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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
The History of Lewis Merthyr Colliery
The name Rhondda is often quoted as being synonymous with that of coal, however just over a century and a half ago the Rhondda valleys were almost unknown and existed as a sparsely populated rural wilderness. For centuries the Rhondda Valleys remained in pastoral glory, with clear running streams and waterfalls, and beautiful trees and flora. The small sheep rearing community that populated the few occasionally scattered farmhouses existed as they had for centuries, as a sleepy rural community.
1855 is the date accepted as marking the change of the rural scene in Rhondda and the historic change to heavy industry, although coal was mined in the Rhondda as early as the seventeenth century for domestic purposes. By the end of the century Rhondda was one of the most important coal producing areas in the world. The coal industry at its peak in Wales employed one in every ten persons and many more relied on the industry for their livelihood. Rhondda alone at one time contained 53 working collieries, in an area only 16 miles long. It was the most intensely mined area in the world and probably one of the most densely populated. From the rural population of around 951 in 1851 mass migration meant that by 1924, the population reached 169,000 approximately 20,000 people to the built up square mile.
Trehafod village grew mainly as a result of the industrial revolution and the rich bituminous coal in the lower Rhondda and the accessibility of the Glamorgan Canal and purpose-built tram roads, the lower Rhondda saw rapid economic growth in the nineteenth century. With the supply for bituminous coal from London and Ireland, came the supply of jobs.
The great majority of the newcomers who came to the mining settlements of Dinas, Cymmer, Hafod and Ynys-Hir, were agricultural labourers taking the change from farm labourer to miner. The new villagers occupied cottages owned by the colliery companies. During the first half of the nineteenth century the district was destitute of drainage arrangements with no provision of any kind for the disposal of excrement or refuse. Besides rainwater, the only source of fresh water was the mountain springs. The new villagers were self-sufficient, owning their own allotments that could be found on either side of the valley mountains. These allotments supplemented the main source of food for the villagers and they took great pride in the fact that they provided their own living.
The number of shops that grew in the village evidently proves the self-sufficiency of the people in a rapidly expanding industrial area. on both sides of the main street the shops were built next door to each other, some trading from their front rooms. At one time there were nearly as many shops in Trehafod as in Porth or Pontypridd. Evans the Grocer, Morgan the Butcher and Thomas the Fruitier are just a few of the businesses run in the village. Everything that was needed for the people was in existence; a cobbler, cafe's, coach builders, midwife, dentist, post office bakehouse, fish shops, undertakers, choirmasters and even musicians. Company stores were also used where goods could be bought in exchange for tokens.
In 1808 Evan Morgan leased the mineral rights to his land to his brother in law, Dr Richard Griffiths, who in turn gave Jerimiah Homphrey the right to open a level under Hafod Fawr lands on the east side of the river Rhondda. This level was worked until 1813. The Hafod mining concern was started in the 1850s at Coed Cae, but due to complications the rich bituminous seams of hafod were not fully exploited until the 1870's when the Coed Cae Coal company reopened the Coed Cae Colliery, now the ground of the Heritage Park Hotel.
In the mid-1870s William Thomas Lewis, later Lord Merthyr, purchased the Hafod and Coed Cae shafts on the river Rhondda near Porth. The Coed Cae pit was reopened in the early 1870s to work the upper bituminous (household) seam coal but it closed in the 1930s. Hafod pit is thought to have worked from the 1880s until 1893, working the bituminous seams, after which date the deeper steam coal seams were worked by Powell Duffryn.
By 1880 WT Lewis had sunk the Bertie shaft, and in 1890 the Trefor shaft (both Trefor and Bertie were named after WT Lewis' sons, and remain so today at the Rhondda Heritage Park). By 1891 the Colliery was known as the Lewis Merthyr Navigation Collieries Ltd and from 1890 the five pits became the "Lewis Merthyr Consolidated Collieries Ltd" employing some 5,000 men and producing almost a million tons of coal annually.
