Anthracite Region History

So, like i said over on the intros page, we have a group called abandoned mine research, inc. we have been running around the anthracite fields for the past 9-10 years photographing studying and researching the old mining operations in the area. some of our members work (or volunteer) at all of the anthracite mine tours as tour guides and for winter maintenance work . myself and adam volunteer at pioneer tunnel in ashland, banks works at the lackawanna no. 190 slope and volunteers at pioneer, and mike a. volunteers at the no. 9 mine tour in lansford. one of the things we did at pioneer last year was open an old gangway for part of the tour. in 3 months we shoveled out 250 tons of rock, muck old timbering and slate by hand into mine cars and hauled it outside. we run several tours a year through the different coal fields. generally the highlight is stopping at one of the 3 mine tours. next year we are starting something different where we are going to hit all 3 mine tours in one day, visiting all 3 coal fields, and all tours in the mine will not be the "standard" mine tour, they will be given by us. this im thinking will be a big hit but we will talk more about this later. if there is enough interest, we may do it once a month, im betting people will love this. another thing we do is restore old mine equipment. one of our most ambitious projects was the the total restoration of a 1926 whitcomb electric storage battery locomotive. we have laid over 300 feet of rail to run it on and have about a thousand to pick up yet. we also have several mine cars to restore for local organizations. for more information on our projects click on that link on our webpage. we all feel the anthracite history needs to be preserved and our goal is to restore equipment to operating condition to demonstrate how things worked and were done years ago. so, feel free to check out our website but plan on staying for awhile, we have over 5,000 photos we have taken over the years in and around old mines in the area. if anyone has any questions please ask!

chris

undergroundminers.com

heres a quick vid from our motor.......

http://www.undergroundminers.com/MOV07980.MPG - 56 meg

Now that's cool ,your own "train". Do you have enough space and track to make a circuit?

well i see wyou 22 liked it! check out the video link next to the headline


http://pahomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=22015

I saw that report on 22. Cool train. Do you have access to old photos or websites that have old photos of the coal mining era? Years ago I saw a picture of the Sugarnotch breaker. One of my hobbies is model building and I'd love to try my hand at a model of that breaker. Google comes back with no images.If you have any links, info etc I'd appreciate it.

model building eh? check this. built it a few years ago. mine cars i made out of balsa wood and aluminum and the motor i machined out of aluminum at our shop. built it around an lgb stock replacement motor. the "motorman" is from my buddys kid. he said he wanted him to drive

http://www.ironminers.com/mineforum/viewtopic.php?t=499

as for old pics we have some all over our site heres a few:

http://www.undergroundminers.com/oldpics.html

http://www.undergroundminers.com/oldwanamie1.html

http://www.undergroundminers.com/harry.html

http://www.undergroundminers.com/loree.html

http://www.undergroundminers.com/loomis.html

http://www.undergroundminers.com/sullivantrail.html

theres a bunch more, check the site out.

billw wrote:I saw that report on 22. Cool train. Do you have access to old photos or websites that have old photos of the coal mining era?

I have some and they are all high quality scans from 8x10's, they were available on my other site. Most go back to about 1920 or so. I'll be putting them on here once I get the mediawiki installed and integrated with the forum. Do you have a name for the breaker?