While i realize the mine picture below of a Pennsylvania mine is perhaps not typical and is of a larger mine than typically modeled, the scenery surrounding the colliery is piles of mine waste and any trees appear dead or at least leafless.
I think many model railroad mine scenes are either too green or too clean. where is the waste?
how accurate is the picture?
is the best way to model this slopes covered with materials similar to ballast with more variation in size and color?
Hi Greg,
I remember the PA coal fields very well from Sunday family drives into that area and a few train trips (I’m a native of Reading, PA) The photo immediately brought to mind the Glen Burn Colliery in Shamokin when I was there in 1973. The mountain of waste was/is known as the Cameron Culm bank. I remember the culm banks being distinctly black and appearing to be a finer grain (from a distance). Maybe a mix of black and dark gray would work. Do a Google on the Glen Burn Colliery Cameron Culm Bank and take a look at the images. Every mining scene I have ever looked at on layouts…they were…too green and clean.
Mark H
This isn’t exactly apples to apples.
I remember going through Sudbury, Ontario in 1965 on the CP Canadian. All you could see for miles was pink granite stained almost black with soot from the nickel operation. Trees? What trees? None. Nada. It was commonly reffered to as a ‘moon scape’. I was only 11 years old but I understood the incredible environmental damage that had been done. Then we saw the huge slag piles.
Anyhow, I think that if you are modelling an active mine with a smelter then greenery in the immediate vicinity would be minimal. However, if the mine had been closed for several years or more modern environmental controls had been installed then there would be lots of new growth trees and shrubs. Sudbury has recovered fairly well thanks to the taller smoke stacks and scrubbers although the bush around it is still a bit stunted.
Dave
There are several reasons why vegetation could be impacted around coal mines. Slag or culm piles are one. The smelting that Dave mentions is actually associated with hard rock mining, but coal used in the process can add to the pollution generated by the release of sulforous and chlorine compounds from the metal ores, also.
Around coals mines, the slag piles are subject to leaching from rain or othere water passing through them, so vegetation downhill from them would be affected to some degree, while areas uphill might be fine.
In older pics, surrounding trees were often gone because they were cut for mine props.
Remember that trees return. A long-lived mine might see a big impact from mining at first, but a couple of decade later things are growing back rapidly.
Mike:
Your mention of rain brings up another aspect of the deleterious effects of smelting. In the 50s and 60s, and likely before, the area south west of Sudbury was renowned for its crystal clear lakes. You could literally see down 50 or 60 feet into the water and there was almost no algae or weed growth. The waters were considered to be amongst the most beautiful places on the planet. Then, in the last half of the 60s, researchers (from Trent University I believe - my almamater) discovered why the waters were so clear. It was because of the acid in the rain coming from the smelter exhaust in Sudbury. The area immediately around Sudbury was starting to recover because of the new taller smoke stacks, but all that had changed was that the pollution had been put higher into the atmosphere and was therefore moved further south west following the normal direction of easterly winds during wet weather.
My family had the good fortune of having a cottage in the area south west of Sudbury and I can personally testify to the beauty of the clear lakes. Little did we know. There were other symptoms too. The deer population crashed by almost 90% in the span of a couple of years due to the damage done to new vegetation. The crayfish disappeared, and those lakes that had been renowned for great fishing were now totally devoid of fish. The fishing still hasn’t come back.
Anyhow, I’m ranting!!!
Sorry
We humans are a rather stupid lot in some respects.
[2c]
Dave
Coincidentally, I was discussing this very subject with someone very recently. My own observations are based on coal mining in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Coal was usually accompanied by a lot of other, less marketable, stuff including slate and various other kinds of rock. When the coal came out of the ground, this material had to be cleaned out, and something had to be done with it. Since it had no signficant commercial value, it was disposed of in the cheapest manner, which means it was usually just dumped near the mine to avoid transportation costs. In my region, the material was usually called “boney”, although I guess other names may have been used. The boney pile was often massive, and often required earthmoving equipment to keep its size and shape manageable. These were the days before OSHA and EPA, so there wasn’t much — if any — regulation. Impurities would leach out of the base of the boney pile and into local streams in a reddish liquid flow called “red dog”. Since there was a significant amount of sulfur in the boney, the red dog was actually a dilute form of sulfuric acid, so you can imagine its destructive environmental effects.
