Mine Scenery / Machinery

sfp
2/2/2004

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An old abandoned dragline left to rust a little north of the Beaver Brook, PA coalbank. June, 2000.

A working dragline near Jeddo, PA. Picture courtesy of Richard Clark, author of "Strange Thunder in Jubilee".
   

A working "Euclid style" strip mining dump truck off the road from Coxeville to PA Rte. 940. Spring, 2002.


An old "Lokie". Lokies were small steam locomotives used to shuttle small trains of coal cars around the breakers and coal works. Date unknown.

The Lokie at Ashland's Pioneer Mine Tunnel, on the top of the mountain at Ashland, PA. This place is a popular tourist attraction nowadays. It features an educational trip into a revived, real coal mine, a descriptive outdoor lokie ride tour to the stripping at the end of the line on Ashland Mountain, and a park with a food concession and well supplied gift shop.

The tour operators tell me that the lokie was found in a junkyard in Hazleton, PA, then refurbished in a local foundry for use at the park. It's ancestry goes back to the mines near Cranberry - Crystal Ridge, PA. It is possible that my deceased father-in-law, George Victor Salvaterra, operated this same locomotive at the Cranberry works.

June, 2003.

 The anthracite coal burning firebox of the Ashland Lokie. Lokies did not have the full-throated whistle of the larger steam locomotives; They blew a characteristic, ear-splitting PEEP!