Fossil charcoal in bituminous coal from the Pennsylvanian of Kentucky, USA. (bedding plane view; field of view ~~3.5 cm across)

 

This is a sample of bituminous coal from a large roadcut north of the town of Jackson, Kentucky. The outcrop has Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic sedimentary rocks of the Breathitt Group (formerly the Breathitt Formation). The succession is dominated by interbedded sandstones and shales, with some coal horizons. The latter include bituminous coal and cannel coal (see elsewhere in this photo album).

 

The striated, shiny silvery pieces seen on this coal bedding plane are fossil charcoal (= burned wood fragments). The Pennsylvanian was a time of low carbon dioxide (CO2) and high oxygen (O2) levels in Earth's atmosphere; forest fires were relatively common events. The source of oxygen was abundant photosynthesizing trees in widespread forests. Earth's first global forestation event occurred during the Pennsylvanian. (See: www.jsjgeology.net/Berner-talk.htm). Charcoalized fossil wood can be found in some abundance in Pennsylvanian sedimentary successions. The original wood microstructure is usually well preserved, but the charcoal fragments themselves are quite delicate. A gentle rub with a finger turns these fragments into black powder. At some localities & in some horizons, the fossil charcoal is partially pyritized.

 

Stratigraphy: float from the Pikeville Formation, Breathitt Group, lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Locality: Jackson North outcrop - loose piece from coal bed exposed in the wall above the 1st bench on the southern side of a large roadcut on the eastern side of new Rt. 15, just south of the southbound old Rt. 15-new Rt. 15 split, north of the town of Jackson, north-central Breathitt County, eastern Kentucky, USA (~37° 34’ 51” North latitude, ~83° 23’ 09” West longitude)

 

Limestone over coal in the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.

 

This eastern Ohio exposure is in the Pottsville Group, a Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic succession containing nonmarine shales, marine shales, siltstones, sandstones, coals, marine limestones, and chert ("flint"). The lower Pottsville dates to the late Early Pennsylvanian. The upper part dates to the early Middle Pennsylvanian. The Lower-Middle Pennsylvanian boundary is apparently somewhere near the Boggs Member (?).

 

The Upper Mercer Limestone is a moderately laterally persistent chertified limestone horizon in the Pottsville Group. It is often composed of black-colored chert/flint but can be dark bluish to bluish-black colored as well (the latter colors are referred to as "Nellie Blue Flint"). Upper Mercer Flint has whitish-colored fossils and fossil fragments that include fusulinid foraminifera, crinoid ossicles, and other Late Paleozoic normal marine fossils. Apparent phylloidal algae can also be present as squiggly lines.

 

Non-chertified limestone is frequently present in the Upper Mercer horizon, although minor in volume. Limestone usually occurs along the outside portions of chert masses, but also in relatively small patches within the chert.

 

In places, the Upper Mercer Flint/Limestone horizon is missing, usually removed by paleoerosion.

 

American Indians sometimes used Upper Mercer Flint to make arrowheads and spear points and knife blades. "Flint Ridge Flint" (= Vanport Flint) was the most desirable source rock for these objects, but other chert horizons also attracted attention.

 

At this outcrop, limestone makes up most of the Upper Mercer, which is unusual. Black, irregularly-shaped flint nodules are present in the limestone.

 

The upper ledge is the Upper Mercer Limestone. The recessed area (shadowed) is mostly shale. The lower ledge is the Bedford Coal, which at this site is composed of bituminous coal and cannel coal.

 

Stratigraphy: Upper Mercer Limestone over Bedford Coal, upper Pottsville Group, Atokan Stage, lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Locality: Tunnel Hill North Portal Outcrop (= Noland Tunnel's northern portal), ~1.75 air miles north-northeast of the town of Tunnel Hill, western Coshocton County, eastern Ohio, USA (~40° 16’ 33.27” North latitude, ~82° 01’ 53.04” West longitude)

 

Crews worked on SR 9 for three days from July 23 through July 25, 2018 applying a oil and gravel surface - bituminous surface treatment - to a 10 mile stretch between the south end of Big Lake and Sedro-Woolley. Following application of the gravel, equipment rolled the area with large rubber tires and sweeping happened overnight to pick up loose material.

Miller Street, Northbridge, NSW

 

The original bridge as a suspension bridge

 

From the RTA website

With the land boom of the 1880s, land to the north of Long Bay, Middle Harbour, was sold and resold. The North Sydney Investment and Tramway Company or the North Shore and Middle Harbour Land Company made major investments in the area and planned to build a tramway and a bridge across Long Bay gully in order to open up the area for sales of residential land. A suspension bridge across the gully was opened to traffic in January 1892. It had taken two years and nine months to complete and cost 42,000 pounds. With a suspension span of 500ft centre to centre of towers, it was considered one of the engineering wonders of Sydney and became a great tourist attraction. A toll of threepence return for adults and one penny for children was charged. The disastrous crash of 1892 saw both the above companies go into liquidation. The Depression of the 1890s slowed land sales and Northbridge did not develop as had been hoped; the tramway was not built. In 1912 the bridge was handed over to the Government as a gift, on the condition that a tramway be extended to the north side and no toll charged. The tramway was extended over the bridge in 1913/4, with its terminus in Sailors Bay Road. (www.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/help/library/Northbridge.htm) Between its construction and its handing over to the Department of Public Works, the bridge was little used and poorly maintained for many years. Repairs and some strengthening works were carried out in conjunction with the construction of the tramway. (Main Roads Journal, August 1937, p 152) The DMR assumed control of the bridge in 1935 and inspections soon revealed serious corrosion in the steelwork and cables, partly attributable to defects in the design of the bridge. For example, water had been allowed to accumulate around the suspension rods as they passed through the cross girder ends in small, undrained reserves that had originally been filled with a bituminous mixture, which had not stood the test of time. The main suspension cables were also found to be weakened by corrosion. The bridge was carefully monitored and it rapidly became clear that replacement or substantial rebuilding would be necessary. From several options, it was decided that a large concrete arch span to support the deck of the old suspension bridge was the most satisfactory solution. The towers themselves were in very good condition and were recognised by the DMR as having local significance as a landmark and tourist attraction and as having considerable historical value. For these reasons they were retained and repeated in the design of the new work, with much attention to sympathetic design. The arch was designed and tested through the analysis of models within the DMR. (Main Roads Journal, August 1937, p 152-155) The construction contract was awarded to Hornibrook Bros. & Clark Pty. Ltd. The bridge was closed to tram and vehicular (but not pedestrian) traffic and work began at the beginning of June, 1937. While a 'Melan' system using a steel rib to serve as falsework and then reinforcement in the completed structure had been considered, the tenderers favoured the conventional system of timber falsework, and it was this system which was employed. An interesting innovation, however, was employed in the form of steel cylinders with base plate partly filled with a fine dune sand and fitted with a hardwood piston. The pistons bore the weight of the girders until it was time to strike the falsework when two small screw plugs on the cylinders could be opened to a carefully prepared schedule, with a large team of operators working to signals, and sand released so that the crown and then, gradually, the whole arch took up its own load. Worker safety was also an important factor in the design of construction methods for the bridge. The bridge was re-opened to traffic in late 1939. (Main Roads Journal, August 1939, p 113-116)

FISSILE CORE STORAGE –

 

The fissile cores were stored in small buildings arranged around the large non-nuclear component stores. In total there are 57 of these buildings, which are divided into 48 Type 'A' and 9 Type 'B' stores. The fissile core stores are organised in four uneven groups around the non-nuclear stores. The two southerly groups of stores are arranged symmetrically to the south of the large non-nuclear stores, each group having sixteen small store buildings. The north-eastern group contains eleven stores and the north-west group fourteen. All but the south-east group contained a mixture of Type 'A' and Type 'B' stores.

 

The store buildings are linked together by pedestrian width walkways, fenced by tubular steel pipes 37in tall with strands of white between the horizontal members. The area was lit by pre-cast concrete lamp-posts, each of which had a red panic button at chest height. The Type 'A' storage buildings 1-48 are small kiosk-like structures. In plan they measure 8ft 4in by 7ft 10in and stand 9ft above ground level. The foundations of the building are constructed of 3ft thick mass concrete. The walls are of cavity wall construction and are formed of solid concrete blocks, while the roof is a flat over-hanging reinforced concrete slab with a drip mould, and is covered with bituminous felt. The design drawing (Drg. No. 3563B/52) shows a variety of irregular roof plans designed to disguise the structures from the air. These were never built, all the roofs being rectangular in plan.

 

Fittings on the walls indicate that they were all originally protected by copper earthing straps. On the front of many of the stores a stencilled notice records ''Date of last lightning conductor test April - 63''. Internally the walls are finished in unpainted, smooth gritless plaster. The side and rear walls are ventilated by four small controllable ventilators, two at the base of the wall and two at the top. In the floor of each of the Type 'A' stores is a single keyhole shaped cavity. Each hole is 1ft 5in in diameter and 1ft 9in deep. The shaft of the hole measures 10in wide and is 8in long and is shallower than the main hole at 3½in. A scar around the hole suggests it originally contained a vessel with the asphalt brought up around its lip. This is confirmed by the survival of the surrounding lip in similar stores at RAF Faldingworth, Lincolnshire, and by the rare survival of a number of stainless steel vessels at the bomb store at RAF Gaydon, Warwickshire.

 

The electrical system of each store was contained within small bore metal pipes; circular junction boxes led to other electrical fittings, which have in most cases been removed. In a number of the stores 'Walsall' Type 1174X flameproof switch boxes remained. On their covers is cast ''5 Amp 250 Volt Flameproof switchbox type Walsall 1174BX Group 2 FLP 302 Group 3 Test P60 Isolate supply elsewhere before removing this cover''. A small formica sign confirmed that ''The electrical installation in this building is standard 'A' in accordance with AP 2608A''. All the stores originally had external fuse boxes to the left of their doors.

 

The doors are wooden and open outwards, their outer faces being protected by a steel sheet. They are secured by a combination lock and internal vertical locking bar operated by an external handle. A metal fitting in the path allowed the door to be secured half ajar. Above the door, and attached to its frame, is a spring-loaded electrical contact, which probably recorded on the control board in building 63 whether or not the door was open or closed. Externally and internally the doors are painted light blue. On the door of building No. 1 is a 1ft diameter radiation symbol in yellow and out-lined in black, below it is a 11½in yellow square with a black star at its centre.

 

The Type 'B' store buildings 49-57 are slightly larger than the Type 'A' measuring 9ft 7in by 7ft 10n. Otherwise the details of the stores are identical to the smaller stores. The principle difference between the two types of structures is that the Type 'B ' had two storage holes in their floors. Each of these buildings was also equipped with a small wooden counter adjacent to the doors; the counters measure 2ft 6in by 1ft 6in and standing 4ft tall. They have been removed from stores 53 and 55. At some point during the operational life of the station the holes in the floors of all the Type 'B' stores were filled and covered by gritless asphalt. The asphalt surfaces in the stores are continuous, often with a slight depression marking the position of the holes, which implies that the original floor was lifted and new floors laid. The holes in store 52 have been reopened, as indicated by fragments of the asphalt surface thrown back into the holes. This is in contrast to RAF Faldingworth where the holes have been left open.

 

In total there were enough holes to store 66 fissile cores. One source states that the single hole stores contained plutonium cores, while the double-hole stores were, used for cobalt cores. Currently available documentation does not reveal if one fissile core may be equated with one bomb, or if a bomb contained more than one fissile core. Recent research has shown that Britain probably produced no more than twenty Blue Danube warheads, with this number on the active stockpile between 1957 and 1961. It is therefore likely that no more than a handful of weapons were stored at RAF Barnham at anyone time.

 

The significance of the filling of the holes in the Type 'B' stores is also unclear. It may coincide with the withdrawal of the first generation nuclear weapon, ''Blue Danube'', and the deployment second generation atomic bomb, ''Red Beard'' (from 1961), or it may be related to the introduction of first British hydrogen bomb, ''Yellow Sun'' (from 1958). Given the number of available nuclear warheads in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it is unlikely that the RAF Barnham store was ever full. Part of RAF Barnham's function, along with other bomb stores, was to convince the Soviet Union that Britain had more nuclear weapons at her disposal than was in fact the case.

 

Information sourced from English Heritage.

 

Crews worked on SR 9 for three days from July 23 through July 25, 2018 applying a oil and gravel surface - bituminous surface treatment - to a 10 mile stretch between the south end of Big Lake and Sedro-Woolley. Following application of the gravel, equipment rolled the area with large rubber tires and sweeping happened overnight to pick up loose material.

Fforio/Explore : Cwm Coke Works

 

Cwm Coke Works

1958 - 2002

"In the 1970s, the cokeworks employed 1,500 men and produced some 515,000 tonnes of coke each year. It continued to do so until 1986, when coal was privatised."

llantwitfardrecommunitycouncil.org

 

"Coke is a fuel with few impurities and a high carbon content, usually made from coal. It is the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Coke made from coal are grey, hard, and porous. While coke can be formed naturally, the commonly used form is man-made. The form known as petroleum coke, or pet coke, is derived from oil refinery coker units or other cracking processes."

Wiki

 

NON-NUCLEAR COMPONENT STORES BUILDING 60 –

 

The function of the non-nuclear component stores was to hold the high explosive part of the bomb and its outer casing. The casing could probably be split into two units, the tail and forward part containing the high explosive and electronics. The bombs, minus their fissile components, were housed in three almost identical stores buildings 59-61, known as Storage Building Type 'D-D'. These are arranged in an arrowhead pattern, and are accessed from the internal loop road, and are all surrounded by 14ft 6in high earth traverses, revetted by a reinforced concrete retaining wall against the roadway.

 

The western store, building 59 was gutted by a fire during the 1980's and has subsequently been demolished. Its floor plan remains visible on the remaining concrete floor slab. The two remaining stores, buildings 60 and 61 are rectangular in plan, and are constructed from reinforced concrete columns and beams. Internally there are two rows of columns, 13in², which support the roof beams, 2ft by 9in, which carry the 9in thick reinforced concrete roof slab which is covered with bituminous felt. The rainwater gutters and down pipes are cast asbestos.

 

The wall sections are filled with 18in by 9in by 9in precast concrete blocks, internally the main storage area measures 190ft 2½in by 60ft. It is divided longitudinally into eleven 17ft by 3ft bays and cross ways into three bays the outer bays measure 17ft 6in and the central bay is 25ft wide. The maximum clear internal height was 12ft from the floor to the underside of the roof beams. The floor is surfaced with a hard gritless asphalt with the patent name 'Ironite'. The walls are painted pale green colour and the ceiling cream. in store building 61 the bay letters 0, N, M, and L are visible on the rear columns on the eastern side, suggesting the store was divided into 22 bays along the outer walls.

 

Abutting on to the front of the stores, and flanking the entrances, are plant and switch rooms, which originally contained heating and air conditioning plant to maintain a stable environment within the stores. A raised air extract duct is placed asymmetrically on the roofs of the stores. Entry into the stores is through a 10ft wide door opening with 12ft high doors. In the rear wall of the stores is a single door width, outward opening emergency exit. The first nuclear weapon the store was designed to hold was relatively large, a ''Blue Danube'' bomb measured 24ft in length and weighed 10,000lbs.

 

The problems of handling such large objects are reflected in the provision of substantial lifting gantries at the entrance to each store. Two variants are found, the simplest, exemplified by the middle store building 60 comprises a straight gantry. Over the roadway the gantry is supported by four 24in by 18in reinforced concrete columns, which support two 51in by 24in reinforced concrete beams. The upper beams of the gantry taper towards the entrance to the store where they are suppurted by two reinforced concrete columns. On the underside of the gantry is attached a 20in by 6½in rolled steel joist runway beam which runs to the entrance to the building. This was originally fitted with a 10 ton hoist. The gantry is covered by asbestos sheeting to provide a dry working area.

 

On the eastern and western stores the gantries were set at 30° to the front of the stores. In this variant an extra set of columns was placed at the 30° dogleg. Internally there is no evidence for a runway beam, so it presumed the bombs were lifted off a road transporter and loaded onto a bomb trolley for storage. It is not known how many bombs were kept in each store, or if the tail units were separated from the front part of the bomb for storage. Subsequent to the site being relinquished by the RAF a central corridor has been created in the stores by the insertion of breeze block walls. Doors in these walls give access to workshops along either side of the buildings. External windows have also been inserted in some of the bays.

 

Information sourced from English Heritage.

46

 

59352-N

 

Soft coal is found mostly in Western Pennsylvania, and in many counties almost every farm has its own coal mine.

 

Pennsylvania Beauty Views, E. Madciff, Hershey, Pa.

 

Genuine Curteich-Chicago "C T American Art" Post Card.

FISSILE CORE STORAGE –

 

The fissile cores were stored in small buildings arranged around the large non-nuclear component stores. In total there are 57 of these buildings, which are divided into 48 Type 'A' and 9 Type 'B' stores. The fissile core stores are organised in four uneven groups around the non-nuclear stores. The two southerly groups of stores are arranged symmetrically to the south of the large non-nuclear stores, each group having sixteen small store buildings. The north-eastern group contains eleven stores and the north-west group fourteen. All but the south-east group contained a mixture of Type 'A' and Type 'B' stores.

