of this experience begins with a short lecture, which is followed by a visit to a former coal mine, which is found some 160 feet below the surface. They sell tickets, and it’s a popular attraction.
We all piled into a ‘Man Riding Car’ which would carry us down to the depths. It was an interesting group, one which included families with young children. A cool vibe was in the air.
Yep, when I get interested in something, I’m ‘all in.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After piling into the tracked vehicle, it was all ‘shake, rattle, and roll’ on the way down. One of the things I soon discerned on this trip was that I wouldn’t have lasted a half hour at this job.
A blossom of existential horror was constantly unfolding, along with an illogical sense of paranoid terror that was stalking around at the edge of thought, polluting the environment between the ears and behind the eyes. I’m a little bit claustrophobic, it seems.
Our guide through these stygian depths under Tarentum was a retired coal miner, named ‘Bob.’
50 years on the job, he said. 12 hours a day, and six days a week. Bob mentioned that if even if you were having open heart surgery at six in the morning, the boss would still expect you to come in after lunch or lose ‘your place.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you can see above, the ‘Man Riding Car’ is rather shallow in terms of verticality, and it took a bit of a wiggle to get my fat butt in and out of it.
Historically: the coal industry would send recruiting agents to Southern and Eastern Europe, mainly, bringing people over who were Serfs in their home countries. They’d emigrate, and join the coal extraction work force in Appalachia, and along the way become Americans. The promise.
The agents and the bosses promised these people freedom, and a chance at fortune, and then when they arrived here… some of the darkest forms of capitalism awaited them, many of which which made the feudal system back home seem comparatively liberal and progressive… the company store, the Coal and Iron Police, the unincorporated company towns…
Another day older, and deeper in debt… huh?
Good old captains of industry, what a bunch of coy rascals they were. Definitely not Robber Barons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You are obliged to wear a hard hat down in the Tour-Ed mine, as even a no more than five foot and nine inches tall but humble narrator kept accidentally bopping his head on the roof.
Bob continued with his demonstrations of the equipment installed down here, and regaled the crowd with tales of working in the extraction industry, spiced up with witty commentary and all ages jokes. I got the sense that Bob also answers to ‘Grandpa.’ He had that vibe about him.
The Pittsburgh Coal Seam forms a narrow band in the Appalachian soil’s Layer Cake, sometimes stretching less than five feet from top to bottom, but more often it’s around ten feet in depth. The economics of mining involve ascertaining just how far down you can afford to follow the seam, and transport the coal back to the surface, while maintaining your profit margin.
If you dig too deep, all sorts of problems can emerge.
Tour-Ed is what’s called a ‘Drift Mine,’ as the original miners back in the 19th century were able to start digging in at the surface level, and then they followed the coal seam into, and down the side of, the hill.
The entrance to a coal mine is called a ‘Portal,’ incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob demonstrated the actual task of freeing the coal from the seam, which involved lying on his side and picking at the seam to create small holes, into which explosive charges would then be inserted.
Once you collapsed a section with the boom sticks, you’d shovel the freed coal into a cart, and attach your ‘chit’ (a metal disc with your employee ID number on it, used for accounting purposes) to a hook installed on the thing, and a donkey would then pull the cart and coal up and out of the mine, where it would be weighed and then recorded into a ledger alongside your chit ID. That’s how what you’d get paid for the day was calculated. ‘16 tons, and what do you get?’
Piece work.
For 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. That’s how those ‘Captains of Industry’ got it done, back when ‘America was Great.’ Bootstraps. All that.
Bob said you could expect to pull 80-90K a year as a coal miner, but that’s in modern times, and it’s due to unionization. Further, he asserted that if you followed the Union’s safety rules to the letter, you’d be just fine working down below.
As mentioned above, I wouldn’t last a half hour down here. These people are made of far sterner stuff than I am.
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
What could possibly go wrong? Pfft…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bridgeville, PA., well, that’s a community which can be found within the South Hills region of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area.
