Ear on Chicago; Coal Mine at Museum of Science

Those two long and two short blasts on that whistle were from the fabulous coal mine, which is located in the museum of science and industry on Chicago's south side. In just a moment, a trip into this coal mine will be taken by some of the visitors to the museum. Now, we're going to take a special trip in just a few moments with Bruce Mitchell, who is a demonstrator. Bruce, how about the men that work on this coal mine? The men who work on the coal mine are all retired miners. Many of them worked in mines so early to have worked with mules, pulling the trains, and the old pick and shovel bays. Is that right? This gentleman up here, I suppose he's an old -time miner. Yes, he was associated in the mining industry with the very machinery that is installed here in the museum when it was originally installed at the Old Bend coal mine number 17 at Johnson City, Illinois. I wonder if I could talk to him just a moment. Surely. Could you come over here just a second, sir? I don't want to take you away from a busy job here. Could I have your name?

Hey, T. Moore. I understand you're an old -time coal miner. I'm a hoisting engineer. All right, we'll change that. That's the official title, hoisting engineers, that right? When were you a hoisting engineer on a real coal mine? I began in 1906 and ran until 1929. Where was that? It was in Williamson County and the Old Bend coal corporation. Tell us something about this equipment. I understand you had a hand in bringing it up here to the museum. No, I put it in at the mine. Well, you put it in at the mine. Well, that was way back. When was that? That was in 1923. And then it was new equipment, of course, then. And when was it brought up here to the museum? In 1933, 10 years later. And now, well, tell us about this. Now, for example, this platform you're standing on, which is surrounded by red guard rails. There's a telephone up here, a dial, and then a group of lights, a telephone over there on the right side. What does all that mean? Well, that's our instrument

board there. We turn the power on and off on this switch, when we want to run the hoist. Now, you just got through running that hoist. Is it down as a, what do you call it, the elevator? We call it the cage, the cage. The cage is down in the mine now. Yes, it is. Let me ask you just a question or two about the equipment now up in front of you. You mentioned this platform you're standing on was from the old bend mine down in Johnson City. It was a Johnson City. That's right. What about this winch on this cable here? Where did that come from? That came from the same place. What about the tipple? That was from Pena, Illinois, but I don't know what mine. So that's a real tipple. This is a real winch. This is real equipment here. That's right. What's the purpose of blowing the bell? I'm blowing in the whistle, rather, and ringing the bell. Well, the bell is a signal to the cageer. Growing the whistle here would be to attract the public's

attention. At the mine, it is to put on the coal whenever you get, whenever it gets slow with the harvesting, and the coal runs out, and the engineer blows for coal. And he rings, does it? You don't have a bell at the mine, do you? No, we have the same equipment, we have here. We have the bell, but we just use that when the men are coming up and going down. And the cageer at the bottom bells us away with a air bell, just like that. He has one on the bottom. And when he rings one bell to hoist, three bells, if men are coming up, and two bells from the top to the lower down, those are the signals that are planted there on the board. All right, thank you very much for talking to us, and we'll probably see you when we come back. In just a moment, we're going to take a trip down into that coal mine. We have reached the top of the temple now. It took us just a few moments to climb the steps, up all about maybe 35 or 40 feet above, where we were

just a moment ago with the winch. And we're up here at the entrance of the cage. Now, as I said, as I called it, it was an elevator, and that's exactly what it is, except in minor's terminology, it's known as a cage. Right. Now, we're going to talk to a man right here who is the operator of the cage. What's your name, sir? Dalton. CS Dalton. Where are you from, Mr. Dalton? Well, I'm originally from West Virginia. Did you work in the coal mines in 37 years? Have you ever worked in the Illinois coal mines? No, sir. What kind of coal mines they have in West Virginia? Well, we have a tumious south coal, and then we have a between hard coal and south coal which is known as farblock coal. Is your operation there similar to the operation of this mine right here? They shaft mines, yes, sir. Well, now tell us what you do here. How do you operate this cage? Well, we come to the top of this year for a load of people, and we give three signals shared to the engineer. Go ahead and give them to him, and we'll listen.