 

The store buildings are linked together by pedestrian width walkways, fenced by tubular steel pipes 37in tall with strands of white between the horizontal members. The area was lit by pre-cast concrete lamp-posts, each of which had a red panic button at chest height. The Type 'A' storage buildings 1-48 are small kiosk-like structures. In plan they measure 8ft 4in by 7ft 10in and stand 9ft above ground level. The foundations of the building are constructed of 3ft thick mass concrete. The walls are of cavity wall construction and are formed of solid concrete blocks, while the roof is a flat over-hanging reinforced concrete slab with a drip mould, and is covered with bituminous felt. The design drawing (Drg. No. 3563B/52) shows a variety of irregular roof plans designed to disguise the structures from the air. These were never built, all the roofs being rectangular in plan.

 

Fittings on the walls indicate that they were all originally protected by copper earthing straps. On the front of many of the stores a stencilled notice records ''Date of last lightning conductor test April - 63''. Internally the walls are finished in unpainted, smooth gritless plaster. The side and rear walls are ventilated by four small controllable ventilators, two at the base of the wall and two at the top. In the floor of each of the Type 'A' stores is a single keyhole shaped cavity. Each hole is 1ft 5in in diameter and 1ft 9in deep. The shaft of the hole measures 10in wide and is 8in long and is shallower than the main hole at 3½in. A scar around the hole suggests it originally contained a vessel with the asphalt brought up around its lip. This is confirmed by the survival of the surrounding lip in similar stores at RAF Faldingworth, Lincolnshire, and by the rare survival of a number of stainless steel vessels at the bomb store at RAF Gaydon, Warwickshire.

 

The electrical system of each store was contained within small bore metal pipes; circular junction boxes led to other electrical fittings, which have in most cases been removed. In a number of the stores 'Walsall' Type 1174X flameproof switch boxes remained. On their covers is cast ''5 Amp 250 Volt Flameproof switchbox type Walsall 1174BX Group 2 FLP 302 Group 3 Test P60 Isolate supply elsewhere before removing this cover''. A small formica sign confirmed that ''The electrical installation in this building is standard 'A' in accordance with AP 2608A''. All the stores originally had external fuse boxes to the left of their doors.

 

The doors are wooden and open outwards, their outer faces being protected by a steel sheet. They are secured by a combination lock and internal vertical locking bar operated by an external handle. A metal fitting in the path allowed the door to be secured half ajar. Above the door, and attached to its frame, is a spring-loaded electrical contact, which probably recorded on the control board in building 63 whether or not the door was open or closed. Externally and internally the doors are painted light blue. On the door of building No. 1 is a 1ft diameter radiation symbol in yellow and out-lined in black, below it is a 11½in yellow square with a black star at its centre.

 

The Type 'B' store buildings 49-57 are slightly larger than the Type 'A' measuring 9ft 7in by 7ft 10n. Otherwise the details of the stores are identical to the smaller stores. The principle difference between the two types of structures is that the Type 'B ' had two storage holes in their floors. Each of these buildings was also equipped with a small wooden counter adjacent to the doors; the counters measure 2ft 6in by 1ft 6in and standing 4ft tall. They have been removed from stores 53 and 55. At some point during the operational life of the station the holes in the floors of all the Type 'B' stores were filled and covered by gritless asphalt. The asphalt surfaces in the stores are continuous, often with a slight depression marking the position of the holes, which implies that the original floor was lifted and new floors laid. The holes in store 52 have been reopened, as indicated by fragments of the asphalt surface thrown back into the holes. This is in contrast to RAF Faldingworth where the holes have been left open.

 

In total there were enough holes to store 66 fissile cores. One source states that the single hole stores contained plutonium cores, while the double-hole stores were, used for cobalt cores. Currently available documentation does not reveal if one fissile core may be equated with one bomb, or if a bomb contained more than one fissile core. Recent research has shown that Britain probably produced no more than twenty Blue Danube warheads, with this number on the active stockpile between 1957 and 1961. It is therefore likely that no more than a handful of weapons were stored at RAF Barnham at anyone time.

 

The significance of the filling of the holes in the Type 'B' stores is also unclear. It may coincide with the withdrawal of the first generation nuclear weapon, ''Blue Danube'', and the deployment second generation atomic bomb, ''Red Beard'' (from 1961), or it may be related to the introduction of first British hydrogen bomb, ''Yellow Sun'' (from 1958). Given the number of available nuclear warheads in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it is unlikely that the RAF Barnham store was ever full. Part of RAF Barnham's function, along with other bomb stores, was to convince the Soviet Union that Britain had more nuclear weapons at her disposal than was in fact the case.

 

Information sourced from English Heritage.

 

Asphaltic concrete road in Thailand

Old fashioned hand-loading of coal in bituminous mine.

  

For more information or additional images, please contact 202-586-5251.

On Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018 WSDOT contractor crews from Granite Construction resurfaced SR 539/Guide Meridian Road north of Lynden and south of the Alderwood Border Crossing. The long moving work zone creates lengthy delays as a pilot vehicle alternates traffic through the busy work zone.

Taken by Cory Funk.

Woodlawn Cemetery Company 335 Maple Ave Fairmont, WV 26554

   

Woodlawn Cemetery, located in Fairmont, West Virginia is an example of the rural cemetery. It was laid out by Tell W. Nicolet of the firm of Morris and Knowles of Pittsburgh, PA. It is a National Historic District. Today, the cemetery covers 42 acres (170,000 m2) and has over 15,000 burials.

 

The cemetery was established in the early Spring of 1875. Joseph R. Hamilton was climbing the fence between his father's farm and that of Norval Barns. The loaded rifle he was carrying accidentally discharged, killing him. His father's decision to "bury him where he lay" led to the families establishing a small burying ground. They opened the fence line between their properties and enclosed about a quarter of an acre to use for family burials.

 

Ten years later, in December 1885, the Woodlawn Cemetery Company was incorporated and plots were offered for sale to the larger community. 5 acres (20,000 m2) were purchased from each of the land owners, Elmus Hamilton and Norval Barns. Many of the early leaders of the Fairmont community were laid to rest here. Among them is Francis Harrison Pierpont, the Governor of the Restored State of Virginia from 1861-1868, his wife Julia and three of their four children.

 

Boaz Fleming, the founder of Fairmont, is here with his wife, Elizabeth. Other members of his family are here as well, including Clarissa Fleming Hamilton, his grandson Elmus Hamilton,owner of the Hamilton farm, and great-grandson, Joseph R. Hamilton. Another descendant is Aretas B. Fleming, eighth governor of West Virginia. A lawyer, Mr. Fleming was among the men who created the Fairmont Development Company and worked to develop Fairmont, West Virginia.

 

James Otis Watson is considered the father of the bituminous coal industry in north central West Virginia. He and Pierpont owned the first coal mine to be commercially viable following the completion of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad linking Fairmont with the eastern seaboard markets. One of his daughters married Aretas B. Fleming. His sons, James Edwin Watson, Sylvanus Lamb Watson and Clarence Wayland Watson are also buried here.

     

Historical figures buried at Woodlawn

Times West Virginian

 

The following is a list of the historical figures buried at Woodlawn Cemetery and their contribution to the history of Fairmont, Marion County and West Virginia.

 

This list was compiled from the application made to the U.S. Department of the Interior in order for the cemetery to be considered for the National Register of Historic Places and does not reflect a complete list of all persons of note buried at the cemetery.

 

Francis H. Pierpont (1814-1899) — The “Father of West Virginia.” Pierpont was chosen as Provisional Governor of Restored Virginia in 1861 during a Union convention. He was later elected to that position from 1863-68 and was instrumental in the creation of the state of West Virginia in 1863.

 

Julia Augusta Robertson Pierpont (1828-1886) — The wife of Gov. Pierpont. She is credited by many historians as the founder of Decoration Day (Memorial Day) in 1866.

 

Boaz Fleming (1758-1830) — The founding father of Fairmont. He cleared a section of land he own and sold individual lots to create Fairmont, the county seat of Marion, which was created from pieces of Monongalia and Harrison counties.

 

James Otis Watson (1815-1902) — Father of the Coal Industry West of the Alleghenies. He opened his first mine in 1852 with his friend, Francis Pierpont. Later the Watson Coal Co. and Hutchinson Coal Co. combined to form the Consolidated Coal Co.

 

Clyde E. Hutchinson (1861-1926) — Founder of Hutchinson Coal Co., one of the predecessors of Consolidated Coal Co.

 

A. Brooks Fleming (1839-1923) — Governor of West Virginia from 1890-1893. He also served as county prosecuting attorney, the West Virginia House of Delegates and judge of the 2nd District Judicial Circuit.

 

Matthew Mansfield Neely (1874-1958) — Governor of West Virginia from 1940-44. Also served as mayor of Fairmont, delegate, congressman and U.S. senator.

 

The Rev. William Ryland White (1820-93) — The first state superintendent of West Virginia public schools from 1863-69, resigning to become president of the new Fairmont State Normal School (Fairmont State University).

 

Bernard Butcher (1853-1918) — Elected as state superintendent of schools in 1880 and was instrumental in legislation for the education of black teachers and the creation of Arbor Day. He also organized the Marion County Historical Society in 1908.

 

Thomas C. Miller (1844-1926) — Educator who also served as state superintendent of schools (1900-09), principal of West Virginia University (1893) and Shepherd Normal School.

 

Victims of Newburg Mine explosion — While they are not marked individually, six victims of the 1886 Preston County explosion are buried there under a single monument, including a father, son, three stepsons and another relative.

 

George Albert Dunnington (1858-1928) — Editor of the Fairmont Index.

 

Judge Harry Evans Watkins (1898-1963) — U.S. Federal District Judge Frank C. Haymond (1887-1972) — Longtime justice of the Supreme Court of West Virginia.

Original Caption:

"Miners Changing Clothes in Wash and Change House. Union Pacific Coal Company, Reliance Mine, Reliance, Sweetwater County, Wyoming."

 

U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: NWDNS-245-MS-685L

 

From: Series: Photographs of the Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry (Record Group 245)

 

Created by: Department of the Interior. Solid Fuels Administration For War (04/19/1943 - 06/30/1947 )

 

Production Date: 7/9/1946

 

Photographer: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986

 

Subjects:

Coal mines and mining

Mines and mineral resources

 

Persistent URL: catalog.archives.gov/id/540555

  

Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.

 

For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html

 

Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html

   

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

Use Restrictions: Unrestricted

 

Asphaltic concrete road in Thailand

Today's Posting & Our Daily Challenge

 

Go old-school today and make a photograph that either features an old subject or simply looks old., post it then Tag it with #TP358

 

Make a photograph of something that captures a small bit the flavor of where you live or your culture., post it then Tag it with #TP359

  

INDIGENOUS is the topic for Thursday 1st November 2012

 

Sure glad I had my hand fired coal stove the last couple days. Sandy the Storm knocked out our power, but we were nice and warm!

 

Thanks to Anthracite Coal:

 

Coal is a four-letter word. These days, it's hard to even mention its name without bringing divergent points of view to a boil. The first recorded anti-coal legislation dates back to 1306 when British Paliament, disgusted by the coal-fired soot and smog filling London's streets, outlawed its use. Seven hundred years later, its carbon-and-sulphur laced emissions and environmentally disasterous mining techniques still put it at the top of every environmentalist's shit list. On the other hand, it powered the industrial revolution, continues to be a cheap and available form of power, and it's abundance in North America actually spared countless acres of forest from the furnaces of industrial America. The irony is that it is a form of solar power: Photosynthesized solar energy stored as carbon by plants millions of years ago.

 

There are lots of varieties of coal. There is Anthracite, Bituminous, Lignite, Blind coal, Kilkenny coal, and Crow coal just to name a few.

 

But Anthracite is the hardest, purest, cleanest and longest burning coal. It is the highest grade of coal, and the most expensive. Because of it's superior quality it was the preferred fuel for America's home heating and industrial needs during much of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

A mummy is a deceased human or an animal whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions. Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least 1615 AD (See the section Etymology and meaning).

 

Mummies of humans and other animals have been found on every continent, both as a result of natural preservation through unusual conditions, and as cultural artifacts. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats.

 

In addition to the well-known mummies of ancient Egypt, deliberate mummification was a feature of several ancient cultures in areas of America and Asia with very dry climates. The Spirit Cave mummies of Fallon, Nevada in North America were accurately dated at more than 9,400 years old. Before this discovery, the oldest known deliberate mummy is a child, one of the Chinchorro mummies found in the Camarones Valley, Chile, which dates around 5050 BCE. The oldest known naturally mummified human corpse is a severed head dated as 6,000 years old, found in 1936 CE at the site named Inca Cueva No. 4 in South America.

 

ETYMOLOGY AND MEANING

The English word mummy is derived from medieval Latin mumia, a borrowing of the medieval Arabic word mūmiya (مومياء) and from a Persian word mūm (wax), which meant an embalmed corpse, and as well as the bituminous embalming substance, and also meant "bitumen". The Medieval English term "mummy" was defined as "medical preparation of the substance of mummies", rather than the entire corpse, with Richard Hakluyt in 1599 CE complaining that "these dead bodies are the Mummy which the Phisistians and Apothecaries doe against our willes make us to swallow".

 

THESE SUBSTANCES WERE DEFINED AS MUMMIES

The OED defines a mummy as "the body of a human being or animal embalmed (according to the ancient Egyptian or some analogous method) as a preparation for burial", citing sources from 1615 CE onward. However, Chamber's Cyclopædia and the Victorian zoologist Francis Trevelyan Buckland define a mummy as follows: "A human or animal body desiccated by exposure to sun or air. Also applied to the frozen carcase of an animal imbedded in prehistoric snow".

 

Wasps of the genus Aleiodes are known as "mummy wasps" because they wrap their caterpillar prey as "mummies".

 

HISTORY OF MUMMY STUDIES

While interest in the study of mummies dates as far back as Ptolemaic Greece, most structured scientific study began at the beginning of the 20th century. Prior to this, many rediscovered mummies were sold as curiosities or for use in pseudoscientific novelties such as mummia. The first modern scientific examinations of mummies began in 1901, conducted by professors at the English-language Government School of Medicine in Cairo, Egypt. The first X-ray of a mummy came in 1903, when professors Grafton Elliot Smith and Howard Carter used the only X-ray machine in Cairo at the time to examine the mummified body of Thutmose IV. British chemist Alfred Lucas applied chemical analyses to Egyptian mummies during this same period, which returned many results about the types of substances used in embalming. Lucas also made significant contributions to the analysis of Tutankhamun in 1922.

 

Pathological study of mummies saw varying levels of popularity throughout the 20th century. In 1992, the First World Congress on Mummy Studies was held in Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. More than 300 scientists attended the Congress to share nearly 100 years of collected data on mummies. The information presented at the meeting triggered a new surge of interest in the subject, with one of the major results being integration of biomedical and bioarchaeological information on mummies with existing databases. This was not possible prior to the Congress due to the unique and highly specialized techniques required to gather such data.

 

In more recent years, CT scanning has become an invaluable tool in the study of mummification by allowing researchers to digitally "unwrap" mummies without risking damage to the body. The level of detail in such scans is so intricate that small linens used in tiny areas such as the nostrils can be digitally reconstructed in 3-D. Such modelling has been utilized to perform digital autopsies on mummies to determine cause of death and lifestyle, such as in the case of Tutankhamun.

 

TYPES

Mummies are typically divided into one of two distinct categories: anthropogenic or spontaneous. Anthropogenic mummies were deliberately created by the living for any number of reasons, the most common being for religious purposes. Spontaneous mummies, such as Ötzi, were created unintentionally due to natural conditions such as extremely dry heat or cold, or anaerobic conditions such as those found in bogs. While most individual mummies exclusively belong to one category or the other, there are examples of both types being connected to a single culture, such as those from the ancient Egyptian culture.

 

EGYPTIAN MUMMIES

The earliest ancient Egyptian mummies were created naturally due to the environment in which they were buried. In the era prior to 3500 BCE, Egyptians buried the dead in pit graves, without regard to social status. Pit graves were often shallow. This characteristic allowed for the hot, dry sand of the desert to dehydrate the bodies, leading to natural mummification.

 

The natural preservation of the dead had a profound effect on ancient Egyptian religion. Deliberate mummification became an integral part of the rituals for the dead beginning as early as the 2nd dynasty (about 3400 BCE). New research of an 11-year study by University of York, Macquarie University and University of Oxford suggests mummification occurred 1,500 years earlier than first thought. Egyptians saw the preservation of the body after death as an important step to living well in the afterlife. As Egypt gained more prosperity, burial practices became a status symbol for the wealthy as well. This cultural hierarchy lead to the creation of elaborate tombs, and more sophisticated methods of embalming.

 

By the 4th dynasty (about 2600 BCE) Egyptian embalmers began to achieve "true mummification" through a process of evisceration, followed by preserving the body in various minerals and oils. Much of this early experimentation with mummification in Egypt is unknown.

 

The few documents that directly describe the mummification process date to the Greco-Roman period. The majority of the papyri that have survived only describe the ceremonial rituals involved in embalming, not the actual surgical processes involved. A text known as The Ritual of Embalming does describe some of the practical logistics of embalming, however, there are only two known copies and each is incomplete. With regards to mummification shown in images, there are apparently also very few. The tomb of Tjay designated TT23, is one of only two known which show the wrapping of a mummy (Riggs 2014).

 

Another text that describes the processes being used in latter periods is Herodotus' Histories. Written in Book 2 of the Histories is one of the most detailed descriptions of the Egyptian mummification process, including the mention of using natron in order to dehydrate corpses for preservation. However, these descriptions are short and fairly vague, leaving scholars to infer the majority of the techniques that were used by studying mummies that have been unearthed.