Historically, Bridgeville’s economy was centered around coal mining, during the late 19th and first few decades of the 20th centuries.
Basically; Boom and bust, entrepreneur and robber baron, monopoly and trust, abandonment and dissolution. Usual story.
The coal people left behind a huge environmental mess, and it’s pretty routine to observe the waterways in this part of Pennsylvania running with bright orange water, suggesting that it’s runoff from abandoned mines that’s causing the pollution. The orange coloration is caused by dissolved metals, notably pyrites and iron, in the ground water. In prior mentions of Bridegville, I’ve mentioned the vast taxpayer funded environmental remediation efforts at work in the area.
Our Lady of the Pentacle has been taking a class in Bridgeville – and apparently – so have I. While she’s bene inside ‘a-learning,’ I’ve been wandering the streets, which are my classroom.
I recently spotted this charming feature, pictured above, which seems to be an open to the atmosphere coal mine portal. Lovely.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now that I sort of know what to look for, it’s everywhere.
Conversation with the locals reveal that it’s only been a generation or two since mine work was a common experience, for men in particular. My dad used to tell me that you could pick up non-union day work along the waterfront in South Brooklyn, unloading ships and loading trucks, back in the 40’s and 50’s. Wonder if it was the same sort of situation here, but with coal instead of maritime trade goods?
I’ve read that child labor was pretty common in the mines, as a note.
One was standing along the fence lines of a large industrial site, which in modernity hosts several businesses, and that’s where I spotted that chunk of rusting machinery pictured above.
That thingie looks like the remains of, to me at least, a ‘Coal Tipple.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The older structures at this industrial park display a characteristic masonry motif that one has learned to associate with the Pittsburgh Coal Company, a historical monopolist trust that was controlled by the Mellon Family.
Hey… where do you think that the extra money to start a university, and then a bank, came from for these Captains of Industry? They had poor people dig treasure out of the ground for them on 12 hour shifts, employed child labor, and colluded with oligarchal colleagues like Henry Clay Frick – who were the end customers for the coal at the steel mills – and with whom they conspired to set wages and prices – so everyone felt great about the whole affair, while drinking french wine in their baronial mansions, before moving to Manhattan. When the coal seam sputtered out, the trust moved on, leaving behind a real mess.
Captains of industry, right? Not ‘Robber Barons,’ right? America was great, back then, right? Which side are you on, kid? Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady’s class was scheduled to last an hour, so I had a somewhat limited amount of time available to me to wander about with the camera.
An interesting bit of trivia about this particular area, transmitted to me by the folks who were conducting Our Lady’s class (they are located within this complex), is that this section of Bridgeville seems to have been rich in deposits of Vanadium. So much so that a nearby road is dubbed ‘Vanadium Road,’ and that tenants in these industrial buildings need to set up specialized monitors and ventilation systems within, as the subterrene deposits of Vanadium produce radioactive gas, and the depositional strata associated with the element seems to include the compounds that produce Radon, with all of this reactivity happening deep down within the Appalachian Layer Cake forming the ground hereabouts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! That’s Wheeling & Lake Erie #6986 hurtling by.
Above and just beyond these tracks is a bus depot and maintenance garage. Below them is that open coal mine portal. Sigh…
The really annoying part of this scene is what they were hauling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Don’t know if the tankers were full, but they were pulling a long train of LNG tankers through a densely populated area. I’ve used the term ‘bomb train’ before, but it’s alarmist and somewhat disingenuous.
Let’s just say that if conditions were just right when said conditions went perfectly wrong, and any single of those tanker cars were to derail and became punctured… that would make the news. Remember East Palestine in Ohio, where a train went boom?
There’s a lot of ‘horizontal fracturing’ or ‘fracking’ oil company activity around these parts. Major part of the local and national economies, it is. Future generations will hate us for this, and talk about this industry in the manner which I do, regarding coal.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