The miners usually lived very close to the mine, and walked to work. It would not be at all surprising if their drinking water was tainted. As often as not, the houses lacked indoor restrooms. The miners’ houses, usually a fairly consistent, uniform design provided by the Company, were within sight of the mine and should probably be visible in the model scene. Other Community buildings such as the mine offices, a school, Company Store, church, Post office, etc. were located there too. Miners’ families often tried to individualize and beautify their meager homes as much as possible. I remember passing a miner’s house in Widen, West Virginia in 1962, where there was a sign saying the
In a different vein many years ago there was an actual coal mine casting that consisted of a vertical shaft and three or four horizontal shafts over each other. They were all three sided so they could be mounted in the fascia. Guess it didn’t sell too well. Think that may have been early 70s.
Bethlehem Mines was a part of our local scene including 20+ miles of mills (bar, rod, coke, etc.), industrial railroads, car shops (i.e. Bethgons), and a couple major dams**.** The hallmark of the mines, including the (company) coal towns, were darkish and cinderish surroundings. Don’t forget the red steel mill smokestack particles that only added to the gritty coal ambience.
Also see http://coalcampusa.com/
Those big waste piles were all over in Northeast PA. These days, many of them are disappearing as modern technology enables extracting the usable coal from what in the 50’s was just junk that was not economically usable. There are several power plants in the region that actually burn the stuff. Reading and Northern has some lucrative completely on-line business loading up car loads from these culm banks and transporting to the power plants.
Other areas had stripe mines in addition to the deep mines, and many of those have been covered over and planted, making things look much better than they did back whenthe mines were a going concern. This change takes years - not a coal mine, but just north of Allentown is Palmerton, which was the home of a huge zinc mine. The hills surrounding the area were all completely devoid of trees from the fumes and poisonous gasses given off by the smelting process. This all shut down some 40 years ago - just now are trees starting to come back. You can still tell something is different in this area, but it looks far better than what I remember driving through the area in the early 70’s.
–Randy
The era you are modeling would also have an impact on how nasty the surrounding environment is. Photo’s from 75-100 years ago mostly look like the photo you posted. More recent operations don’t indicate as much collateral damage to the surrounding area. Search on “mine” in WV over at railpictures.net and you’ll see lots of pictures with undamaged greenery surrounding the mine.
Another thing to keep in mind is that effects like this as well as weathering need to be toned down a little. You see a lot of weathering on models that while a fairly precise representation of real life, when scaled down ends up looking more like a caricature than a model.
My wife was born and grew up in Richlands, Va and she told how the the water in the streams was black.
Bob
I’m not very familiar with North American practice, but I did spend a couple of years (1958-1960) minefanning the area around Itazuke AB (now Fukuoka International Airport.) No question that the area was impacted - the ground nearest the mine tended to look like a well-used ash tray. The two largest mines had culm mountains fed by skip cars - conical heaps of grey(mostly) rock/gravel/sand/mud. the skips ran up tracks sloped about 20 degrees to level, while the waste dumped wherever the trips were and dropped down to its angle of repose. Frequent rains caused the stuff to slide, making more room closer to the skip tracks.
One thing that I notice about modeled mine scenes, apart from their unrealistic cleanliness, is the absence of minor structures. The biggest mine had a whole avenue of open-front shops for mine car and motor repair, machinery repair (drills, pumps, winches) and one that fabricated special props out of used rail and otherwise scrap steel. There should be an office, showers and a locker room, possibly all in one building. Even the ‘three couples and a dog’ mine had a couple of shacks with tracks leading into them.
One thing I saw in Japan that may or may not have an American counterpart. All the water used to wash coal dust off things went to a settling pond. The precipitate was mixed with a little clay, molded to shape and baked into bricquettes (like the ones used in backyard grills) or hibachi fuel (cylinders about six inches in diameter and six inches tall, with holes parallel to the axis, burned in something like a flower pot.) I once saw a locomotive with its tender full of those little pillow shapes. The closed building where they were baked wasn’t airtight, and smoke poured out of every seam.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with collieries from Northern Kyushu)
The original question was about coal mining though… there’s no coal within a thousand miles of Sudbury.