 

By utilizing current advancements in technology, scientists have been able to uncover a plethora of new information about the techniques used in mummification. A series of CT scans performed on a 2,400-year-old mummy in 2008 revealed a tool that was left inside the cranial cavity of the skull. The tool was a rod, made of an organic material, that was used to break apart the brain to allow it to drain out of the nose. This discovery helped to dispel the claim within Herodotus' works that the rod had been a hook made of iron. Earlier experimentation in 1994 by researchers Bob Brier and Ronald Wade supported these findings. While attempting to replicate Egyptian mummification, Brier and Wade discovered that removal of the brain was much easier when the brain was liquefied and allowed to drain with the help of gravity, as opposed to trying to pull the organ out piece-by-piece with a hook.

 

Through various methods of study over many decades, modern Egyptologists now have an accurate understanding of how mummification was achieved in ancient Egypt. The first and most important step was to halt the process of decomposition, by removing the internal organs and washing out the body with a mix of spices and palm wine. The only organ left behind was the heart, as tradition held the heart was the seat of thought and feeling and would therefore still be needed in the afterlife. After cleansing, the body was then dried out with natron inside the empty body cavity as well as outside on the skin. The internal organs were also dried and either sealed in individual jars, or wrapped to be replaced within the body. This process typically took forty days.

 

After dehydration, the mummy was wrapped in many layers of linen cloth. Within the layers, Egyptian priests placed small amulets to guard the decedent from evil. Once the mummy was completely wrapped, it was coated in a resin in order to keep the threat of moist air away. Resin was also applied to the coffin in order to seal it. The mummy was then sealed within its tomb, alongside the worldly goods that were believed to help aid it in the afterlife.

 

Aspergillus niger has been found in the mummies of ancient Egyptian tombs and can be inhaled when they are disturbed.

 

MUMMIFICATION AND RANK

Mummification is one of the defining customs in ancient Egyptian society for people today. The practice of preserving the human body is believed to be a quintessential feature of Egyptian life. Yet even mummification has a history of development and was accessible to different ranks of society in different ways during different periods. There were at least three different processes of mummification according to Herodotus. They range from "the most perfect" to the method employed by the "poorer classes".

 

"MOST PERFECT" METHOD

The most expensive process was to preserve the body by dehydration and protect against pests, such as insects. Almost all the actions Herodotus described serve one of these two functions.

 

First, the brain was removed by passing an iron hook through the nose into the cranium and retracting it by the same pathway; the gray matter was discarded. Modern mummy excavations have shown that instead of an iron hook inserted through the nose as Herodotus claims, a rod was used to liquefy the brain via the cranium, which then drained out the nose by gravity. The embalmers then rinsed the skull with certain drugs that mostly cleared any residue of brain tissue and also had the effect of killing bacteria. Next, the embalmers made an incision along the flank with a sharp blade fashioned from an Ethiopian stone and removed the contents of the abdomen. Herodotus does not discuss the separate preservation of these organs and their placement either in special jars or back in the cavity, a process that was part of the most expensive embalming, according to archaeological evidence.

 

The abdominal cavity was then rinsed with palm wine and an infusion of crushed, fragrant herbs and spices; the cavity was then filled with spices including myrrh, cassia, and, Herodotus notes, "every other sort of spice except frankincense," also to preserve the person.

 

The body was further dehydrated by placing it in natron, a naturally occurring salt, for seventy days. Herodotus insists that the body did not stay in the natron longer than seventy days. Any shorter time and the body is not completely dehydrated; any longer, and the body is too stiff to move into position for wrapping. The embalmers then wash the body again and wrapped it with linen bandages. The bandages were covered with a gum that modern research has shown is both waterproofing agent and an antimicrobial agent.

 

At this point, the body was given back to the family. These "perfect" mummies were then placed in wooden cases that were human-shaped. Richer people placed these wooden cases in stone sarcophagi that provided further protection. The family placed the sarcophagus in the tomb upright against the wall, according to Herodotus.

 

AVOIDING EXPENSE

The second process that Herodotus describes was used by middle-class people or people who "wish to avoid expense". In this method, an oil derived from cedar trees was injected with a syringe into the abdomen. A rectal plug prevented the oil from escaping. This oil probably had the dual purpose of liquefying the internal organs, but also of disinfecting the abdominal cavity. (By liquefying the organs, the family avoided the expense of canopic jars and separate preservation). The body was then placed in natron for seventy days. At the end of this time, the body was removed and the cedar oil, now containing the liquefied organs, was drained through the rectum. With the body dehydrated, it could be returned to the family. Herodotus does not describe the process of burial of such mummies, but they were perhaps placed in a shaft tomb. Poorer people used coffins fashioned from terracotta.

 

INEXPENSIVE METHOD

The third and least-expensive method the embalmers offered was to clear the intestines with an unnamed liquid, injected as an enema. The body was then placed in natron for seventy days and returned to the family. Herodotus gives no further details.

 

CHRISTIAN MUMMIES

In Christian tradition some bodies of Saints are naturally conserved, and venerated.

 

MUMMIFICATION IN OTHER CULTURES

AFRICA

In addition to the mummies of Egypt, there have been instances of mummies being discovered in other areas of the African continent. The bodies show a mix of anthropogenic and spontaneous mummification, with some being thousands of years old.

 

LIBYA

The mummified remains of an infant were discovered during an expedition by archaeologist Fabrizio Mori to Libya during the winter of 1958–1959 in the natural cave structure of Uan Muhuggiag. After curious deposits and cave paintings were discovered on the surfaces of the cave, expedition leaders decided to excavate. Uncovered alongside fragmented animal bone tools was the mummified body of an infant, wrapped in animal skin and wearing a necklace made of ostrich egg shell beads. Professor Tongiorgi of the University of Pisa radiocarbon-dated the infant to between 5,000–8,000 years old. A long incision located on the right abdominal wall, and the absence of internal organs, indicated that the body had been eviscerated post-mortem, possibly in an effort to preserve the remains. A bundle of herbs found within the body cavity also supported this conclusion. Further research revealed that the child had been around 30 months old at the time of death, though gender could not be determined due to poor preservation of the sex organs.

 

SOUTH AFRICA

The first mummy to be discovered in South Africa was found in the Baviaanskloof Wilderness Area by Dr. Johan Binneman in 1999. Nicknamed Moses, the mummy was estimated to be around 2,000 years old. After being linked to the indigenous Khoi culture of the region, the National Council of Khoi Chiefs of South Africa began to make legal demands that the mummy be returned shortly after the body was moved to the Albany Museum in Grahamstown.

 

ASIA

The mummies of Asia are usually considered to be accidental. The decedents were buried in just the right place where the environment could act as an agent for preservation. This is particularly common in the desert areas of the Tarim Basin and Iran. Mummies have been discovered in more humid Asian climates, however these are subject to rapid decay after being removed from the grave.

 

CHINA

Mummies from various dynasties throughout China's history have been discovered in several locations across the country. They are almost exclusively considered to be unintentional mummifications. Many areas in which mummies have been uncovered are difficult for preservation, due to their warm, moist climates. This makes the recovery of mummies a challenge, as exposure to the outside world can cause the bodies to decay in a matter of hours.

 

An example of a Chinese mummy that was preserved despite being buried in an environment not conducive to mummification is Xin Zhui. Also known as Lady Dai, she was discovered in the early 1970s at the Mawangdui archaeological site in Changsha. She was the wife of the marquis of Dai during the Han dynasty, who was also buried with her alongside another young man often considered to be a very close relative. However, Xin Zhui's body was the only one of the three to be mummified. Her corpse was so well-preserved that surgeons from the Hunan Provincial Medical Institute were able to perform an autopsy. The exact reason why her body was so completely preserved has yet to be determined.

 

Some of the more infamous mummies to be discovered in China are those termed Tarim mummies because of their discovery in the Tarim Basin. The dry desert climate of the basin proved to be an excellent agent for desiccation. For this reason, over 200 Tarim mummies, which are over 4,000 years old, were excavated from a cemetery in the present-day Xinjiang region. The mummies were found buried in upside-down boats with hundreds of 13-foot long wooden poles in the place of tombstones. DNA sequence data shows that the mummies had Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) characteristic of western Eurasia in the area of East-Central Europe, Central Asia and Indus Valley. This has created a stir in the Turkic-speaking Uighur population of the region, who claim the area has always belonged to their culture, while it was not until the 10th century when the Uighurs are said by scholars to have moved to the region from Central Asia. American Sinologist Victor H. Mair claims that "the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucasoid, or Europoid" with "east Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 3,000 years ago", while Mair also notes that it was not until 842 that the Uighur peoples settled in the area. Other mummified remains have been recovered from around the Tarim Basin at sites including Qäwrighul, Yanghai, Shengjindian, Shanpula, Zaghunluq, and Qizilchoqa.

 

IRAN

As of 2012, at least eight mummified human remains have been recovered from the Douzlakh Salt Mine at Chehr Abad in northwestern Iran. Due to their salt preservation, these bodies are collectively known as Saltmen. Carbon-14 testing conducted in 2008 dated three of the bodies to around 400 BCE. Later isotopic research on the other mummies returned similar dates, however, many of these individuals were found to be from a region that is not closely associated with the mine. It was during this time that researchers determined the mine suffered a major collapse, which likely caused the death of the miners. Since there is significant archaeological data that indicates the area was not actively inhabited during this time period, current consensus holds that the accident occurred during a brief period of temporary mining activity

 

SIBERIA

In 1993, a team of Russian archaeologists led by Dr. Natalia Polosmak discovered the Siberian Ice Maiden, a Scytho-Siberian woman, on the Ukok Plateau in the Altai Mountains near the Mongolian border. The mummy was naturally frozen due to the severe climatic conditions of the Siberian steppe. Also known as Princess Ukok, the mummy was dressed in finely detailed clothing and wore an elaborate headdress and jewelry. Alongside her body were buried six decorated horses and a symbolic meal for her last journey. Her left arm and hand were tattooed with animal style figures, including a highly stylized deer.

 

The Ice Maiden has been a source of some recent controversy. The mummy's skin has suffered some slight decay, and the tattoos have faded since the excavation. Some residents of the Altai Republic, formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union, have requested the return of the Ice Maiden, who is currently stored in Novosibirsk in Siberia.

 

Another Siberian mummy, a man, was discovered much earlier in 1929. His skin was also marked with tattoos of two monsters resembling griffins, which decorated his chest, and three partially obliterated images which seem to represent two deer and a mountain goat on his left arm.

 

PHILIPPINES

Philippine mummies are called Kabayan Mummies.They are common in Igorot culture and their heritage.The mummies are found in some areas named Kabayan, Sagada and among others. The mummies are dated between the 14th and 19th centuries.

 

EUROPE

The European continent is home to a diverse spectrum of spontaneous and anthropogenic mummies. Some of the best-preserved mummies have come from bogs located across the region. The Capuchin monks that inhabited the area left behind hundreds of intentionally-preserved bodies that have provided insight into the customs and cultures of people from various eras. One of the oldest, and most infamous, mummies (nicknamed Ötzi) was discovered on this continent. New mummies continue to be uncovered in Europe well into the 21st Century.

 

BOG BODIES

The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark have produced a number of bog bodies, mummies of people deposited in sphagnum bogs, apparently as a result of murder or ritual sacrifices. In such cases, the acidity of the water, low temperature and lack of oxygen combined to tan the body's skin and soft tissues. The skeleton typically disintegrates over time. Such mummies are remarkably well preserved on emerging from the bog, with skin and internal organs intact; it is even possible to determine the decedent's last meal by examining stomach contents. A famous case is that of the Haraldskær Woman, who was discovered by labourers in a bog in Jutland in 1835. She was erroneously identified as an early medieval Danish queen, and for that reason was placed in a royal sarcophagus at the Saint Nicolai Church, Vejle, where she currently remains. Another famous bog body, also from Denmark, known as the Tollund Man was discovered in 1950. The corpse was noted for its excellent preservation of the face and feet, which appeared as if the man had recently died. To this day, only the head of Tollund Man remains, due to the decomposition of the rest of his body, which was not preserved along with the head.

 

CANARY ISLANDS

The mummies of the Canary Islands belong to the indigenous Guanche people and date to the time before 14th Century Spanish explorers settled in the area. All deceased people within the Guanche culture were mummified during this time, though the level of care taken with embalming and burial varied depending on individual social status. Embalming was carried out by specialized groups, organized according to gender, who were considered unclean by the rest of the community. The techniques for embalming were similar to those of the ancient Egyptians; involving evisceration, preservation, and stuffing of the evacuated bodily cavities, then wrapping of the body in animal skins. Despite the successful techniques utilized by the Guanche, very few mummies remain due to looting and desecration.

 

CZECH REPUBLIC

The majority of mummies recovered in the Czech Republic come from underground crypts. While there is some evidence of deliberate mummification, most sources state that desiccation occurred naturally due to unique conditions within the crypts.

 

The Capuchin Crypt in Brno contains three hundred years of mummified remains directly below the main altar. Beginning in the 18th Century when the crypt was opened, and continuing until the practice was discontinued in 1787, the Capuchin monks of the monastery would lay the deceased on a pillow of bricks on the ground. The unique air quality and topsoil within the crypt naturally preserved the bodies over time.

 

Approximately fifty mummies were discovered in an abandoned crypt beneath the Church of St. Procopius of Sázava in Vamberk in the mid-1980s. Workers digging a trench accidentally broke into the crypt, which began to fill with waste water. The mummies quickly began to deteriorate, though thirty-four were able to be rescued and stored temporarily at the District Museum of the Orlické Mountains until they could be returned to the monastery in 2000. The mummies range in age and social status at time of death, with at least two children and one priest. The majority of the Vamberk mummies date from the 18th century.

 

The Klatovy catacombs currently house an exhibition of Jesuit mummies, alongside some aristocrats, that were originally interred between 1674–1783. In the early 1930s, the mummies were accidentally damaged during repairs, resulting in the loss of 140 bodies. The newly updated airing system preserves the thirty-eight bodies that are currently on display.

 

DENMARK

Apart from several bog bodies, Denmark has also yielded several other mummies, such as the three Borum Eshøj mummies, the Skrydstrup Woman and the Egtved Girl, who were all found inside burial mounds, or tumulus.

 

In 1875, the Borum Eshøj grave mound was uncovered, which had been built around three coffins, which belonged to a middle aged man and woman as well as a man in his early twenties. Through examination, the woman was discovered to be around 50–60 years old. She was found with several artifacts made of bronze, consisting of buttons, a belt plate, and rings, showing she was of higher class. All of the hair had been removed from the skull later when farmers had dug through the casket. Her original hairstyle is unknown. The two men wore kilts, and the younger man wore a sheath of which contained a bronze dagger. All three mummies were dated to 1351–1345 BCE.

 

The Skrydstrup Woman was unearthed from a tumulus in Southern Jutland, in 1935. Carbon-14 dating showed that she had died around 1300 BCE; examination also revealed that she was around 18–19 years old at the time of death, and that she had been buried in the summertime. Her hair had been drawn up in an elaborate hairstyle, which was then covered by a horse hair hairnet made by sprang technique. She was wearing a blouse and a necklace as well as two golden earrings, showing she was of higher class.

 

The Egtved Girl, dated to 1370 BCE, was found also inside a sealed coffin inside of a tumulus, in 1921. She was wearing a bodice and a skirt, including a belt and bronze bracelets. Also found with the girl were the cremated remains of a child at her feet, and by her head a box containing some bronze pins, a hairnet, and an awl.

 

HUNGARY

In 1994, 265 mummified bodies were found in the crypt of a Dominican church in Vác, Hungary from the 1729–1838 period. The discovery proved to be scientifically important, and by 2006 an exhibition was established in the Museum of Natural History in Budapest. Unique to the Hungarian mummies are their elaborately decorated coffins, with no two being exactly alike.

 

ITALY

The varied geography and climatology of Italy has led to many cases of spontaneous mummification. Italian mummies display the same diversity, with a conglomeration of natural and intentional mummification spread across many centuries and cultures.

 

The oldest natural mummy in Europe was discovered in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps on the Austrian-Italian border. Nicknamed Ötzi, the mummy is a 5,300-year-old male believed to be a member of the Tamins-Carasso-Isera cultural group of South Tyrol. Despite his age, a recent DNA study conducted by Walther Parson of Innsbruck Medical University revealed Ötzi has 19 living genetic relatives.

 

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo were built in to the 16th century by the monks of Palermo’s Capuchin monastery. Originally intended to hold the deliberately mummified remains of dead friars, interment in the catacombs became a status symbol for the local population in the following centuries. Burials continued until the 1920s, with one of the most famous final burials being that of Rosalia Lombardo. In all, the catacombs host nearly 8000 mummies.

 

The most recent discovery of mummies in Italy came in 2010, when sixty mummified human remains were found in the crypt of the Conversion of St Paul church in Roccapelago di Pievepelago, Italy. Built in the 15th Century as a cannon hold and later converted in the 16th Century, the crypt had been sealed once it had reached capacity, leaving the bodies to be protected and preserved. The crypt was reopened during restoration work on the church, revealing the diverse array of mummies inside. The bodies were quickly moved to a museum for further study.

 

NORTH AMERICA

The mummies of North America are often steeped in controversy, as many of these bodies have been linked to still-existing native cultures. While the mummies provide a wealth of historically-significant data, native cultures and tradition often demands the remains be returned to their original resting places. This has led to many legal actions by Native American councils, leading to most museums keeping mummified remains out of the public eye.