And he signals back with one. That indicates. That bell I just heard. He knows that I'm going to load men on to the cage. And he signals back for to go ahead and load them. All right, let's go. Come on, let's go into the cage, and get us lowered on down. Now, we close the door with this share button here, which closes these doors and they're automatically closed until they hit the bottom, and then they automatically open. We push this other button here that lets the engineer lors into the mine. I can feel it going down now. Now, the state mining law of Illinois and other states prohibits a man cage from dropping into the mines faster than 600 feet to the minute. The miner doesn't have the protection of the sides that we have on this cage here. He rides an open cage. He must hold to the chain overhead and lean towards the center

for his own protection. Now, in this particular case, on this cage it takes us about 50 seconds to go from my top landing down to the bottom of the shaft. And this chain here is what the miner's actually hold on to. Then there's a little... put up our little high for the purpose of people coming in here so it won't bump again and so forth. Now we're at the bottom of the shaft, and now at this weight, please. And you'll go around here to the rotary dump, and that man down there will demonstrate that rotary dump and talk to you down there. All right. We'll go around to the left. And thank you very much for helping us out. While we've come around the edge of the elevator now, just a few feet away, I keep calling it an elevator. I'd better get in the coal miner's lingo here and call it a cage. What's your name, sir? Cofur. John Cofur. Where are you from, John? I'm down Marial Noise. You a coal miner? Yes, sir. How many years? I was all about 15 -20 years. Well, now tell us about this rotary dump that we just heard about. Well, this represents the bottom of a large modern mine. They use these rotary dumps to handle

their coal, and it's all handled automatically. I'll show you how to operate. Coal cars in there now. There it goes. The rotary is beginning to move. The coal is dumped out, down below, into a shaft. And back the rotary comes, bringing the coal car upright once again. Oh, what about down below? Does the coal go down there? Yes. If that didn't, if I didn't shut that off, that run continually. Automatically, it would pull another car right on. And from here, the coal goes into a large hopper beneath here. It's automatically weighed and recorded on these scales here. And from here, that's large hopper. It holds about 75 to 100 tons. And it, in turn, automatically loads the skips. It takes the coal out the surface. They're large steel hoppers. They're similar to the cage you came down. They're just large steel buckets. They take this coal up. Oh, and these large mines, they're taking 15

to 20 tons of the hoys. Now, they dump it over a set of shaker screens on top, where it's graded into different sizes, and goes into the railroad cars. Where are we now? Did you weigh that coal car right there? I did, it weighed about 4 ,500 pounds. The coal in the car, yeah. The scale is right here in front of us, the one he was talking about. And the coal in that car weighed 4 ,500 pounds. About that, yeah. Uh -huh. Okay, well, that pretty much takes care of it. What's our next stop? Well, up only inside. And I'll take you inside on a train, or you can see the rest of the mine. All right, fine. Let's go in there. We are now inside of the train and prepared to take our trip. What's going to happen to us here? Well, it's quite the coal of a man trip in the mines. That's a trip it takes the miners into the work of a morning brings them back out at night. In the large mines, they have to go in some time, four and five miles, it's too far to walk, so they take them in on these trains and bring them back in the evening. And that's the trip we're going to take now. That's the trip we're going to take now. Hang on and be there. Go right ahead. There are a couple of visitors with us along this trip and some of them are

rather young. Well, here goes the trip. It's rather noisy in here. I wanted to talk to this young boy sitting across from me, but I don't think he could hear me. Moving a little bit faster now. Well, here's the end of the trip. We're now inside where they're going to do some digging. Let me ask this boy right here. What's your name, son? Ellie. What's your last name, Ellie? Ellie Stone. Where are you from, Ellie? Um. Ellie's point to his

head. Milwaukee. It took you a while to figure that out. Why? Well, no. What do you think of this coal mine? I think it's nice. You think it's nice? What's your name, sir? Stone. Well, you're... Well, you're his brother. How old are you? Twenty -four. And how old is Eddie? Four. Four years old. How come you're out of kindergarten today? Do you go to kindergarten, Eddie? No. Did you ever see a coal mine before? You're shaking your head, no, so I guess that's the answer. All right, let's move on out and see how they dig this coal. We have reached a spot now where they're going to start digging the coal and there's a machine right down here in front of us. Could we have your name, sir? Harry Higgins. Harry, tell us about this machine. Well, this machine, it cuts a depth of six feet and it's equipped with a chain with cutters on. Picks like you see here and picks goes around. They cut the coal. And the reason we cut this coal underneath like this is to weakness so as when it's shot down, it makes a better grade of coal to load out. Now, the miners that use these machines when they