Sudbury’s issues were from the smelting of various metals mined in the area particularly nickel and copper. Not the mining itself.
Hmm, I don’t recall hearing any mention of the side business of making the briquettes, at least at the anthracite breakers. In the PA anthracite fields, the coal was mainly delivered to centralized breakers where it was sorted, washed, and sized. In the later years, from the 30’s on, this consolidation reached fairly extreme levels - and a huge shame that they just tore down the last of the big breakers - probably put a shopping mall there or something. A small mine would take coal by the truckload to a truck dump and load hopper cars, bigger mines would load up the hoppers directly, those trains would haul the mine run coal to the breaker and unload it, the breaker would do its thing, and then other rail cars would be loaded with sorted product per customer order.
I don’t know that they even bothered with any sort of settling basins for the dirty water - mostly it all flowed downhill to Pottsville where it gave Yeungling beer its distinct flavor. With less mining and stricter environmental controls, the beer tastes different. (mostly just kidding there - but there are old pictures where the water is black, no in many of the rivers and streams you can see the bottom)
–Randy
Hi Chris:
I think I indicated
that my post wasn’t spot on the OP’s topic in my first sentence.
And oh ya, what did they use to fire the smelters? Couldn’t have been coal could it? I wonder where all that sulphur dioxide came from?[swg]
Dave
In an earlier post I mentioned my wife describing the water running black in the streams but I forgot the coke ovens. On a pitch dark night we were driving along when we came upona long row of blood red large oval shaped lights. They were the coke ovens. I never saw them during the day so I have no idea of what they looked like, but they were very impressive at night.
Bob
Since anthracite has been my modeling theme for some time, I’ve accumulated a small library of TOC period coal mine and colliery photos. Leafing through them for the purpose of this response, I did not find a single photo of a working colliery that was not in a wasteland setting. The photo in your IP is typical for both large and small anthracite mining operations from the late 1800’s to the early-mid 1900’s.
Jim
it’s been hard for me to find photos of mines or collieries smaller than that in the original photo and similar in size to modeling kits other than small operations that are simple holes in the side of hills or tipples probably handle with trucks. So i have a hard time imagining real mines similar to modeling kits.
Oh yeah! That’s the typical MRing challenge of putting a 10+ pound industry in a 2 pound space.
Mines could be of any size since they typically deal with extraction only; so one could be represented by as little as a truck dump or a modest building. Collieries did extraction, cleaning and grade separation which required a lot more infrastructure. Google and eBay images will show many examples but obviously both grew larger as the industrial age matured.
The common MRing wisdom would be to choose the type of industry you need, then, apply the usual bag of tricks of selective compression, building flats and “just-behind-the-hill-operations” to create the illusion to justify the rail traffic you need.
Jim
Hello All,
Coal mining here in Colorado has occurred in several regions.
The south-east of the state near Trinidad (site of the Ludlow massacre), the west-central, south-western and on the north-eastern plains.
I have visited the south-east and west-central coal producing regions.
My wife’s family worked the mines in Berwin, Colorado, near Trinidad. When asked about what age the “boys” went to work in the mines? Her father’s response was, “When they were big enough to carry the ‘Growler’ lunch buckets.”
The topography in this area; near the New Mexico border (Raton Pass), is high-plains dessert with Arroyo cut canyons. The photos from her family’s album shows company towns built at the Adits.
Railroads ran through these canyons to transport the coal to either the Coke ovens at Cokedale, Colorado, or the smelters in Pueblo, Colorado.
Company towns in this area had “Beautification” contests for the miners homes along with YMCA’s and the typical company stores. Because of the lack of naturally occurring trees in the surrounding areas there was little noticeable dessication of the surrounding landscape.
In the central-west part of Colorado, that I have visited, the mines seem to be more of the “drift” or “slope” type, compared to the “strip” or “open pit” mines of the north-eastern plains.
The processing facilities that I have seen in the central-west region have a small footprint and little impact on the surrounding area. Lots of trees and vegetation.
Contrasting the coal producing areas of Colorado to the town we live in; which was founded on hard-rock mines seeking gold but resulted in huge silver strikes, the landscape was shaped by not the ditritus of the mines but the clear-cutting o