 

CANADA

Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi ("Long ago person found" in the Southern Tutchone language of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations), was found in August 1999 by three First Nations hunters at the edge of a glacier in Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. According to the Kwäday Dän Ts'ìnchi Project, the remains are the oldest well preserved mummy discovered in North America. (It should be noted that the Spirit Cave mummy although not well preserved, is much older.) Initial radiocarbon tests date the mummy to around 550 years-old.

 

GREENLAND

In 1972, eight remarkably preserved mummies were discovered at an abandoned Inuit settlement called Qilakitsoq, in Greenland. The "Greenland Mummies" consisted of a six-month-old baby, a four-year-old boy, and six women of various ages, who died around 500 years ago. Their bodies were naturally mummified by the sub-zero temperatures and dry winds in the cave in which they were found.

 

MEXICO

Intentional mummification in pre-Columbian Mexico was practiced by the Aztec culture. These bodies are collectively known as Aztec mummies. Genuine Aztec mummies were "bundled" in a woven wrap and often had their faces covered by a ceremonial mask. Public knowledge of Aztec mummies increased due to traveling exhibits and museums in the 19th and 20th centuries, though these bodies were typically naturally desiccated remains and not actually the mummies associated with Aztec culture. (See: Aztec mummy)

 

Natural mummification has been known to occur in several places in Mexico, though the most famous are the mummies of Guanajuato. A collection of these mummies, most of which date to the late 19th century, have been on display at El Museo de las Momias in the city of Guanajuato since 1970. The museum claims to have the smallest mummy in the world on display (a mummified fetus). It was thought that minerals in the soil had the preserving effect, however it may rather be due to the warm, arid climate. Mexican mummies are also on display in the small town of Encarnación de Díaz, Jalisco.

 

UNITED STATES

Spirit Cave Man was discovered in 1940 during salvage work prior to guano mining activity that was scheduled to begin in the area. The mummy is a middle-aged male, found completely dressed and lying on a blanket made of animal skin. Radiocarbon tests in the 1990s dated the mummy to being nearly 9,000 years old. The remains are currently held at the Nevada State Museum. There has been some controversy within the local Native American community, who began petitioning to have the remains returned and reburied in 1995.

 

AUSTRALIA

The aboriginal mummification traditions found in Australia are thought be related to those found in the Torres Strait islands, the inhabitants of which achieved a high level of sophisticated mummification techniques (See:Torres Strait). Australian mummies lack some of the technical ability of the Torres Strait mummies, however much of the ritual aspects of the mummification process are similar. Full-body mummification was achieved by these cultures, but not the level of artistic preservation as found on smaller islands. The reason for this seems to be for easier transport of bodies by more nomadic tribes.

 

NEW ZEALAND

Some Māori tribes from New Zealand would keep mummified heads as trophies from tribal warfare. They are also known as Mokomokai. In the 19th Century, many of the trophies were acquired by Europeans who found the tattooed skin to be a phenomenal curiosity. Westerners began to offer valuable commodities in exchange for the uniquely tattooed mummified heads. The heads were later put on display in museums, 16 of which being housed across France alone. In 2010, the Rouen City Hall of France returned one of the heads to New Zealand, despite earlier protests by the Culture Ministry of France.

 

There is also evidence that some Maori tribes may have practiced full-body mummification, though the practice is not thought to have been widespread. The discussion of Maori mummification has been historically controversial, with some experts in past decades claiming that such mummies have never existed. Contemporary science does now acknowledge the existence of full-body mummification in the culture. There is still controversy, however, as to the nature of the mummification process. Some bodies appear to be spontaneously created by the natural environment, while others exhibit signs of deliberate practices. General modern consensus tends to agree that there could be a mixture of both types of mummification, similar to that of the ancient Egyptian mummies.

 

SOUTH AMERICA

The South American continent contains some of the oldest mummies in the world, both deliberate and accidental. The bodies were preserved by the best agent for mummification: the environment. Rather than developing elaborate processes such as later-dynasty ancient Egyptians, the early South Americans often left their dead in naturally dry or frozen areas, though some did perform surgical preparation when mummification was intentional. Some of the reasons for intentional mummification in South America include memorialization, immortalization, and religious offerings.

 

INCA MUMMIES

Several naturally-preserved, unintentional mummies dating from the Incan period have been found in the colder regions of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. These are collectively known as "ice mummies". The first Incan ice mummy was discovered in 1954 atop El Plomo Peak in Chile, after an eruption of the nearby volcano Sabancaya melted away ice that covered the body. The Mummy of El Plomo was a male child who was presumed to be wealthy due to his well-fed bodily characteristics. He was considered to be the most well-preserved ice mummy in the world until the discovery of Mummy Juanita in 1995.

 

Mummy Juanita was discovered near the summit of Ampato in the Peruvian section of the Andes mountains by archaeologist Johan Reinhard. Her body had been so thoroughly frozen that it had not been desiccated; much of her skin, muscle tissue, and internal organs retained their original structure. She is believed to be a ritual sacrifice, due to the close proximity of her body to the Incan capital of Cusco, as well as the fact she was wearing highly intricate clothing to indicate her special social status. Several Incan ceremonial artifacts and temporary shelters uncovered in the surrounding area seem to support this theory.

 

More evidence that the Inca left sacrificial victims to die in the elements, and later be unintentionally preserved, came in 1999 with the discovery of the Llullaillaco mummies on the border of Argentina and Peru. The three mummies are children, two girls and one boy, who are thought to be sacrifices associated with the ancient ritual of qhapaq hucha. Recent biochemical analysis of the mummies has revealed that the victims had consumed increasing quantities of alcohol and coca, possibly in the form of chicha, in the months leading up to sacrifice. The dominant theory for the drugging reasons that, alongside ritual uses, the substances probably made the children more docile. Chewed coca leaves found inside the eldest child's mouth upon her discovery in 1999 supports this theory.

 

SELF-MUMMIFICATION

Monks whose bodies remain incorrupt without any traces of deliberate mummification are venerated by some Buddhists who believe they successfully were able to mortify their flesh to death. Self-mummification was practiced until the late 1800s in Japan and has been outlawed since the early 1900s.

 

Many Mahayana Buddhist monks were reported to know their time of death and left their last testaments and their students accordingly buried them sitting in lotus position, put into a vessel with drying agents (such as wood, paper, or lime) and surrounded by bricks, to be exhumed later, usually after three years. The preserved bodies would then be decorated with paint and adorned with gold.

 

Bodies purported to be those of self-mummified monks are exhibited in several Japanese shrines, and it has been claimed that the monks, prior to their death, stuck to a sparse diet made up of salt, nuts, seeds, roots, pine bark, and urushi tea.

 

PLASTINATION

Plastination is a technique used in anatomy to conserve bodies or body parts. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most microscopic properties of the original sample.

 

The technique was invented by Gunther von Hagens when working at the anatomical institute of the Heidelberg University in 1978. Von Hagens has patented the technique in several countries and is heavily involved in its promotion, especially as the creator and director of the Body Worlds traveling exhibitions, exhibiting plastinated human bodies internationally. He also founded and directs the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg.

 

More than 40 institutions worldwide have facilities for plastination, mainly for medical research and study, and most affiliated to the International Society for Plastination.

Treatment of ancient mummies in modern times

 

In the Middle Ages, based on a mistranslation from the Arabic term for bitumen, it was thought that mummies possessed healing properties. As a result, it became common practice to grind Egyptian mummies into a powder to be sold and used as medicine. When actual mummies became unavailable, the sun-desiccated corpses of criminals, slaves and suicidal people were substituted by mendacious merchants. The practice developed into a wide-scale business that flourished until the late 16th century. Two centuries ago, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties to stop bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form as in mellified man. Artists also made use of Egyptian mummies; a brownish pigment known as mummy brown, based on mummia (sometimes called alternatively caput mortuum, Latin for death's head), which was originally obtained by grounding human and animal Egyptian mummies. It was most popular in the 17th century, but was discontinued in the early 19th century when its composition became generally known to artists who replaced the said pigment by a totally different blend -but keeping the original name, mummia or mummy brown-yielding a similar tint and based on ground minerals (oxides and fired earths) and or blends of powdered gums and oleoresins (such as myrrh and frankincense) as well as ground bitumen. These blends appeared on the market as forgeries of powdered mummy pigment but were ultimately considered as acceptable replacements, once antique mummies were no longer permitted to be destroyed. Many thousands of mummified cats were also sent from Egypt to England to be processed for use in fertilizer.

 

During the 19th century, following the discovery of the first tombs and artifacts in Egypt, Egyptology was a huge fad in Europe, especially in Victorian England. European aristocrats would occasionally entertain themselves by purchasing mummies, having them unwrapped, and holding observation sessions. These sessions destroyed hundreds of mummies, because the exposure to the air caused them to disintegrate.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Cannel coal from Tennessee, USA. (public display, entrance building to Olentangy Indian Caverns, central Ohio, USA)

 

Cannel coal is a scarce, fossil spore-rich variety of coal - it is hard and weathering-resistant, has a velvety to satiny luster, little to no stratification, and a conchoidal fracture. The differences in physical characterstics between cannel coal and other ranks of coal (lignite, bituminous, anthracite) are due to the organic matter content. Cannel coals are composed principally of fossil spores (sporinite phytoclasts). Garden-variety coals are composed principally of a mix of altered fragmented plant debris that was originally woody tissue, leaves, bark, fungi, and spores. Cannel coals are generally interpreted to have formed in pond, lagoon, or channel facies within a larger coal swamp setting.

 

This sample is attributed to Tennessee. No additional information is provided. If correctly attributed, the sample may be from the occurrence reported by Ashley (1918, p. 113):

"In Tennessee cannel coal is mined only south of Jellico, about 2 miles from Newcomb in Campbell County, where for some years it has been mined by the Jellico Cannel Coal Company. The bed has an average thickness of 30 to 36 inches and lies about 1,800 feet above sea level. Benches of cannel coal of small lateral extent occur at Bon Air and Whitwell and at a few other places in the state."

 

Age: probably Pennsylvanian

---------------

For more info. on cannel coal in general, see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannel_coal

---------------

Reference cited:

 

Ashley, G.H. 1918. Cannel coal in the United States. United States Geological Survey Bulletin 659. 127 pp. 8 pls. (pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0659/report.pdf)

 

NON-NUCLEAR COMPONENT STORES BUILDING 60 –

 

The function of the non-nuclear component stores was to hold the high explosive part of the bomb and its outer casing. The casing could probably be split into two units, the tail and forward part containing the high explosive and electronics. The bombs, minus their fissile components, were housed in three almost identical stores buildings 59-61, known as Storage Building Type 'D-D'. These are arranged in an arrowhead pattern, and are accessed from the internal loop road, and are all surrounded by 14ft 6in high earth traverses, revetted by a reinforced concrete retaining wall against the roadway.

 

The western store, building 59 was gutted by a fire during the 1980's and has subsequently been demolished. Its floor plan remains visible on the remaining concrete floor slab. The two remaining stores, buildings 60 and 61 are rectangular in plan, and are constructed from reinforced concrete columns and beams. Internally there are two rows of columns, 13in², which support the roof beams, 2ft by 9in, which carry the 9in thick reinforced concrete roof slab which is covered with bituminous felt. The rainwater gutters and down pipes are cast asbestos.

 

The wall sections are filled with 18in by 9in by 9in precast concrete blocks, internally the main storage area measures 190ft 2½in by 60ft. It is divided longitudinally into eleven 17ft by 3ft bays and cross ways into three bays the outer bays measure 17ft 6in and the central bay is 25ft wide. The maximum clear internal height was 12ft from the floor to the underside of the roof beams. The floor is surfaced with a hard gritless asphalt with the patent name 'Ironite'. The walls are painted pale green colour and the ceiling cream. in store building 61 the bay letters 0, N, M, and L are visible on the rear columns on the eastern side, suggesting the store was divided into 22 bays along the outer walls.

 

Abutting on to the front of the stores, and flanking the entrances, are plant and switch rooms, which originally contained heating and air conditioning plant to maintain a stable environment within the stores. A raised air extract duct is placed asymmetrically on the roofs of the stores. Entry into the stores is through a 10ft wide door opening with 12ft high doors. In the rear wall of the stores is a single door width, outward opening emergency exit. The first nuclear weapon the store was designed to hold was relatively large, a ''Blue Danube'' bomb measured 24ft in length and weighed 10,000lbs.

 

The problems of handling such large objects are reflected in the provision of substantial lifting gantries at the entrance to each store. Two variants are found, the simplest, exemplified by the middle store building 60 comprises a straight gantry. Over the roadway the gantry is supported by four 24in by 18in reinforced concrete columns, which support two 51in by 24in reinforced concrete beams. The upper beams of the gantry taper towards the entrance to the store where they are suppurted by two reinforced concrete columns. On the underside of the gantry is attached a 20in by 6½in rolled steel joist runway beam which runs to the entrance to the building. This was originally fitted with a 10 ton hoist. The gantry is covered by asbestos sheeting to provide a dry working area.

 

On the eastern and western stores the gantries were set at 30° to the front of the stores. In this variant an extra set of columns was placed at the 30° dogleg. Internally there is no evidence for a runway beam, so it presumed the bombs were lifted off a road transporter and loaded onto a bomb trolley for storage. It is not known how many bombs were kept in each store, or if the tail units were separated from the front part of the bomb for storage. Subsequent to the site being relinquished by the RAF a central corridor has been created in the stores by the insertion of breeze block walls. Doors in these walls give access to workshops along either side of the buildings. External windows have also been inserted in some of the bays.

 

Information sourced from English Heritage.

FISSILE CORE STORAGE –

 

The fissile cores were stored in small buildings arranged around the large non-nuclear component stores. In total there are 57 of these buildings, which are divided into 48 Type 'A' and 9 Type 'B' stores. The fissile core stores are organised in four uneven groups around the non-nuclear stores. The two southerly groups of stores are arranged symmetrically to the south of the large non-nuclear stores, each group having sixteen small store buildings. The north-eastern group contains eleven stores and the north-west group fourteen. All but the south-east group contained a mixture of Type 'A' and Type 'B' stores.

 

The store buildings are linked together by pedestrian width walkways, fenced by tubular steel pipes 37in tall with strands of white between the horizontal members. The area was lit by pre-cast concrete lamp-posts, each of which had a red panic button at chest height. The Type 'A' storage buildings 1-48 are small kiosk-like structures. In plan they measure 8ft 4in by 7ft 10in and stand 9ft above ground level. The foundations of the building are constructed of 3ft thick mass concrete. The walls are of cavity wall construction and are formed of solid concrete blocks, while the roof is a flat over-hanging reinforced concrete slab with a drip mould, and is covered with bituminous felt. The design drawing (Drg. No. 3563B/52) shows a variety of irregular roof plans designed to disguise the structures from the air. These were never built, all the roofs being rectangular in plan.

 

Fittings on the walls indicate that they were all originally protected by copper earthing straps. On the front of many of the stores a stencilled notice records ''Date of last lightning conductor test April - 63''. Internally the walls are finished in unpainted, smooth gritless plaster. The side and rear walls are ventilated by four small controllable ventilators, two at the base of the wall and two at the top. In the floor of each of the Type 'A' stores is a single keyhole shaped cavity. Each hole is 1ft 5in in diameter and 1ft 9in deep. The shaft of the hole measures 10in wide and is 8in long and is shallower than the main hole at 3½in. A scar around the hole suggests it originally contained a vessel with the asphalt brought up around its lip. This is confirmed by the survival of the surrounding lip in similar stores at RAF Faldingworth, Lincolnshire, and by the rare survival of a number of stainless steel vessels at the bomb store at RAF Gaydon, Warwickshire.

 

The electrical system of each store was contained within small bore metal pipes; circular junction boxes led to other electrical fittings, which have in most cases been removed. In a number of the stores 'Walsall' Type 1174X flameproof switch boxes remained. On their covers is cast ''5 Amp 250 Volt Flameproof switchbox type Walsall 1174BX Group 2 FLP 302 Group 3 Test P60 Isolate supply elsewhere before removing this cover''. A small formica sign confirmed that ''The electrical installation in this building is standard 'A' in accordance with AP 2608A''. All the stores originally had external fuse boxes to the left of their doors.

 

The doors are wooden and open outwards, their outer faces being protected by a steel sheet. They are secured by a combination lock and internal vertical locking bar operated by an external handle. A metal fitting in the path allowed the door to be secured half ajar. Above the door, and attached to its frame, is a spring-loaded electrical contact, which probably recorded on the control board in building 63 whether or not the door was open or closed. Externally and internally the doors are painted light blue. On the door of building No. 1 is a 1ft diameter radiation symbol in yellow and out-lined in black, below it is a 11½in yellow square with a black star at its centre.

 

The Type 'B' store buildings 49-57 are slightly larger than the Type 'A' measuring 9ft 7in by 7ft 10n. Otherwise the details of the stores are identical to the smaller stores. The principle difference between the two types of structures is that the Type 'B ' had two storage holes in their floors. Each of these buildings was also equipped with a small wooden counter adjacent to the doors; the counters measure 2ft 6in by 1ft 6in and standing 4ft tall. They have been removed from stores 53 and 55. At some point during the operational life of the station the holes in the floors of all the Type 'B' stores were filled and covered by gritless asphalt. The asphalt surfaces in the stores are continuous, often with a slight depression marking the position of the holes, which implies that the original floor was lifted and new floors laid. The holes in store 52 have been reopened, as indicated by fragments of the asphalt surface thrown back into the holes. This is in contrast to RAF Faldingworth where the holes have been left open.

