Martinsburg Coal Mine Kit Question

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I got the Martinsburg Coal Mine Kit #1 (American Model Builders) from Walthers catalog (#152-164). I’m not too knowledgeable about coal mines and thought someone could answer my questions not covered in the historical part of directions. I imagine there are those out there who have built this kit

Does the coal come out of the ground inside the head frame? How is that done (with an elevator, shovel, manual labor)? The hoist from the hoist house to the top of the head frame lowers and raises what inside the head frame? How was the rock and dirt going out the trestle to be dumped, separated from the coal? Did manual labor with shovels get the coal into the loading chutes? What kind of a car or bin ran on the trestle to transport the separated rock and dirt?

Hal

2

It looks like the shaft is under the vertical tower in the head frame. Stuff coming out of the mine is lifted by a winch located in the winchhouse behind the mine, vertically out of the mine up to the horizontal portion of the mine. The material would probably be in some sort of large bucket or side dump that would be big enough to handl prop timbers down and miners to ride in it, in and out of the mine… The elevator bucket would dump into some type of rolling hopper. If the bucket contained ore or coal it would dump it into an hopper that would roll out to the end of the horizontal portion and dump the ore/coal down the chute into a hopper or gondola car. If the bucket contained waste it would dump into a hopper that rolled out onto the trestle and dumped along the trestle. Normally those types of hoppers had 4 small wheels and a tilting hopper that was manually tipped.

If you search for coal miner or coal mining pictures on the web you are bound to see some little hoppers like that.

3

Thanks Dave. This was what I was looking for, and does a good job of explaining how the mine worked. I thought the shaft was probably vertical and in the head house, but hadn’t thought of the waste being separated in the mine and lifted in its own load. Makes sense to have the chutes filled from a dumping car loaded with the coal.

Thanks so much, Hal