The Bertie shaft was 4.3m in diameter and 434m in depth. The Winding Engine is unique because of the unusual design of the drum known as a differential bi-cylindro conical drum, which enabled the engine to wind to and from different depths simultaneously. There is thought to have existed only one other engine of this style. The engine was originally steam operated until it was electrified in the late 1950s.
In 1904 the company sunk the Lady Lewis colliery a mile to the North East in the Rhondda Fach and in 1905 they acquired the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd, which was later to suffer the worst ever mining disaster in British history. In 1929 the colliery became part of the Powell Dyffryn Group, and in the same year Coed Cae stopped winding coal. Hafod No 2 followed, and Hafod No 1 in 1933. The colliery was nationalised in 1947.
In 1958 Lewis Merthyr Colliery and the neighbouring Ty Mawr Colliery merged and all coal winding ceased at Lewis Merthyr, with coaling continuing via Ty Mawr and men and supplies only at Lewis Merthyr. By 1969 the Colliery had become the Ty Mawr/Lewis Merthyr Colliery. As many as thirteen seams have been worked at the Lewis Merthyr using the advanced long wall method of working using Dowty hydraulic props set under heavy section corrugated steel bars, the bars were set at 0.9m intervals (3'-0") with most of the coal being won with pneumatic picks and hand loaded onto conveyors.
The seam shown on this plan is locally known as the Two Feet Nine Seam, in accordance with the Woodland's correlation it's correct name is the Four Feet Seam. It has an aggregate thickness of seven feet and contains four dirt bands of varying thickness. The roof is good clift (Mudstone) and the floor is fireclay. The volatile content on an ash free dry basis is 18.5%.
Until the 1950s the coal industry maintained a steady level of production and employment, but since that time there has been a continuing decline in the number of miners in employment. Most of the pits, which have been closed, have still left coal to mine, but with oil and coal available more cheaply from abroad the demise of the industry has been inevitable. Nowhere has the decline of the coal industry been more dramatic than in the South Wales Coal Field. At Lewis Merthyr production came to an end on the 14 March 1983 with production continuing in the four feet seam until July when coaling ceased forever at Ty Mawr/Lewis Merthyr.
22nd November 1956 - N4 District Explosion.
At approximately 7.15am on the 22nd November 1956 an explosion occurred in the N4 District, at this time this was the only district being worked in the Two Feet Nine Seam, output at this time output was about 320 tons per day.
Traditionally the working section in this seam had been the lower four feet of the seam with a bed of coal 0.45m (1'-6") thick forming the roof, in September 1956 it had been decided to try to work the full thickness of the seam.
On the night of the 8/9th Nov 1956, an extensive fall of rock occurred in the road head of the centre road of the N4 face from the inbye permanent support practically to the face of the road head, a length of some 16 feet. One steel arch was left standing between the inbye end of the fall and the coal face. The cavity was the full width of the roadway and exposed the Three Coal Seam some 24ft above. For some time earlier a small fault had been working down the left hand face towards this road. There was no evidence of this fault in the cavity, but it was obvious that the thick bed of clift above the seam had changed to become weaker than normal and lacking in its usual cohesion. The fall was cleared and 14 feet steel arches were erected beneath the cavity. These arches were covered with wood lagging which in turn was covered with a "cushion" of rubbish some four feet thick, the top of which would thus be some eight feet from the top of the cavity. The roof and sides of the cavity above this packing were not supported in any way. The Production of coal was resumed on Monday 12th Nov 1956.