 

In total there were enough holes to store 66 fissile cores. One source states that the single hole stores contained plutonium cores, while the double-hole stores were, used for cobalt cores. Currently available documentation does not reveal if one fissile core may be equated with one bomb, or if a bomb contained more than one fissile core. Recent research has shown that Britain probably produced no more than twenty Blue Danube warheads, with this number on the active stockpile between 1957 and 1961. It is therefore likely that no more than a handful of weapons were stored at RAF Barnham at anyone time.

 

The significance of the filling of the holes in the Type 'B' stores is also unclear. It may coincide with the withdrawal of the first generation nuclear weapon, ''Blue Danube'', and the deployment second generation atomic bomb, ''Red Beard'' (from 1961), or it may be related to the introduction of first British hydrogen bomb, ''Yellow Sun'' (from 1958). Given the number of available nuclear warheads in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it is unlikely that the RAF Barnham store was ever full. Part of RAF Barnham's function, along with other bomb stores, was to convince the Soviet Union that Britain had more nuclear weapons at her disposal than was in fact the case.

 

Information sourced from English Heritage.

 

Hyden Formation over Pikeville Formation in the Pennsylvanian of Kentucky, USA.

 

This is a relatively new roadcut along new Route 15, north of the town of Jackson, Kentucky, USA. The exposure has Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic sedimentary rocks of the Breathitt Group (formerly the Breathitt Formation). The upper part of the roadcut is Hyden Formation, consisting of mixed siliciclastics and coal. The lower part is Pikeville Formation, also having mixed siliciclastics and coal. Coal beds are principally bituminous coal horizons, but there is one cannel coal horizon in the upper Pikeville Formation.

 

Stratigraphy: Hyden Formation over Pikeville Formation, Breathitt Group, lower Atokan Series (Duckmantian), lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Location: Jackson North outcrop - large roadcut on the western side of new Rt. 15, just south of southbound old Rt. 15-new Rt. 15 split, north of Jackson, north-central Breathitt County, eastern Kentucky, USA (37° 34’ 53.95” North, 83° 23’ 07.99” West)

 

Cannel coal from Tennessee, USA. (public display, entrance building to Olentangy Indian Caverns, central Ohio, USA)

 

Cannel coal is a scarce, fossil spore-rich variety of coal - it is hard and weathering-resistant, has a velvety to satiny luster, little to no stratification, and a conchoidal fracture. The differences in physical characterstics between cannel coal and other ranks of coal (lignite, bituminous, anthracite) are due to the organic matter content. Cannel coals are composed principally of fossil spores (sporinite phytoclasts). Garden-variety coals are composed principally of a mix of altered fragmented plant debris that was originally woody tissue, leaves, bark, fungi, and spores. Cannel coals are generally interpreted to have formed in pond, lagoon, or channel facies within a larger coal swamp setting.

 

This sample is attributed to Tennessee. No additional information is provided. If correctly attributed, the sample may be from the occurrence reported by Ashley (1918, p. 113):

"In Tennessee cannel coal is mined only south of Jellico, about 2 miles from Newcomb in Campbell County, where for some years it has been mined by the Jellico Cannel Coal Company. The bed has an average thickness of 30 to 36 inches and lies about 1,800 feet above sea level. Benches of cannel coal of small lateral extent occur at Bon Air and Whitwell and at a few other places in the state."

 

Age: probably Pennsylvanian

---------------

For more info. on cannel coal in general, see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannel_coal

---------------

Reference cited:

 

Ashley, G.H. 1918. Cannel coal in the United States. United States Geological Survey Bulletin 659. 127 pp. 8 pls. (pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0659/report.pdf)

 

This is a 30-foot (9.1 m) bridal veil waterfall on Cucumber Run, a small creek which flows into the Youghiogheny River.

 

Water cascades over a lip of coarse-grained sandstone of the Allegheny Formation at Ohiopyle State Park. Beneath the sandstone, finer-grained rocks including shale and a thin coal bed are visible. The Allegheny Formation is an important coal-bearing formation in western Pennsylvania.

 

The name of the stream, Cucumber Run, by the way, isn't because it is shaped like a cucumber, is the color of a cucumber, or has the smell of a cucumber. Actually the name has nothing to do with cucumbers at all. Cucumber Run is named for the abundance of one species of magnolia tree, the cucumber magnolia ( Magnolia acuminate ), that still is found in the watershed.

 

The rock formation that gives rises to Cucumber Falls is the Pottsville Sandstone or Pottsville Formation. The Pennsylvanian (323.2 million years ago to 298.9 million years ago) Pottsville Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio. The formation is also recognized in Alabama. It is a major ridge-former in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the eastern United States. The Pottsville Formation is conspicuous at many sites along the Allegheny Front, the eastern escarpment of the Allegheny or Appalachian Plateau.

 

The Pottsville Formation consists of a gray conglomerate, fine to coarse grained sandstone, and is known to contain limestone, siltstone and shale, as well as anthracite and bituminous coal. It is considered a classic orogenic molasse. The formation was first described from a railroad cut south of Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

  

www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/field/pnhp/pnhpsites/cucumbe...

triblive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/focus/s_539295.html#axzz36v...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottsville_Formation

Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad 2-4-2 Class N-1 590 presumed at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on an unknown date in 1895, photograph by Baldwin Locomotive Works, Chuck Zeiler collection. The following is excerpted from the book, Steam Locomotives Of The Burlington Route by Bernard G. Corbin and Richard F. Kerka:

 

One of the truly high steppers used on the Burlington was the class N-1, 2-4-2 Columbia type built by Baldwin in 1895 and assigned to the road as No. 590. The engine was an experimental design, and was to handle a train of six cars from Chicago to Galesburg in three hours, for an average speed of over 54 mph. It was one of the first engines designed for burning bituminous coal with a wide firebox placed to the rear of the driving wheels and over the trailing truck. The boiler was of a straight-top type with a combustion chamber extending forward from the firebox. Unfortunately this combination did not prove entirely satisfactory, and the engine was rebuilt in 1897 with a new firebox, the combustion chamber being omitted. The 2-4-2 type had 84¼ inch drivers with cast steel centers. The first pair of drivers was equalized with the leading truck, and underhung springs were used under all wheels. The cylinders were 19X26 inches and inboard piston valves of 10 inches diameter were located above the front frame extension. The valve link motion was placed entirely between the driving wheels. The tender appears to have been influenced by European design, since it was of a six-wheel type with all three axles held in place by a rigid frame. The springs on the second and third axles were connected by equalizing bars. Although the N-1 engine was never duplicated, its design features were adopted on the 4-4-2 type locomotives that were to follow. In 1905 the Columbia type was rebuilt to a 4-4-2 wheel arrangement and reclassed as P-4 and numbered 2599 and retired in November 1929.

A loaded unit coal train departs Consol Energy's massive Bailey Mine complex. You can see the tail end of an empty train waiting on the inbound section of the balloon track. I caught this train as it came up to the mine empty. Four freezing hours later, I took this photo. It was worth the wait.

With a plentiful and gracious heads up from my inside source, I was alerted to this coming through on the H-TEAAMY 1-18A. As stated to me “a “weird looking color schemed engine” departing Teague third in consist at 16:00 which would put it through Flynn at approximately 17:15.

 

Now, it’s been blisteringly hot and dry here for the last 2½ months, so no railfanning for me. Of course this comes through and we’ve got a major thunderstorm line bearing down from the west. Trust me, we need the rain desperately, but the timing?

 

What was going to get here first: the locomotive or the storm line? Well, the locomotive made it by about 5 minutes before the rain. No sooner does the EOT pass me does the first line of downpours hit.

 

I was fortunate enough to catch the logo.

 

Cerrajón

carbón para el mundo

Progreso para Columbia.

 

Which translates to”

Coal for the world,

Progress for Columbia

 

Cerrajón Mining located in La Guajira, Columbia is an open pit low sulfur low ash bituminous coal mine.

 

Photos on the internet show Cerrajón had a fleet of GE B36-7 units and is in the progress of upgrading to ES44ACs.

 

BNSF

Red River Division

Houston Subdivision

MP168.46 – FM 977gc

Flynn, Texas, USA

18 August 2020 – 17:22 CDT

 

BNSF H-TEAAMY 1-18A (sb manifest, Teague, TX to PTRA American Yard; Houston, TX)

BNSF 5497 [GE C44-9W]

BNSF 6701 [GE ES44C4]

Cerrajon 1026 [GE ES44AC]

 

all images: © 2022 ~ Phantastic Pherroequinology / Philip M. Goldstein

Fossil charcoal in coal from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.

 

This rock is from the Pottsville Group, a Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic succession containing nonmarine shales, marine shales, siltstones, sandstones, coals, marine limestones, and chert ("flint"). The lower Pottsville dates to the late Early Pennsylvanian. The upper part dates to the early Middle Pennsylvanian. The Lower-Middle Pennsylvanian boundary is apparently somewhere near the Boggs Member (?).

 

Shown above is a sample derived from the Bedford Coal, a horizon that occurs just below the Upper Mercer Limestone (or Upper Mercer Flint). Lithologically, the Bedford ranges from carbonaceous shale to argillaceous coal to bituminous coal to cannel coal. The cannel coal in the Bedford was targeted for mining in the 1800s as a source of fuel. It was particularly useful in the manufacture of kerosene, an illuminating fuel. After the petroleum industry started in the 1860s, production of kerosene from cannel coal essentially ceased.

 

At this locality, the Bedford Coal consists of cannel coal and bituminous coal. This sample is weathered coal with pieces of compressed fossil charcoal (= lustrous, blackish-colored chunks). The Pennsylvanian was a time of relatively high atmospheric oxygen (O2) levels, and forest fires were relatively common events. Charcoalized fossil wood can be found in some abundance in Pennsylvanian sedimentary successions. The original wood microstructure is usually well preserved, but the charcoal fragments themselves are quite delicate. A gentle rub with a finger turns these fragments into black powder. Sometimes, the fossil charcoal is partially pyritized.

 

The rainbow-colored areas are thin weathering films of turgite, which is essentially hydrous hematite (2Fe2O3·H2O - hydrous iron oxide). Some geologists do not consider turgite to be a mineral - rather, it's interpreted as a mixture of hematite and goethite resulting from goethite alteration. Turgite often occurs as rainbow-colored iridescent coatings on iron oxide-rich rocks or rocks having surficial iron oxide staining. It can also occur as irregularly botryoidal masses. (see also: www.jsjgeology.net/Turgite.htm and www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/albums/72157661979539290)

 

Stratigraphy: Bedford Coal, upper Pottsville Group, Atokan Stage, lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Locality: Tunnel Hill North Portal Outcrop (= Noland Tunnel's northern portal), ~1.75 air miles north-northeast of the town of Tunnel Hill, western Coshocton County, eastern Ohio, USA (~40° 16’ 33.27” North latitude, ~82° 01’ 53.04” West longitude)

 

Asphaltic concrete road in Thailand

Awarding contest prizes during the National Library Week Open House festivities at the WSDOT Materials Laboratory Library, April 12, 2011. Left to right: Bituminous Technology Engineer Sean McLaughlin, Foundation Engineer Andrew Fiske, Materials Documentation Engineer Maha Ablson, and Librarian Rebecca Christie. Silly hats have become part of the annual tradition.

nrhp # 66000666- The East Broad Top Railroad and Coal Company was chartered in 1856. Due to financial constraints and the American Civil War, the railroad was not built by its original charterers, but a new group of investors began to acquire right-of-way in 1867 and was able to construct the railroad as a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge line in 1872–1874. Service began from Mount Union, Pennsylvania to Orbisonia, Pennsylvania in August, 1873, and to Robertsdale in November, 1874. The line later was extended to Woodvale and Alvan, with several short branches. At its height, it had over 60 miles of track and approximately 33 miles of main line.

The primary purpose of the railroad was to haul semi-bituminous coal from the mines on the east side of the remote Broad Top Mountain plateau to the Pennsylvania Railroad in Mount Union. The railroad also carried substantial amounts of ganister rock, lumber and passengers with some agricultural goods, concrete, road tar and general freight. In its first three decades the railroad supplied much of its coal to the Rockhill Iron Furnace, operated by the railroad's sister company, the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company, and in turn hauled the pig iron from the furnace.

As the iron industry in the region faded in the early 1900s, the railroad came to subsist on coal traffic for about 90% of its revenue. Large plants for the manufacture of silica brick were developed at Mount Union around the turn of the 20th century, and these became major customers for coal and also for ganister rock, which was quarried at multiple points along the railroad.

The EBT was generally profitable from the 1880s through the 1940s and was able to modernize its infrastructure far more than other narrow gauge railroads. A coal cleaning plant and a full maintenance shops complex were built, bridges were upgraded from iron and wood to steel and concrete, wood rolling stock was replaced by steel, and modern high-powered steam locomotives were bought from the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia.

In the 1950s, coal demand plummeted as homes and industries switched to cheap oil and gas. The last nail in the coffin came when the silica brick plants in Mount Union converted to oil and gas and not enough coal could be sold to support the mines and the railroad. The railroad closed as a coal hauler April 14, 1956, and along with the coal-mining company was sold for scrap to the Kovalchick Salvage Corporation.

 

from Wikipedia

www.artskooldamage.blogspot.com/

Smoking stack of thermal power station against a blue sky

Houille (focus stacking).

 

Image composée de 7 photos assemblées avec CombineZP.

Hyden Formation over Pikeville Formation in the Pennsylvanian of Kentucky, USA.

 

This is a relatively new roadcut along new Route 15, north of the town of Jackson, Kentucky, USA. The exposure has Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic sedimentary rocks of the Breathitt Group (formerly the Breathitt Formation). The upper part of the roadcut is Hyden Formation, consisting of mixed siliciclastics and coal. The lower part is Pikeville Formation, also having mixed siliciclastics and coal. Coal beds are principally bituminous coal horizons, but there is one cannel coal horizon in the upper Pikeville Formation.

 

Stratigraphy: Hyden Formation over Pikeville Formation, Breathitt Group, lower Atokan Series (Duckmantian), lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Location: Jackson North outcrop - large roadcut on the western side of new Rt. 15, just south of southbound old Rt. 15-new Rt. 15 split, north of Jackson, north-central Breathitt County, eastern Kentucky, USA (37° 34’ 53.95” North, 83° 23’ 07.99” West)

 

Coal from the Cretaceous of Colorado, USA. (public display, Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, Durango, Colorado, USA)

 

Coal is a carbonaceous, biogenic sedimentary rock composed of the altered remains of plant material in ancient swamp environments. The precursor to coal is peat - a very loosely consolidated, highly porous, lightweight mass of plant fragments. With burial and diagenesis, the peat is altered to various ranks of coal - lignite coal, sub-bituminous coal, and bituminous coal. With very low grade metamorphism, bituminous coal becomes semi-anthracite coal and then anthracite coal. Each successive coal rank is harder, heavier, more carbon-rich, and hotter-burning.

 

The coal shown above appears to be a bituminous coal. It comes from a coal mine in Hay Gulch in southwestern Colorado. Coal from this locality is used to power steam locomotives of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, which operates tourist trains between those two towns in Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

 

Stratigraphy: Menefee Formation, Campanian Stage, upper Upper Cretaceous

 

Locality: National King Coal Mine, Hay Gulch, western La Plata County, southwestern Colorado, USA

 

Crews worked on SR 9 for three days from July 23 through July 25, 2018 applying a oil and gravel surface - bituminous surface treatment - to a 10 mile stretch between the south end of Big Lake and Sedro-Woolley. Following application of the gravel, equipment rolled the area with large rubber tires and sweeping happened overnight to pick up loose material.

Devonian mudstone showing the anuual deposition of sediment. Each pair of light and dark bands represents one year. The dark bands are rich in bitumen. Found on Shaltigoe beach, Wick Bay. Photographed on 13 April 2009.

Bituminous coal from the Cretaceous of Utah, USA.

 

Coal is a carbon-rich, biogenic sedimentary rock. It forms by the burial and alteration of organic matter from fossil land plants that lived in ancient swamps. Coal starts out as peat. With increasing burial and diagenetic alteration, peat becomes lignite coal, sub-bituminous coal, and then bituminous coal. Bituminous coals tend to break and weather in a blocky fashion, are relatively sooty to the touch, and are harder and heavier than lignite coal (but still relatively soft and lightweight). Discernible plant fossil fragments may be present on bituminous coal bedding planes - sometimes in abundance. Bituminous coals commonly have irregular patches of shiny, glassy-textured organic matter (vitrain).

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Info. from public signage at Wittenberg University's Geology Department (Springfield, Ohio, USA):

 

Origin of Coal

 

Coal is formed from accumulated vegetation that grew in peat-forming swamps on broad lowlands that were near sea level. Cyclothems indicate that the land must have been at a "critical level" since the change from marine to non-marine sediments shows that the seas periodically encroached upon the land.

 

Formation of Coal

 

The change from plant debris to coal involves biochemical action producing partial decay, preserval of this material from further decay, and later dynamochemical processes. The biochemical changes involve attack by bacteria which liberate volatile constituents, and the preserval of the residual waxes and resins in the bottom of the swamps where the water is too toxic for the decay-promoting bacteria to live. The accumulated material forms "peat bogs". The dynamochemical process involves further chemical reactions produced by the increased pressure and temperature brought about by the weight of sediment that is deposited on top of it. These reactions are also ones in which the volatile constituents are driven off.