come in in the mornings, they start in one corner of the place and they cut a depth of six feet. The take that could clear it across to the other side of the place, six feet deep. Is this what is known in the coal mine as the cutting machine? The cutting machine. I've heard that expression. Goodman, the goodman. Short wall under cutting machine. This seam of coal is about, what, about eight feet tall? Well, about seven and a half. And what's above it? Looks like a... Well, that's shale, it's rockers. There's different kinds of shale, you know? There's limestone, there's sand rock and all kinds of different kinds of shale above that. See? Looks like several layers of shale. Yeah, there is a different color. One is black, one is white. Yeah. And above that is what? Limestone? Yeah. Sometimes limestone. And then we call it cap rocks, see? Different kinds. They have different names for it in the miners' language, you know? Well, as he explained down at the bottom of the seam of coal, there's a large gap where they've been cutting. Yeah. So let's... There's a circular cutting instrument there and we're going to watch it as it goes. Why don't you turn it on and go right ahead? Right. We'll listen now. Now, as that machine operates, the blades stick out

from a long tongue out of the machine and reach in there about six feet or so and the cutting instruments rotate on some sort of a chain and they cut it in there. Now, you explain that, you can probably explain it a lot better than I can. Now, this is a cut a bar. It's six foot long and it's equipped with a chain and picks these picks on the side there's the cutting of the coal as you see there. Now, they have to be changed every once in a while when they get dull. See? Let's take them off. Now, as the machine moves across the place, it cuts six feet deep right across. This is the first time we've ever seen a shovel. I always thought to use a lot of shovels in the mine and finally we see a scoop shovel over there. That's for the hand loaders. That's to load the cool load by hand. You don't do that much anymore. Well, in some mines, yes, but in the large mines today, they have loading machines. Now, after the finished cutting, they pull out and the load onto their own truck, they pull into another room and they go through the same operation, they cut six to eight places in a working day. They cut what? Six to eight places in a working day. Six to eight places.

Yeah, the minutes run the machine. All right. Well, I will assume that you've got them all cut. Then what happens? The holes have to be drilled. There has to be three holes in the top, two in the bottom, in a place 24 foot wide. The men that do that are called drillers. Now, I'll show you how they operate. All right, go right ahead and we'll watch. Now, this is what they call electric drilling machine. Now, this two man comes in and the drill holes. What's the set this up? They start the drill? Like, do you see here? Go ahead. Okay, now you've got the holes drilled. Now, after the drill the hole, they have to load them with a blast and powder. Now, you see three sticks of powder on that box there. Now, they put two to three sticks in each hole. Now, one of those sticks is equipped with a blast and cap with wires attached. Now, they put those sticks of powder in each hole as far back as

them get it. Then, they tamp each hole with clay. Then, the wires belong to the blast and cap hangs out of the hole. That gives them a chance to hang the cable on. That's one of the sticks in the mine. That's right there. That's the blast and cap hanging out there. One wire is white and one is red. Now, after the men have left the mine, this men come down at night call shot fighters. They carry a battery with them and a cable. Now, that cable is 150 feet long. They attach the wires of one end of the cable to the wires hanging out of each hole. Then, they go back to a safe place and they shoot these shots down one at a time. After all the shots have been shot down, there's approximately 50 tons of coal to load out the next morning. In other words, when these blasts take place, the coal crumbles and falls down here on the floor of the mine. Then, it has to be loaded out. Now, in the large mines today, they have what they call loading machines, electric loading machines. They load the coal out. Now, around the corner, there's a demonstration of electric loading machine around there. We're going to see that, but

I want to ask you a question first. Are you from Scotland? No, from the north of England. You castle. You're not Scottish? No, my wife is. Well, you sound as if you're Scottish. Well, I'm from the north of England. How long have you worked in the mines? About 45 years. Overseas and here too. All over you. All right, thanks a million here. Are you going over and show us this other machine? No, there's another mine there, I'll show you that. All right, thank you very much. We have now reached the loading machine, and it's going to be operated in just a moment. First of all, let me have your name, sir. Tom Walic. Where are you from, Tom? You come from Yugoslavia. Where do you live here in Chicago now? Oh, yeah. You work in the coal mines? Work in the coal mine for 25 years before. Where? Senabil Ayua. And part of southern Illinois. Now, this is a loading machine. Yes, this is a joy loading machine. Tell me how it works. Well, turn it on and we'll see it. We'll see how it works for a minute. OK. This is a very operating machine. Well, it would have been difficult to talk while I was running, so we let it run for just a minute. Now, I