Work proceeded without untoward incident until the night of 19/20th Nov 1956, when a second fall occurred at the road head. This was an extension of the earlier fall. The cavity now extended to the coal head and was some 30ft long and 30ft high. It had also widened to about 30ft exposing a sliken-slide slant (Fault Plane) some 10 feet to the left of the fault previously mentioned, which was now crossing the middle of the centre road. There has been no earlier indication of the presence of this slant. The second fall made coal production impossible and this situation was unchanged on the 21st November. By the afternoon shift of this day, the fall had been cleared and the erection of steel arches beneath the cavity was begun. This work was being carried on by the night shift when at about 3am on the 22nd November, four of the six newly erected steel arches were displaced by a stone weighing about 3 tons which fell from the cavity. The colliery manager accompanied by the morning shift overman, arrived at the scene at about 5.30am. He decided to erect an "umbrella" of ten feet arches covered by wood lagging beneath which the gate conveyor could run. These ten-feet arches could be erected without disturbing the 14-feet arches displaced by the fall. The stone which had fallen was broken up by means of a pneumatic pick and the work of erecting the steel arches began. By this time the men employed on the morning shift had begun to reach the meeting station at the junction of the left hand supply road with the intake airway. A few of these men were brought forward to assist with the work and the remainder told to stay at the meeting station until they received further instructions.
By about 7.15am three of the ten-feet arches had been erected. At the time of the explosion there were 14 persons employed in the work, two workmen were standing on a staging, tightening the fishplate bolts, and four others were holding the legs of the arches, the night shift deputy had gone back in the road some 30 yards to a point where a repairer was preparing wood struts for use between the arches. The others standing, prepared to cover the arches with wood lagging, when a further fall occurred from the cavity above. The fall was of some two tons of stone, most of it in one piece. Almost coincident with the fall there was a flame.
All the persons present were enveloped in flames and suffered severe burns. Two died from their burns at the scene and the 12 others received first-aid treatment at the scene and were then conveyed to the surface Medical Centre via the Hafod Shaft. At the centre they received further treatment from doctors, before being conveyed to the East Glamorgan Hospital, two of which died within 12 hours, one was detained at this hospital and recovered. The remaining nine other casualties were transferred to the Chepstow Burns Unit, where five of the died later.
This plan is dedicated to their memory.
List of Casualties
Killed
E Howells Aged 37 Turbine Attendant
S Thomas Aged 69 Overman
Fatally Injured
A Atkins Aged 40 Colliery
T Davies Aged 38 Charge hand
A R Fox Aged 41 Manager
C Jones Aged 41 Overman
R Jones Aged 57 Repairer
JH Mills Aged 35 Repairer Profitt Aged 27 Repairer
Injured
H Bryant Aged 46 Charge man
W Childs Aged 43 Repairer
F Crump Aged 39 Repairer
WH Davies Aged 50 Packer
I Humphries Aged 35 Deputy
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 15, 1915) was an African American political leader, educator and author. He was one of the dominant figures in African American history from 1890 to 1915.
He was born into slavery at the community of Hale's Ford in Franklin County, Virginia. As a young man he made his way east from West Virginia to obtain schooling at Hampton in eastern Virginia at a school established to train teachers. In his later years, Dr. Washington became a leading educator and was a prominent and popular spokesperson for African American citizens of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Although labeled by some activists as an "accommodator", his work cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists helped raise funds to establish and operate dozens of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of black persons throughout the south.
Within the context of the times he did much to improve the friendship and working relationship between the races.
I will let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him.
During Reconstruction, after he was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Washington worked with his mother Jane as a salt-packer in a West Virginia facility, and, when he could, attended school. At 16, Washington worked odd jobs to make his way across Virginia to reach Elizabeth City County near Hampton Roads where he enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), in Hampton, Virginia. It was a school founded for the purpose of training black teachers and had been funded by individuals such as William Jackson Palmer, a Quaker, among others. From 1878 to 1879 he attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C.
In 1881 Booker T. Washington founded and became the first principal of the Normal School in Tuskegee, Alabama. It later developed into the Tuskegee Institute and Tuskegee University. Still an important center for African-American learning, the Institute was created to embody and enable the goals of self-reliance. He wed Olivia A. Davidson, his second wife, in 1885. She was a Hampton graduate and the assistant principal of Tuskegee. They had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr. and Ernest Davidson Washington before she died in 1889. His third marriage took place in 1893 to Margaret James Murray who died in 1925.
Active in politics, Booker T. Washington was routinely consulted by Congressmen and Presidents about the appointment of African Americans to political positions. He worked and socialized with many white politicians and notables. He argued that self-reliance was the key to improved conditions for African Americans in the United States and that they could not expect too much having only just been granted emancipation.