 

Rank of Coal

 

The different types of coal are commonly referred to in terms of rank. From lowest upward, they are peat (actually not a coal), lignite, bituminous, and anthracite. The rank of the coal is the result of the different amounts of pressure and time involved in producing the coal.

 

Bituminous

 

Bituminous coal is a dense, dark, brittle, banded coal that is well jointed and breaks into cubical or prismatic blocks and does not disintegrate upon exposure to air. Dull and bright bands and smooth and hackly layers are evident. It ignites easily, burns with a smoky yellow flame, has low moisture contnet, medium volatile content, and fixed carbon and heating content is high. It is the most used and most desired coal in the world for industrial uses.

 

In the United States, the Northern Appalachian fields lead in production, followed by the interior fields of the Midwest.

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This sample comes from Utah's Bronco Mine, which reportedly started in the 1880s. The coal ranks as high-volatile C bituminous coal, which means it gives off less heat than high-volatile A or B bituminous coals. The former gives off about 11,500 British thermal units (Btu) of heat per pound of coal. The latter two give off about 14,000 and 13,000 Btu per pound, respectively.

 

Stratigraphy: coal horizon in the Ferron Sandstone Member, Mancos Shale, Upper Cretaceous

 

Locality: Bronco Mine (= Emery Deep Mine), Emery County, central Utah, USA

 

FISSILE CORE STORAGE –

 

The fissile cores were stored in small buildings arranged around the large non-nuclear component stores. In total there are 57 of these buildings, which are divided into 48 Type 'A' and 9 Type 'B' stores. The fissile core stores are organised in four uneven groups around the non-nuclear stores. The two southerly groups of stores are arranged symmetrically to the south of the large non-nuclear stores, each group having sixteen small store buildings. The north-eastern group contains eleven stores and the north-west group fourteen. All but the south-east group contained a mixture of Type 'A' and Type 'B' stores.

 

The store buildings are linked together by pedestrian width walkways, fenced by tubular steel pipes 37in tall with strands of white between the horizontal members. The area was lit by pre-cast concrete lamp-posts, each of which had a red panic button at chest height. The Type 'A' storage buildings 1-48 are small kiosk-like structures. In plan they measure 8ft 4in by 7ft 10in and stand 9ft above ground level. The foundations of the building are constructed of 3ft thick mass concrete. The walls are of cavity wall construction and are formed of solid concrete blocks, while the roof is a flat over-hanging reinforced concrete slab with a drip mould, and is covered with bituminous felt. The design drawing (Drg. No. 3563B/52) shows a variety of irregular roof plans designed to disguise the structures from the air. These were never built, all the roofs being rectangular in plan.

 

Fittings on the walls indicate that they were all originally protected by copper earthing straps. On the front of many of the stores a stencilled notice records ''Date of last lightning conductor test April - 63''. Internally the walls are finished in unpainted, smooth gritless plaster. The side and rear walls are ventilated by four small controllable ventilators, two at the base of the wall and two at the top. In the floor of each of the Type 'A' stores is a single keyhole shaped cavity. Each hole is 1ft 5in in diameter and 1ft 9in deep. The shaft of the hole measures 10in wide and is 8in long and is shallower than the main hole at 3½in. A scar around the hole suggests it originally contained a vessel with the asphalt brought up around its lip. This is confirmed by the survival of the surrounding lip in similar stores at RAF Faldingworth, Lincolnshire, and by the rare survival of a number of stainless steel vessels at the bomb store at RAF Gaydon, Warwickshire.

 

The electrical system of each store was contained within small bore metal pipes; circular junction boxes led to other electrical fittings, which have in most cases been removed. In a number of the stores 'Walsall' Type 1174X flameproof switch boxes remained. On their covers is cast ''5 Amp 250 Volt Flameproof switchbox type Walsall 1174BX Group 2 FLP 302 Group 3 Test P60 Isolate supply elsewhere before removing this cover''. A small formica sign confirmed that ''The electrical installation in this building is standard 'A' in accordance with AP 2608A''. All the stores originally had external fuse boxes to the left of their doors.

 

The doors are wooden and open outwards, their outer faces being protected by a steel sheet. They are secured by a combination lock and internal vertical locking bar operated by an external handle. A metal fitting in the path allowed the door to be secured half ajar. Above the door, and attached to its frame, is a spring-loaded electrical contact, which probably recorded on the control board in building 63 whether or not the door was open or closed. Externally and internally the doors are painted light blue. On the door of building No. 1 is a 1ft diameter radiation symbol in yellow and out-lined in black, below it is a 11½in yellow square with a black star at its centre.

 

The Type 'B' store buildings 49-57 are slightly larger than the Type 'A' measuring 9ft 7in by 7ft 10n. Otherwise the details of the stores are identical to the smaller stores. The principle difference between the two types of structures is that the Type 'B ' had two storage holes in their floors. Each of these buildings was also equipped with a small wooden counter adjacent to the doors; the counters measure 2ft 6in by 1ft 6in and standing 4ft tall. They have been removed from stores 53 and 55. At some point during the operational life of the station the holes in the floors of all the Type 'B' stores were filled and covered by gritless asphalt. The asphalt surfaces in the stores are continuous, often with a slight depression marking the position of the holes, which implies that the original floor was lifted and new floors laid. The holes in store 52 have been reopened, as indicated by fragments of the asphalt surface thrown back into the holes. This is in contrast to RAF Faldingworth where the holes have been left open.

 

In total there were enough holes to store 66 fissile cores. One source states that the single hole stores contained plutonium cores, while the double-hole stores were, used for cobalt cores. Currently available documentation does not reveal if one fissile core may be equated with one bomb, or if a bomb contained more than one fissile core. Recent research has shown that Britain probably produced no more than twenty Blue Danube warheads, with this number on the active stockpile between 1957 and 1961. It is therefore likely that no more than a handful of weapons were stored at RAF Barnham at anyone time.

 

The significance of the filling of the holes in the Type 'B' stores is also unclear. It may coincide with the withdrawal of the first generation nuclear weapon, ''Blue Danube'', and the deployment second generation atomic bomb, ''Red Beard'' (from 1961), or it may be related to the introduction of first British hydrogen bomb, ''Yellow Sun'' (from 1958). Given the number of available nuclear warheads in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it is unlikely that the RAF Barnham store was ever full. Part of RAF Barnham's function, along with other bomb stores, was to convince the Soviet Union that Britain had more nuclear weapons at her disposal than was in fact the case.

 

Information sourced from English Heritage.

 

Coal in the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.

 

The Bowerston Shale Company was founded in the fall of 1929 by Samuel D. Milliken. They have brick manufacturing plants in Bowerston, Ohio and Hanover, Ohio.

 

The Hanover plant makes bricks using rocks derived from two quarries that I know of - the Hanover Pit and the Frazeysburg Pit. I have visited the latter, with kind permission of the Bowerston company. The Frazeysburg Pit targets shales in the Pottsville Group. The shales are excavated and left in piles in the quarry to weather. Limestones and sandstones are excluded from the shale piles. Shale material is eventually trucked to the Hanover Plant, where it is processed into bricks.

 

Seen here is a crack surface of a weathered bituminous coal sample in the new/southern quarry of the Frazeyburg Pit in northwestern Muskingum County, Ohio. The rock is from the Middle Mercer Coal, which occurs immediately below the Lower Mercer Limestone, a widespread, marine marker bed. In eastern Ohio, The Middle Mercer Coal ranges in composition from bituminous coal to cannel coal.

 

Stratigraphy: Middle Mercer Coal, Pottsville Group, lower Atokan Stage, lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Locality: new/southern quarry, Frazeysburg Pit (Bowerston Shale Company), southern side of Clay Pit Road, ~1.7 air miles north of Frazeysburg, Jackson Township, northwestern Muskingum County, eastern Ohio, USA (40° 08’ 39.92” North latitude, 82° 07’ 19.07” West longitude)

 

On our trip down south, February 24, 2018. We stopped at Shag Point/Matakaea as I had never been there before. Matakaea is the name of the pa (fortified village). We have left Dunedin and going to stay in Timaru for a night before heading back to Christchurch.

 

Shag Point/Matakaea has a rich history, from early Ngai Tahu settlement to historic coalmining. The area has diverse marine life. It has interesting flora, is great for wildlife viewing, and is geologically fascinating.

 

Flat rock platforms provide an easy haul-out site for New Zealand fur seals, and cliff-top viewing areas allow you to observe seal behaviour without disturbing their rest.

 

Whalers discovered the first bituminous coal in New Zealand here in the 1830s. By 1862 the exposed coal seams were found to be commercially viable and were successfully mined until 1972, when flooding eventually closed shafts that extended under the coast. Evidence of coal mining is still obvious throughout the reserve.

 

Matakaea is jointly managed by DOC and Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu. Matakaea has Topuni status. The mana (authority) and rangatiratanga (chieftainship) of Ngai Tahu over the area is recognised publicly by this status. Ngai Tahu takes an active role in managing the natural and cultural values of the area.

For More Info: www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/otago/p...

Pyrite nodule in cannel coal from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.

 

Cannel coal is a scarce, fossil spore-rich variety of coal - it is hard and weathering-resistant, has a velvety to satiny luster, little to no stratification, and a conchoidal fracture. The differences in physical characterstics between cannel coal and other ranks of coal (lignite, bituminous, anthracite) are due to the organic matter content. Cannel coals are composed principally of fossil spores (sporinite phytoclasts). Garden-variety coals are composed principally of a mix of altered fragmented plant debris that was originally woody tissue, leaves, bark, fungi, and spores. Cannel coals are generally interpreted to have formed in pond, lagoon, or channel facies within a larger coal swamp setting.

 

This eastern Ohio sample is from the Bedford Coal in the Pottsville Group, a Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic succession containing nonmarine shales, marine shales, siltstones, sandstones, coals, marine limestones, and chert ("flint"). The lower Pottsville dates to the late Early Pennsylvanian. The upper part dates to the early Middle Pennsylvanian. The Lower-Middle Pennsylvanian boundary is apparently somewhere near the Boggs Member (?).

 

The Bedford Coal occurs just below the Upper Mercer Limestone, which is often a flint-dominated interval. Lithologically, the Bedford ranges from carbonaceous shale to argillaceous coal to bituminous coal to cannel coal. The cannel coal in the Bedford was targeted for mining in the 1800s as a source of fuel. It was particularly useful in the manufacture of kerosene, an illuminating fuel. After the petroleum industry started in the 1860s, production of kerosene from cannel coal essentially ceased.

 

The sample shown above is not high-quality cannel. The nodule is pyrite. Since collection of the specimen, the nodule has been experiencing pyrite disease - white powder is forming (= iron sulfate).

 

Stratigraphy: Bedford Coal, upper Pottsville Group, Atokan Stage, lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Locality: Tunnel Hill North Portal Outcrop (= Noland Tunnel's northern portal), ~1.75 air miles north-northeast of the town of Tunnel Hill, western Coshocton County, eastern Ohio, USA (~40° 16’ 33.27” North latitude, ~82° 01’ 53.04” West longitude)

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For more info. on cannel coal in general, see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannel_coal

 

Destroyed 2004.

In preparation for the Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme of the 1930s, this hut was built for the SEC in the summer of 1932-3 to accommodate the snow research program manager, the resident engineer for the scheme{ Lawrence: 25,32 states 1933-4 and 1932-3 as const. date?}. The cottage was sited next to a hydro-meteorological station, set on stilts above the snow in the same year{ Carlyon}. This was not a refuge hut but a permanent residence for all of the year. The hut was designed by WE Gower (later SEC Chief Architect) and built by Joe Holston and C Jassund{ Carlyon, other sources say builder was Bill Spargo and designer, GT Dyson}. The materials for the hut were carted on a sled or pack horse by High Plains cattleman, Wally Ryder, and his brother-in-law, George Hobbs, along what is now the Alpine Walking Track from Mt Hotham{ ibid.; Holth & Holth: 110; VOM: 25; Carlyon says only Hobbs}. They had successfully tendered for the job in 1932{ VOM}. The frame was of Oregon, the weatherboards stained, the roof clad with bituminous felt layers placed over timber T&G decking, the interior lined with `Caniete' or a similar composite board, and the timber casement windows were double-glazed{ ibid.}. A photograph by Weston taken in December 1932 shows the hut in construction with the stud frame visible, the chimney built and the felt going in over the roof with purlins placed on top appearing ready to receive corrugated iron{ copy held at hut; compare with above roof cladding description}. A large shed with a thatch and canvas roof was built about 20m from the hut, housing wood, stores and an earth-drying stove (reputedly done during the Trimble occupation, c1942-6){ ibid.}. The work was sanctioned in 1932 after pioneering SEC weatherman, Joe Holston, had been operating from Wallace's Hut and later, the Pretty Valley Hut, from c1928{ Napier: 36}. Federal money and Bureau of Meteorology assistance was won and these two early huts were a base for construction of this building. Snow pole lines were established from Pretty Valley to Mt Cope and from Wallace's down Fall's Creek to allow weather station construction. The work carried out there included operation of a meteorological station at the cottage, measuring the snow depth and density along two pole lines, and operating stream gauging stations in the area{ Lawrence: 33}. The engineers included TO Olsen (1933-4), a Swiss engineer Adrian Rufenacht (1934-6), a Norwegian Martin Romuld (1936-42) and Stan Trimble until the program ceased in 1946{ ibid.; Napier: 37}. Olsen was reputedly a `brilliant engineer', the co-builder of this hut and the instigator of the research programme{ see Napier: 37}. He was credited as being the one of the masterminds behind the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity scheme{ Holth & Holth: 110-}. Romuld, on the other hand, was a champion skier, constructing a ski-jump and a grass tennis court near the hut during his residency{ ibid.; Carlyon states that the court is still apparent by the collapsed wire mesh and posts}. The tennis court was reputedly the venue for a tournament which attracted some 39 entrants, drawn from the SEC camps in the area{ Lawrence: 33}. SEC worker, Warrand Begg, described life at the weather station under Olsen in the 1930s, himself resident at Cope Hut: `A very comfortable, if somewhat compact house has been built in which lived the engineer, Mr Olsen, Mrs Olsen and their son, Lasse{ Napier: 38}…I had to ski to work each morning (1 mile). The scope of the work carried out at the station is very wide; in addition to standard meteorological work… it also covers a detailed study of the behaviour of the water (including snow) both on and in the ground and to take samples of the soil every foot. These samples were taken to the station where the moisture content was determined..'{ ibid.}. Begg would go with Olsen or alone to inspect the weather stations on the pole line, going down to Roper's Hut or Pretty Valley{ ibid.}. The pioneering alpine ecological research done by Maisie Fawcett was undertaken from this (staying with the Trimbles) and the Rover Scout hut in the early 1940s{ Gillbank: 224}. Special radio broadcasts (both in English and coded) from 3UZ to the battery powered wireless at the cottage were a feature of each night 6.45-7.00 pm{ Carlyon}. During Trimble's occupation, in 1946, the hut was covered by a snow drift and the family trapped. Only the chimney tops of the hut were visible but the arrival of Rover Scouts meant the family's rescue although it took some 5 days to dig them out, with cracked rafters and a leaning hut as one result{ Holth, COTHC: 116}. The drift was thought to be caused by the lack of trees on the hill near the hut, allowing drifts to build up{ Carlyon}. The store which had been erected at the Cottage, reputedly during Trimble's time, was to become a storeroom for the Rover Scouts{ ibid.}. Access to stores for the building's occupiers was made a little easier when the Fitzgeralds cut a pack track for the SEC from Shannonvale{ Carlyon}. In the Trimble era, the porch was removed and in its place a bunk room was built, with a long entry passage: this was connected via a covered way to the shed{ Carlyon}. Regarded as luxurious by the local cattlemen, the hut had an attic level and had hot and cold running water{ ibid.}. Nevertheless it was pictured in `The Alps at the Crossroads' as a typical gabled weatherboarded hut form (now clad with metal sheet), albeit with an attic window, and a skillion entry annexe in the place of the typical verandah. The corrugated iron cladding of the skillion vestibule has however remained. Two metal chimneys were visible; the one at the south end since replaced by the kitchen alcove{ Johnson: 118}. The south kitchen window shown has also been replaced. The hut was sold in 1948 to the Victorian Ski Club and renamed Wilkinson Lodge, Wilkinson Robert Wood Wilkinson, best known as 'Wilkie, was indisputably the 'Father figure' of Victorian skiing. He first visited the snow at Mount Buffalo in 1909, at the age of thirty-five years, and was fifty when he joined the Ski Club of Victoria as one of its earliest members, in 1924. He had an immense influence on the Club in its formative years and played a prominent part in some of the earliest trips of exploration "Robert Wood Wilkinson was born at Talbot (Victoria) in 1874, and was at the age of sixteen apprenticed to his father, who was at that time a chemist at Maryborough. Mr Wilkinson led the first party across the Bogong High Plains in the winter of 1926, pioneering Mt Nelse on the same trip. In 1927, with Jack Docherty, he was the first to climb Mt Fainter on ski. Again, in 1929, Mr Wilkinson, with a party from the Club, were the first to climb Mt McKay on ski. As a photographer, he was known far and wide. Cope Hut, on the Bogong High Plains, as well as the lines of snow poles were the outcome of his untiring efforts. As long as people ski in Victoria the name of Robert Wilkinson should be remembered, because of his devotion to the sport, and his untiring efforts to assist the Ski Club of Victoria in its growth and activities." Robert Wood Wilkinson died on May 22, 1939. The hut was resold some 12 years later to the Melbourne Bushwalkers club{ Lawrence: 25 says 1948; Lloyd: 294 says 1949 but shows cheque dated 1948}. Johnson, in `The Alps at the Crossroads' gives the purchase date as 1959, noting that club member Darrel Sullivan (and later Doug Pocock) organised and `..carried out extensive renovations' to the hut{ Johnson: 118}. Sullivan and Art Terry led club work parties who maintained the Long Hill-Crinoline and Gillio's Tracks{ ibid.}. In 1983, the National Parks Service described the building as an old SEC hut which had been purchased and, afterwards, maintained and occupied solely by the Melbourne Bushwalking Club (locked). It was in good condition but offered no public refuge: they recommended that some space in the hut be provided for refuge after negotiations with the club{ NPS (1983): 47}. ....'