can tell you what happened. What was going to happen and what actually would have happened had this been loading coal. Actually, there wasn't any coal to load at this particular spot. But two long arms reach out and sort of rotate in a semi -circular manner and grab the coal and it'd be big chunks, wouldn't it? Yeah, big chunks, they're getting all over to the car, to the channel here. Then those big arms drag those chunks of coal up into a conveyor belt. When the miners are planning seven hours a day, we'll load four hundred tons of coal and one day for this machine here. What do you call this, a conveyor belt that moves it up? Yeah. And then you go into another conveyor belt over there. The operating by hydraulic in the back and the front and the electric in the center. This must get awful dusty down there when you're really mining coal with all that chunks of coal being thrown around by those huge, biting arms. Oh, yeah, that's for sure. Plenty of. And then up into the conveyor and from there, where does it go? To go right into the car. We load one of those cars for one minute and a half. We'll put in a two ton coal in that car. Two tons in each car. Yes, sir. Is that what we're going to see next? Who are next? Next,

you're going to see you're going to walk right through the door. You're going to come to the safety room. The safety room. Safety room. All right. You're going to tell you all about the gas and the coal. How do you use the safety lamp and the danger gas mine? All right, we're going to go in there. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. We have come into the safety room now and in just a moment you're going to hear about safety in a coal mine. Perhaps many of you wonder how they check for gas in the mine. Well, you'll hear all about that in just a moment. But first of all, we have just about concluded our tour of the coal mine, Bruce. And one thing that I want to get straightened out in the listener's mind is this. We just saw and heard a loading machine and the coal was supposedly going into the conveyor belt and from there into the coal car. Now, for purposes of the broadcast, we didn't go to see the car actually loaded, but we apparently assume that it is loaded, right? Yes. Now, what happens to the coal from there? Well, it's loaded there by the joy loader in two minutes. Then a locomotive, an electric locomotive is working right at that spot, pulls out that car, puts in another. Pushes that car under the

mainline track and eventually builds up a train of anywhere from 10 to maybe as many as 50 cars. They go over and go right to the rotary dump where we entered the shaft bottom. Now, we've got our circle completed, in other words. The coal car is filled by the loading machine. It is then hooked up and taken over to the rotary dump where we saw it dumped out and into that shaft and finally up into a railroad up above. That's correct. Okay, that completes it. Now, let's talk about safety. Could we have your name, sir? John Asboys. Where do you come from, John? Southern Illinois, West Frankfurt. I had 40 years experience in the coal mine. All right, tell us about mine, safety. Well, one of the greatest hazards we have in the coal field today is methane gas, which is fireman to coal when the coal was fired. We've never had any way of getting on until we did mine to coal. Then it seeps out, comes in contact with a certain percentage of air. It makes a mixture known as far down. Little slower, John. When a far down comes in contact with the open blaze, it explodes. Now, this methane gas is oldest, tasteless, and silenced. We cannot contact it within the natural senses,

so they have to use a lamp like this. Before the miners goes down to work every morning, it'd be a bunch of men known as examiners. If our boss take these lamps on the inside, they examine the mines. They have to be miners of long standards. It's been before the state and federal board have passed all examinations. We do not trust the eyes of these lamps, so they have to put them in a cabinet like this and lamphouse on top and test them. Oh, wait a minute. Let me tell you what tell them what you're doing here. You took the lamp and put it inside of a little housing apparatus here, a cabinet, and you can see inside there. Now, what are you going to do from here? We're going to turn the light side and put a little gas in there, and you'll see hot eggs in the coal mines. The same thing shows up down in the mines when the examiner runs into gas. Okay, go ahead. The lights are out. You see, that's the perfect blaze, but when we put a little gas in there, you'll see a blue blaze on up the top and go to burn. An examiner says that he knows that the gas in the place and it has to be taken care of. Now, we have another lamp here. The same type as that one, but we damaged this lamp. I put in a hole for the little wide gauze, large enough for a pencil to go through, but it wouldn't have to be that large. One just large enough for

a pen of needle to go through and let the blaze come on the outside of the lamp. The 90 gas is set off cause explosion. That's the reason the examiner has to be careful with these lamps. Now, I'll show you what half the ticket damage lamp like this one down below. He's put this one with the hole inside the cabinet once again. You're going to put some more gas in there, John? We're going to put some more gas in there. Oh, there was an explosion. I think you could probably hear that. Now, in other words, that would be what would happen if there was an explosion in the mine. In the mine. What kind of gas did you say that was? A big gas. Well, okay, John. I think that pretty well clears it up. Thank you very much for telling us the story of the safety in the mines. And that is the story of the coal mine at the Museum of Science and Industry. We hope you've enjoyed the tour as we certainly have. We want to thank Bruce Mitchell for taking us on the tour, and Fred Ashley, the public relations man down here for letting us come over and talk about the coal mine at the Museum of Science and Industry. This is Hugh Hill speaking.