I lived on Trevorton Road about half way between Trevorton and Shamokin. I met an OLD retired miner by the name of Haven Wheary who talked about working a bootleg mine on "the road" as they called it. Haven is gone now from black lung, heart disease and complications from two broken backs from roof collapses. From what he told me it was around 1960 and they used a pickup truck as the hoist. The took the rear tires off and replaced them with rims. They wrapped the rope around the rims two times and the rope guy would either feed rope or coil rope depending on whether they were hoisting or dropping. He said there were four that worked the shaft and did pretty good. They got enough to heat their homes nice and toasty and sold the rest at below market rate so to speak for extra cash.
He told me went back in the deep shaft around 68' and that was when he was in his first cave in. I miss him and his stories. When the last of the old deep shaft miners move on we will have lost an era and dedication to the mines that we will never see again.
Rev. Larry
New Beginning Church
Ashland Pa.
Bootleggers
- 2001Sierra
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Please explain those terms better for us topside folks. Thanks for you efforts to keep us warm.grimmy wrote:We are still deep mining. 546' down, 1200' in. Driving gangway, and a double heading. Miner heading and Monkey heading.
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We are 546 feet down slope, then 1200 feet east of the slope on the work face. Above our gangway, which is where we load our coal buggy's, we have 2 more workings. A miner heading, and a monkey heading, driving east. The miner heading is above the monkey. So that means we have 3 workings on 1 level driving at the same time. With chutes running vertically connecting all workings, so gravity carries the coal to the gangway. Guy's load the coal in gangway buggy's, push to the slope buggy and off to the surface it goes.
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Our vein is 7 foot thick on average. We are in a thick spot for the last 100' to 150'. We are at 23' in the miner heading, down to 16'in the gangway. To thick to run straight through. Running 9' thick right now, and getting setup to rob out back to the slope. Coal is really nice, over 90% on the recovery side. Very hard, and brittle. We are not pulling a lot right at this time. We heist enough to keep going. Once we hit the limit, then rob back and really throw some coal on the ground. Thats when we have some fun!