Queensland State Archives DR136

 

The William Jolly Bridge is a heritage-listed road bridge over the Brisbane River between North Quay in the Brisbane central business district and Grey Street in South Brisbane, within City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Harding Frew and built from 1928 to 1932 by MR Hornibrook.

The style of the bridge's design is Art Deco, which was popular at the time. MR Hornibrook company built the bridge that consists of two piers that were built in the river and two pylons on the river banks, which support three graceful arches. The rainbow arch type, as it was described, was claimed to be the first of its type in Australia. It is a steel frame arch bridge with an unusual concrete veneer, treated to make it appear like "light-coloured porphyry".

When opened, during the worst year of the Great Depression, the bridge was known simply as the Grey Street Bridge. It was renamed to the William Jolly Bridge on 5 July 1955 in memory of William Jolly, the first Lord Mayor of Greater Brisbane. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 6 August 1996.

History

The William Jolly Bridge was constructed between 1928 and 1932 following the formation of Greater Brisbane in 1925, and was one of the first major capital works of the new Brisbane City Council and bears the name of its first Mayor, William Jolly. At the time of construction, the only traffic bridge linking the Brisbane central business district and South Brisbane was the second Victoria Bridge, built in 1897 to replace an earlier bridge washed away in the flood of 1893. The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and at North Quay at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank.

The tip of the South Brisbane peninsula is traditionally a point of crossing. A sandy beach marked the point of crossing for aboriginal tribes from the Moreton region, then later for Europeans who crossed the river near this point on the North Quay ferry, and then from the 1930s via the William Jolly Bridge. On the south bank, aboriginal and later European pathways and land use patterns formed the basis for subsequent traffic networks.

Prior to European settlement, the whole of the South Brisbane peninsula was known as Kurilpa, meaning the place of rats, due to the large number of bush rats to be found in the lush vegetation of the area. (The riverfront park adjacent to the bridge at South Brisbane is now called Kurilpa Point.). The first European use of the south bank occurred soon after the establishment of the Moreton Bay penal settlement in 1825 when convicts cleared the flats across the river in order to grow grain to feed the settlement. In 1830 the cultivation of the flats on the south bank was ordered to cease by the Commandant; however throughout the 1830s timber was being exported to Sydney from the south bank. Those en route to the outstations at Coopers Plains, Limestone Hill and Cleveland crossed the area.

On 10 February 1842, following the closure of the penal settlement, the Moreton Bay district was declared open for free settlement. As the point of entry and exit, South Brisbane prospered in the 1840s. In 1846 Brisbane was brought within the provisions of the Police Towns Act of 1839, and boundaries to the town were set.

The first ferry to convey passengers, horses and carriages began operation from Russell Street c.1842. For over 30 years this was the only vehicular ferry crossing to North Brisbane (as the Brisbane CBD was then known) in this area, except for a brief period from June 1865-November 1867 when a temporary timber bridge, which was rapidly destroyed by marine borer, spanned the river.

Brisbane's first burial ground had been established on the northern bank where Skew Street is now located, (later moved to Hale Street where it became known as Paddington Cemetery, site now partially occupied by Suncorp Stadium), and to the rear of the burial ground a new gaol was established by 1860 and military barracks in 1864. Farming was established along the banks of the river, and development concentrated on Petrie Terrace. Land between the new burial ground and barracks was put up for auction in 1861, and from 1863 the auctioning of suburban allotments (now Paddington) encouraged the spread of the settlement along the ridges.

The North Quay Ferry, a row boat, crossed the river where the bridge now stands, and the River Road (now Coronation Drive) was established as a track which serviced properties towards Toowong. The extension on the Main Line railway from Ipswich to Brisbane in 1875 isolated the strip of riverfront residences from the working-class houses in Milton and Paddington, and this contributed to the relative lack of development along the northern bank of the Milton Reach of the river in subsequent years.

The opening of the Victoria Bridge on 15 June 1874 provided an important transport and communications link between the north and south banks of the river, and provided further impetus to the development of the south bank. The Victoria Bridge was funded by the Brisbane Municipal Council and a toll was imposed to recover costs. Eventually, responsibility for the bridge was taken over by the Queensland Government.

In the 1880s, the south bank experienced a development boom. The South Brisbane dry dock was opened in 1881, coal wharves at Woolloongabba and associated rail links were established c.1885, and South Brisbane railway station was established as the passenger terminus for suburban and country lines built during the 1880s. Industry and commerce was attracted to the area, and Stanley Street developed into a major retail centre and thoroughfare. The spread of housing included the development of large residences located along the ridges with views of the river, and industry developed along the southern bank of the Milton Reach.

The establishment of the South Brisbane municipality occurred on 7 January 1888. The development of the civic centre focused on the Stanley and Vulture Street intersection, with the construction of the South Brisbane Town Hall, Fire Station, Post Office and South Brisbane railway station. The boom of the 1880s collapsed, followed by maritime and pastoral strikes in the early 1890s, and the collapse of banks in 1893. Land and rent values plummeted to their lowest levels and hundreds of home owners applied to the council to work out their rates. A series of floods of the Brisbane River in 1893 resulted in the collapse of the Albert rail bridge at Indooroopilly in 1893, which diverted all rail traffic to South Brisbane, and the collapse of Victoria Bridge on 6 February 1893 which cut vital transport and communications links with the central city. A report in the Telegraph on 8 February 1893 described the event as:

"What a terrible hiatus in the course of business alone has been caused by the collapse of Victoria Bridge. Once again, for practical purposes, the metropolis is divided into two separate towns. No bridge, no telephone, no telegraph, and vastly inadequate ferry accommodation."

Urban expansion on both sides of the river continued with the opening of the new Victoria Bridge in 1897 and the advent of electric trams. The first encroachment of industry into the residential enclave along the high northern embankment occurred above the North Quay ferry terminal in 1897 with the construction of the Helidon Spa Company's extensive works from the North Quay-River Road intersection. The residential enclave was further reduced when the Morrow-Rankin (later Arnott's Biscuits) factory was established upstream from the Helidon Spa works in 1913.

On 3 October 1903, the Queensland Government gazetted the proclamation which constituted the City of South Brisbane. From 1908 the South Brisbane City Council tried to bring all the wharves in the South Brisbane Reach under its control and encouraged further commercial and industrial development along the river front. As finance permitted, provision of services such as gas, electricity, road sealing, water supply and an adequate system of drainage and sanitation improved the living and working conditions in the area and generated a demand for residential accommodation and improved cross-river communication.

In the immediate period after World War I, residential growth created continued demand for public transport, particularly through and from the South Brisbane peninsula. Land resumption for road widening was enacted in both Stanley and Melbourne Streets, and in September 1925, South Brisbane City Council is noted as having a population of 40,000 persons. In 1930 the completion of the Sydney to South Brisbane interstate railway benefited the local economy with a demand for factory and manufacturing sites. Health factors, noise and nuisance associated with industry and proximity to wharves and docks all contributed to the changing perception of the area bounded by Grey and Boundary Streets, Montague Road and the river. As a result, when the time came to resume land in connection with the construction of the Grey Street Bridge, there was scant opposition.

The Grey Street Bridge was conceived as a bypass for motor traffic between the southern suburbs and western suburbs of Brisbane to avoid increasing traffic congestion on the Victoria Bridge and on CBD streets such as George Street.

By the time Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925, the need for further cross river links had been established. Traffic across the Victoria Bridge had increased 76% from 1912–1925, and in 1923 it was noted that traffic tonnage had increased 49.5% in 15 months. The Victoria Bridge also contributed to traffic congestion in the Brisbane CBD as all traffic between the suburbs on the north and south sides of the river had to pass through the CBD. The 1897 Victoria Bridge had a paved deck with bituminous surfacing on wrought iron troughing. Between 1920-1922 this paving was replaced by concrete, causing traffic congestion. In 1922, the need for additional traffic on Victoria Bridge was identified, and the Mayor of Brisbane noted the need for cross river traffic as pressing and urgent. The Victoria Bridge structure was investigated in 1923 to determine its strength for further loading, and Walter James Doak, Bridge Engineer of the Queensland Railways, noted that the bridge is now loaded to rather more than its orthodox capacity under live load, but it was considered that there was no immediate danger of collapse. His recommendations included various repairs, and that a second bridge should be built.

The first meeting of the Greater Brisbane Council in March 1925 passed a motion concerning the employment of experts to investigate what cross river facilities were required and their best locations. Mayor William Alfred Jolly was Chairman of the Bridges and Ferries Committee, and recommended that three experts be employed. A motion was passed on 20 May 1925 to appoint a Cross River Commission, which reported on 11 January 1926 (chairman Roger Hawken, Professor of Engineering at the University of Queensland, William Muir Nelson and Ronald Martin Wilson). The report showed 11 proposed river crossings, and considered costs and savings made due to the reduction in haulage costs etc., and the need for a railway bridge was also discussed. A bridge at Grey Street would be a bypass for motor traffic between the southern suburbs and western suburbs of Brisbane to avoid increasing traffic congestion on the Victoria Bridge and on CBD streets such as George Street. A crossing at Kangaroo Point (where the Story Bridge was later built) was estimated to cost 6 times the Grey Street crossing, and further reports were commissioned from William John Earle, the City Planner, and Eneas Fraser Gilchrist, the City Engineer. These reports proposed the Grey Street bridge be two level for road and rail traffic, and a second bridge from Wellington Road to Sydney Street, New Farm, with a major ring road called the Main Parkway Boulevard, be constructed.

On 7 June 1926 Council decided to build a bridge from Grey Street, South Brisbane. However, Gilchrist Avenue (named after EF Gilchrist City Engineer), which is on the other side of the rail line to the proposed Main Parkway Boulevard, is in essence part of the proposed traffic system for the Grey Street Bridge as per Earle's recommended ring road system. The existing Gilchrist Avenue's original drawings are dated 25 June 1930.

The Council called applications for a bridge engineer to design a steel or reinforced concrete bridge on 10 July 1926. Harding Frew, a local but prominent civil engineer, was appointed Engineer for the bridge on 12 November 1926.

Problems were encountered with the design of the bridge due to the depth of rock below the river bed increasing from approximately 14 to 23 metres (46 to 75 ft) on the southern bank. Due to the costly foundation work, a bridge type with long spans was chosen. Harding Frew considered five bridge types, each a variation on a theme, stating in his report that:

"it is frankly admitted that the purely economical aspect alone has not been given as much weight... as the consideration of utility, with good taste, combined with minimum maintenance cost. ... The maintenance requirements for, and performance of, steel bridges was also noted as a concern."

Harding Frew recommended bridge type A and the Council adopted his recommendation, of which some of the details of approaches etc. changed from design to construction. The chosen bridge design was to be of concrete-encased steel with arched ribs which rise through the deck. The final decision of the type of bridge, from the five under consideration, was essentially aesthetic, and was influenced by the so-called Rainbow Arch Bridge, carrying Robert Street, St Paul, Minnesota across the Mississippi River. Harding Frew acknowledged this in his report, including photographs of the bridge, and stated that:

"the time has come when some improvement in the appearance of our city bridges should be looked for in Queensland. ...The questions of utility and aesthetics should also be weighed carefully, especially in relation to a city's importance, its civic pride, and its future."

The selected bridge design differed from the St Paul bridge in that it has three major spans whereas the St Paul bridge only has one, and this has been suggested as possibly making the William Jolly Bridge unique.

The council resumed large areas of land bounded by Roma, Saul and Skew Streets, and between Skew Street, Eagle Terrace and North Quay on the northern side, and on the southern side, east of Grey Street between Montague Road and Melbourne Street. The final position of the bridge was determined by Harding Frew's recommendations (Earle and Gilchrist's were slightly upstream from the present site) and was accepted by Council in late 1926. The bridge was to have a North Quay underpass, and the estimated total cost was £700,000 including viaducts, compulsory acquisitions, roadways, approaches and contingencies. This caused dismay, and the Commissioner for Main Roads considered that the cost should be contained to £500,000 by reducing the North Quay roadworks, minimising resumptions and building a different type of bridge.

Nevertheless, Council called tenders and MR Hornibrook Ltd submitted the lowest of £384,850 and this was accepted on 8 May 1928. Work commenced in August 1928 and was completed in March 1932.

An artist's impression at the time of construction shows trams crossing the bridge with overhead cables, a monument of some kind at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets, and a different number of viaducts on southern side to those actually built.

An incident occurred on 17 February 1927 which highlighted the potentially disastrous situation of having only one bridge across the Brisbane River. The cargo steamer Chronos was taken upstream by a rising tide and the bow was wedged under the Victoria Bridge. Tugs managed to pull it out eventually, but the rising tide could have dislodged a span of the bridge and dumped it in the river, and this was highlighted in the press at the time.

As mentioned, the depth-to-rock over much of the length of the William Jolly Bridge posed a major problem in the design of the foundations. The original design had the piers supported on timber piles, with inclined piles to resist the thrust from the small arch. Piles were driven immediately to the south of the pier, but it became impossible to drive them into the rock and the design was changed to utilise reinforced concrete caissons (heavy, hollow, vertical reinforced concrete cylinders), and the contractor was noted as being completely in accord with this decision. The southern approach spans piers founded on timber piles all driven to rock, or to such depths as it was possible to drive them without damage, and the river piers are founded on reinforced concrete caissons. To achieve this the Sand Island method was invented by Manuel Hornibrook (1893-1970).

The Sand Island is an artificial island constructed by placing sand within a closed ring of sheet piles driven into the bed of the river. Two islands were constructed for each pier (one for each of the cylindrical caissons) with the caissons being 28 feet (8.5 m) in diameter at the base. The pier on the sloping mud bank also used this method with rectangular caissons. Hornibrook is quoted as stating:

"...as far as I am concerned the idea is an original one....The idea came to me one morning about 3 o'clock. I was so much taken up with it that I got out of bed and commenced to design a scheme to carry out the piers for the Grey Street Bridge."

The use of Sand Islands was highly successful and very accurate, and overcame the problem of requiring the cutting edge to be placed directly on dry ground. The material was dredged out of the centre of the caisson and the cylinder progressively sank; however it was necessary to ensure that the caisson was fixed securely to rock and it was therefore essential to ensure man-access into the cylinder. This was achieved by using an air-lock system, but as the men worked under high pressure they could possibly suffer from the bends and an hospital air-lock was located at the surface for repressurisation if required. The foundations for the bridge were very deep, and the experience gained in the construction of this bridge, and later the Story Bridge, was considered of great value and to be a major achievement.

The steelwork was fabricated at the Evans Deakin & Company plant at Rocklea, and the arches had just been fixed in place when, on 5 February 1931 a major flood swept timber falsework away but fortunately the steelwork remained in place.

The steelwork was encased in Gunite, a sprayed dry mix concrete, the process of which was based on an invention in the United States at turn of century to spray plaster of paris in the reconstruction of skeletons of prehistoric animals. Between 1904-1909 this method was modified to spray sand and cement using a machine known as a Cement- Gun. Gunite was copyrighted in 1912 and continued as a proprietary trademark until 1967, when it became a generic term. The process involves a mixture of sand and cement which is loaded into one chamber, a stream of the dry mixture is forced along a delivery pipe to the gun, and on discharge is mixed with an annular jet of water. It was only in the 1920s that the process spread internationally, and it is difficult to ascertain whether other examples of bridges using the Gunite process, beside the St Paul Minnesota bridge, exist. It would appear that the use of Gunite in the arches, beams, deck members and hangers of the main spans, is a major early use of the process in Australia. The Opening Booklet for the bridge states:

"The encasing of broad flange beams with concrete applied under pressure introduces new methods to Brisbane."

The southern approach of the bridge, to the south of Montague Road, was designed to have wider footpaths and roadway than the remainder of the bridge to conform with the decision of the council to utilise this portion of the approach, so that access might be had to abutting buildings (directly) from the bridge roadway.

The concrete balustrades were made by the Hume Pipe Company, and were centrifugally cast in their factory at West End. The Hume brothers invented the centrifugal casting method, for the casting of concrete pipes etc., and their firm was established in Adelaide in 1910. The mould for the grotesques, which decorate the bridge, was made by Karma Eklund, daughter of the State Manager, Hugo Eklund.

The structural steelwork including angles, plates, channels etc. was almost wholly imported from Great Britain. Broad flange beams were supplied from Belgium, the largest being 30 x 12 inches (300 mm) which were larger than Australian rolled beams at the time. The use of large sections in the southern approaches allowed longer spans thereby reducing the number of piers. The cement and aggregate was supplied by the Queensland Cement and Lime Company.

Provision for a major water pipe never eventuated, and the closer spacing of stringers in the centre to support a tramway was not utilised. The decorative towers were intended to support overhead cables for the proposed tramway. The bridge originally crossed the North Quay underpass on two continuous, reinforced-concrete girder spans, each 33 feet (10 m) with girders of variable depth. These have since been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the Riverside Expressway, and in the process the footpath widths have been reduced.

The extent of work included in the bridge contract excluded some retaining walls, roadways etc. on the northern side which were designed by the council. A statement was presented to the council on 14 November 1933 showing the official final cost as £688,387/12/5.

The Grey Street Bridge opened on 30 March 1932. The bridge was officially opened to traffic on 30 March 1932 by Sir John Goodwin, the Governor of Queensland, just eleven days after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A large crowd gathered on both sides of the river and 600 invited guests were in attendance.

There was great community interest in the massive public works under construction at the time. It was the era of the Great Depression and massive public works, and Vida Lahey, a distinguished Queensland artist, painted the bridge at least three times during its construction. She also painted other public works including Anzac Square, the State Government Offices (Anzac Square Building), and the Central railway station. Although there was widespread public interest in the bridge, it was eclipsed within ten years by the much larger and more prominent Story Bridge.

An unusual feature of the Grey Street Bridge is that the arches rise through the deck. It is noted that those living in Brisbane tend to regard this as normal for a bridge of this type; however this is in fact most unusual and few bridges around the world, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, have this feature. The problem confronting Harding Frew was not the span-t- rise ratio of the arch itself, but rather its effect on the design of the deep foundations required at the site.

The bridge was designed to alleviate the traffic on the Victoria Bridge, but by as early as 1939 it was carrying 45% of the cross river traffic and was effectively doing more than it was designed to achieve.

 

On 5 July 1955, the Council decided to rename the bridge the William Jolly Bridge, in honour of William Alfred Jolly (1881-1955). Jolly was Alderman of Windsor Town Council from 1912 to 1925, including 5 years as Mayor. On 21 February 1925 he was elected first Mayor (later Lord Mayor) of the Greater Brisbane Council for six years until his retirement in 1931. John William Greene was the lord mayor when the bridge was opened. Jolly had moved the motions which led to the construction of the bridge. The Greater Brisbane Act gave the council a charter which vested in the council the power to frame its own legislation and the Council proceeded with a bold policy of civic improvements, including the Grey Street Bridge, the newBrisbane City Hall, Anzac Square, the tramways, water supply and sewerage.

Originally the bridge, roadways and footpaths were illuminated by spherical glass light fittings on cast metal mountings on both sides of the arches and the decorative arches of the tower-like elements. These fittings were replaced by the present lighting in 1964.

Many of the balustrades have been replaced, and prior to 1972 the complete roadway was resurfaced with asphalt. The bridge was first painted in 1974. A cream colour was chosen to reflect the approximate colour of newly poured concrete. Floodlighting was also introduced in 1974.

The original two-span overpass over North Quay, later over Coronation Drive, was replaced by the present single-span structure using precast, prestressed concrete deck units in 1988.

Description

The William Jolly Bridge crosses the Brisbane River at the tip of the South Brisbane peninsula between Grey Street, South Brisbane, and North Quay at the intersection of Skew and Saul Streets on the northern bank. The bridge carries four lanes of traffic with pedestrian paths to either side, and retaining walls return at right angles to the bridge at the northern end supporting North Quay above.

 

The bridge spans between ground level on the higher northern bank, ramping down to Grey Street inland from the southern bank. To achieve this, the bridge was constructed with three major spans of arched ribs across the river, with two smaller arches at the northern embankment and a single arch at the southern embankment, and a viaduct consisting of 16 spans ramping down to Grey Street to the south. The southern ramping section curves towards the southeast in plan, crossing Montague Road to align with Grey Street. The two smaller arches at the northern embankment are no longer extant, and have been replaced by precast, prestressed concrete deck units above Coronation Drive, which links onto the riverside expressway.

The bridge is constructed of concrete encased steel, with the three major spans of arched ribs rising through the deck. The roadway is partly supported by hangers from the arches which project above, and cross girders and stringers below. The ramping southern section roadway is supported by longitudinal broad flange beams supported by rows of piers, with the southern end abutment being earth filled between reinforced concrete retaining walls.

 

A misconception at the time of construction was that the concrete encasing was decorative and was only used to hide the structural steelwork of the bridge. This was incorrect as the bridge was designed as a reinforced concrete structure, with the steelwork acting as reinforcing and the concrete carrying a major part of the load. However, the concrete is also used in a decorative manner to represent oversized coursing on the main piers and voussoirs on the arched ribs.

Other decorative features include grotesques to the outer face of some balustrades, and a floral-like motif at either side of the top of the four ornamental tower-like elements. These four tower-like elements frame both entrances to the bridge, surmounting the end piers of the cross-river section, and each consists of an arched opening to a projecting balcony with a stepped crown surmounted by a metal spire. These were originally intended to have the functional purpose of supporting the overhead cables for the proposed electric tramway.

 

The bridge has cast concrete balustrades, and carefully detailed elements such as the curved ends to the concrete encased cross girders beneath the roadway, and the termination blocks for the upper portions of the arched ribs. Openings in the cross girders below the roadway, intended for a major water pipe which was not installed, are evident.

A pedestrian stair with iron balustrade is located on the southern side of Montague Road and rises through the southwestern footpath. A stair is also located within the North Quay retaining wall on the northeastern side of the bridge connecting North Quay and Coronation Drive. This stair has a solid concrete balustrade, and is no longer accessible from below.

Street lighting has been installed along the length of the bridge, and traffic lights are located at the northern end.

Traffic use

The William Jolly Bridge is shared by vehicular traffic, pedestrians and cyclists. It connects Grey Street in South Brisbane to Roma Street on the western edge of the Brisbane central business district. It was constructed with the intention of building tram lines over it and although the tracks were never installed, anchor points for tramway overhead were installed at the top of each arch. These overhead anchor points remain in situ.

 

Information sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jolly_Bridge

  

Destroyed 2004.

In preparation for the Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme of the 1930s, this hut was built for the SEC in the summer of 1932-3 to accommodate the snow research program manager, the resident engineer for the scheme{ Lawrence: 25,32 states 1933-4 and 1932-3 as const. date?}. The cottage was sited next to a hydro-meteorological station, set on stilts above the snow in the same year{ Carlyon}. This was not a refuge hut but a permanent residence for all of the year. The hut was designed by WE Gower (later SEC Chief Architect) and built by Joe Holston and C Jassund{ Carlyon, other sources say builder was Bill Spargo and designer, GT Dyson}. The materials for the hut were carted on a sled or pack horse by High Plains cattleman, Wally Ryder, and his brother-in-law, George Hobbs, along what is now the Alpine Walking Track from Mt Hotham{ ibid.; Holth & Holth: 110; VOM: 25; Carlyon says only Hobbs}. They had successfully tendered for the job in 1932{ VOM}. The frame was of Oregon, the weatherboards stained, the roof clad with bituminous felt layers placed over timber T&G decking, the interior lined with `Caniete' or a similar composite board, and the timber casement windows were double-glazed{ ibid.}. A photograph by Weston taken in December 1932 shows the hut in construction with the stud frame visible, the chimney built and the felt going in over the roof with purlins placed on top appearing ready to receive corrugated iron{ copy held at hut; compare with above roof cladding description}. A large shed with a thatch and canvas roof was built about 20m from the hut, housing wood, stores and an earth-drying stove (reputedly done during the Trimble occupation, c1942-6){ ibid.}. The work was sanctioned in 1932 after pioneering SEC weatherman, Joe Holston, had been operating from Wallace's Hut and later, the Pretty Valley Hut, from c1928{ Napier: 36}. Federal money and Bureau of Meteorology assistance was won and these two early huts were a base for construction of this building. Snow pole lines were established from Pretty Valley to Mt Cope and from Wallace's down Fall's Creek to allow weather station construction. The work carried out there included operation of a meteorological station at the cottage, measuring the snow depth and density along two pole lines, and operating stream gauging stations in the area{ Lawrence: 33}. The engineers included TO Olsen (1933-4), a Swiss engineer Adrian Rufenacht (1934-6), a Norwegian Martin Romuld (1936-42) and Stan Trimble until the program ceased in 1946{ ibid.; Napier: 37}. Olsen was reputedly a `brilliant engineer', the co-builder of this hut and the instigator of the research programme{ see Napier: 37}. He was credited as being the one of the masterminds behind the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity scheme{ Holth & Holth: 110-}. Romuld, on the other hand, was a champion skier, constructing a ski-jump and a grass tennis court near the hut during his residency{ ibid.; Carlyon states that the court is still apparent by the collapsed wire mesh and posts}. The tennis court was reputedly the venue for a tournament which attracted some 39 entrants, drawn from the SEC camps in the area{ Lawrence: 33}. SEC worker, Warrand Begg, described life at the weather station under Olsen in the 1930s, himself resident at Cope Hut: `A very comfortable, if somewhat compact house has been built in which lived the engineer, Mr Olsen, Mrs Olsen and their son, Lasse{ Napier: 38}…I had to ski to work each morning (1 mile). The scope of the work carried out at the station is very wide; in addition to standard meteorological work… it also covers a detailed study of the behaviour of the water (including snow) both on and in the ground and to take samples of the soil every foot. These samples were taken to the station where the moisture content was determined..'{ ibid.}. Begg would go with Olsen or alone to inspect the weather stations on the pole line, going down to Roper's Hut or Pretty Valley{ ibid.}. The pioneering alpine ecological research done by Maisie Fawcett was undertaken from this (staying with the Trimbles) and the Rover Scout hut in the early 1940s{ Gillbank: 224}. Special radio broadcasts (both in English and coded) from 3UZ to the battery powered wireless at the cottage were a feature of each night 6.45-7.00 pm{ Carlyon}. During Trimble's occupation, in 1946, the hut was covered by a snow drift and the family trapped. Only the chimney tops of the hut were visible but the arrival of Rover Scouts meant the family's rescue although it took some 5 days to dig them out, with cracked rafters and a leaning hut as one result{ Holth, COTHC: 116}. The drift was thought to be caused by the lack of trees on the hill near the hut, allowing drifts to build up{ Carlyon}. The store which had been erected at the Cottage, reputedly during Trimble's time, was to become a storeroom for the Rover Scouts{ ibid.}. Access to stores for the building's occupiers was made a little easier when the Fitzgeralds cut a pack track for the SEC from Shannonvale{ Carlyon}. In the Trimble era, the porch was removed and in its place a bunk room was built, with a long entry passage: this was connected via a covered way to the shed{ Carlyon}. Regarded as luxurious by the local cattlemen, the hut had an attic level and had hot and cold running water{ ibid.}. Nevertheless it was pictured in `The Alps at the Crossroads' as a typical gabled weatherboarded hut form (now clad with metal sheet), albeit with an attic window, and a skillion entry annexe in the place of the typical verandah. The corrugated iron cladding of the skillion vestibule has however remained. Two metal chimneys were visible; the one at the south end since replaced by the kitchen alcove{ Johnson: 118}. The south kitchen window shown has also been replaced. The hut was sold in 1948 to the Victorian Ski Club and renamed Wilkinson Lodge, Wilkinson Robert Wood Wilkinson, best known as 'Wilkie, was indisputably the 'Father figure' of Victorian skiing. He first visited the snow at Mount Buffalo in 1909, at the age of thirty-five years, and was fifty when he joined the Ski Club of Victoria as one of its earliest members, in 1924. He had an immense influence on the Club in its formative years and played a prominent part in some of the earliest trips of exploration "Robert Wood Wilkinson was born at Talbot (Victoria) in 1874, and was at the age of sixteen apprenticed to his father, who was at that time a chemist at Maryborough. Mr Wilkinson led the first party across the Bogong High Plains in the winter of 1926, pioneering Mt Nelse on the same trip. In 1927, with Jack Docherty, he was the first to climb Mt Fainter on ski. Again, in 1929, Mr Wilkinson, with a party from the Club, were the first to climb Mt McKay on ski. As a photographer, he was known far and wide. Cope Hut, on the Bogong High Plains, as well as the lines of snow poles were the outcome of his untiring efforts. As long as people ski in Victoria the name of Robert Wilkinson should be remembered, because of his devotion to the sport, and his untiring efforts to assist the Ski Club of Victoria in its growth and activities." Robert Wood Wilkinson died on May 22, 1939. The hut was resold some 12 years later to the Melbourne Bushwalkers club{ Lawrence: 25 says 1948; Lloyd: 294 says 1949 but shows cheque dated 1948}. Johnson, in `The Alps at the Crossroads' gives the purchase date as 1959, noting that club member Darrel Sullivan (and later Doug Pocock) organised and `..carried out extensive renovations' to the hut{ Johnson: 118}. Sullivan and Art Terry led club work parties who maintained the Long Hill-Crinoline and Gillio's Tracks{ ibid.}. In 1983, the National Parks Service described the building as an old SEC hut which had been purchased and, afterwards, maintained and occupied solely by the Melbourne Bushwalking Club (locked). It was in good condition but offered no public refuge: they recommended that some space in the hut be provided for refuge after negotiations with the club{ NPS (1983): 47}. ....'

Characteristics:

 

T130X superfine grinding mill with innovative design is a new-type grinding machine evolving from the original patented product - TGM Super Pressure Trapezium Mill based on market research, feedbacks and suggestions of customers both at home and abroad. It's optimized on the foundation of TGM Super Pressure Trapezium Mill in function and structure, coming into being its own unique characteristics:

 

1, The main frame and the base are completely soft-linked rather than rigid-contacted.

It avoids the vibration from the chamber transferring to the main frame and the classifier,which improving the precision of the classifier.

 

2, The base are made of anti-crack nodular cast iron which boasts the strength of cast steel,the anti-vibration of cast iron and good impact resistance.

 

3, It adopts the reducer that simulates German Flender.

Technological advantage of professional reducer manufacturers are made full use of to improve machine stability.Reducer and motor are connected by V-belt which is conducive to overload protection.

 

4, The main frame and reducer are connected by pin coupling with elastic sleeve to ward off the breaking of nylon pin ,which improves the reliability of the whole equippment.

 

5, The classifier adopts high density impeller which can improve the fineness and capacity. Practice shows that in the case of constant speed, increasing the density of leaves can increase the fineness of the finished product.In other words,in the condition of same fineness, the high-density impeller rotates slower than the low-density one,which reduces the air resistance and increases production meanwhile.

 

6, The classifier adopts frequency control of motor speed with the characteristics of energy-saving, precison, good process control mobility and high degree of automation.

 

7, Bypass powder collector with a dust isolation chamber make more dust go into the bottom of cyclone by the bypass system to avoid the dust escaping from air vents. Compared with general powder collector,it has the character of low pressure loss and high efficiency, particularly being conducive to collect the powder particles which is difficult to collect.

 

8, Same resistance arrangement avoids difference in power from two powder collector, which increases the efficiency,capacity and decreases internal circulation.

 

9, The discharges of the collector and dust remover are in the same line which is convenient for powder collecting and packing and reduces the amount of work.

 

10, The maintenance platform makes maintenance work safer and more convenient.

Function:

 

The machine is mainly used in processing powder of mineral materials of metallurgy, building materials, chemical industry, mining, etc. It can grind non-flammable and non-explosive materials with moisture less than 6% such as Feldspar, calcite, talc, barite, fluorite, rare earth, marble, ceramics, bauxite, manganese ore, iron ore, copper ore, phosphate rock, iron oxide red, slag, slag, activated carbon, dolomite, granite, iron oxide yellow, bean cake, chemical fertilizer, compound fertilizer, fly ash, bituminous coal, coke, lignite, Ling U.S. sand, gold, red mud, clay, Kaolin, coke, coal gangue, porcelain clay, kyanite, fluorspar, bentonite, muddy green rock, leaf wax rock, shale, purple rock, Diego rock, basalt, gypsum, graphite, insulation material, etc.

Charcoal debris horizon in bituminous coal from the Pennsylvanian of Ohio, USA.

 

This fossiliferous coal sample is from the Pottsville Group of eastern Ohio. The Pottsville Group is a Pennsylvanian-aged cyclothemic succession containing nonmarine shales, marine shales, siltstones, sandstones, coals, marine limestones, and chert ("flint"). The lower Pottsville dates to the late Early Pennsylvanian. The upper part dates to the early Middle Pennsylvanian. The Lower-Middle Pennsylvanian boundary is apparently somewhere near the Boggs Limestone horizon (?).

 

This is a sample of weathered bituminous coal with abundant pieces of compressed fossil charcoal (= blackish-colored chunks). The Pennsylvanian was a time of relatively high atmospheric oxygen (O2) levels, and forest fires were relatively common events. Charcoalized fossil wood can be found in some abundance in Pennsylvanian sedimentary successions. The original wood microstructure is usually well preserved, but the charcoal fragments themselves are quite delicate. A gentle rub with a finger turns these fragments into black powder.

 

Stratigraphy: float apparently derived from the Lower Mercer Coal (= Number 3 Coal), just below the Boggs Limestone, middle Pottsville Group, lower Atokan Stage, lower Middle Pennsylvanian

 

Locality: loose piece near the base of Mt. Pleasant North Outcrop - roadcut on the eastern side of Rt. 93, just north of the town of Mt. Pleasant, southern Washington Township, southern Hocking County, southeastern Ohio, USA (39° 23' 51.35" North latitude, 82° 27' 14.15" West)