His 1895 "Separate as the fingers" speech given at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia sparked a controversy wherein he was cast as an accommodationist among those who heeded Frederick Douglass' call to "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate" for social change. A public debate soon began between those such as Washington, who valued the so-called "industrial" education and those who, like W. E. B. DuBois, supported the idea of a "classical" education among African Americans. Both sides sought to define the best means to improve the conditions of the post-antebellum African American community. Washington's advice to African Americans to "compromise" and accept segregation, incensed other activists of the time, such as DuBois, who labeled him "The Great Accommodator". It should be noted, however, that despite not condemning Jim Crow laws and the inhumanity of lynching publicly, Washington privately contributed funds for legal challenges against segregation and disfranchisement (see Giles v. Harris (1903)). Although early in DuBois' career the two were friends and respected each other considerably, their political views diverged to the extent that after Washington's death, DuBois stated "In stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and public school, and the firmer establishment of color caste in this land."
Henry H. Rogers 1840-1909Around 1894, Dr. Washington developed a friendship with millionaire industrialist and financier Henry Huttleston Rogers. The latter had attended one of his speeches in New York City, and had been surprised that no one had "passed the hat" afterwards. Rogers had risen from a working-class family in a small town to become a partner of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust. With additional interests in natural gas, copper, mining, and railroads, Rogers was one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Despite his great wealth, and widespread reputation for tough business dealings, Rogers was apparently both a modest and generous man. Dr. Washington became a frequent visitor to Rogers' office, to his family's 85-room mansion in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and was an honored guest aboard Rogers' yacht Kanawha. Their friendship extended over a period of 15 years, during which time Rogers quietly financially supported and encouraged Washington in his work.
Handbill from 1909 Tour of southern Virginia and West VirginiaAmong many other enterprises, Rogers was the builder of the Virginian Railway, completed in 1909. Although Rogers had died suddenly a few weeks earlier, Dr. Washington went on a previously arranged speaking tour in June, 1909 along the route of the new railroad which was built to transport bituminous coal from the mountains of West Virginia to port at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads.
Dr. Washington rode in Rogers' personal rail car, "Dixie", making speeches at many locations over a 7-day period. He told his audiences that his recently departed friend, Henry Rogers, who was held in their esteem for having financed the railroad from his personal fortune, had urged him to make the trip and see what could be done to improve relations between the races and economic conditions for African Americans along the route of the new railway, which touched many previously isolated communities in the southern portions of Virginia and West Virginia.
Some of the places where Dr. Washington spoke on the tour were (in order of the tour stops), Newport News, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lawrenceville, Kenbridge, Victoria, Charlotte Courthouse, Roanoke, Salem, and Christiansburg in Virginia, and Princeton, Mullens, Page and Deepwater in West Virginia. One of his trip companions reported that they had received a strong and favorable welcome from both white and African American citizens all along the tour route.
It was only after the multi-millionaire's death that Dr. Washington said he felt compelled to reveal publicly some of the extent of Henry Rogers' contributions for his causes. The funds, he said, were at that very time, paying for the operation of at least 65 small country schools for the education and betterment of African Americans in Virginia and other portions of the South, all unknown to the recipients. Known only to a few trustees, Rogers had also generously provided support to institutions of higher education.
Dr. Washington later wrote that Henry Rogers had encouraged projects with at least partial matching funds, as that way, two ends were accomplished:
1. The gifts would help fund even greater work.
2. Recipients would have a stake in knowing that they were helping themselves through their own hard work and sacrifice.
In an effort to inspire the "commercial, agricultural, educational, and industrial advancement" of African Americans, Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League (NNBL) in 1900.
Booker T. Washington's coffin was being carried to grave site when his autobiography, Up From Slavery, was published in 1901, it became a bestseller and was one of the major influences to Marcus Garvey in the founding of the UNIA in Jamaica. He was also the first African-American ever invited to the White House as the guest of a President – which led to a scandal for the inviting President, Theodore Roosevelt.
"Think about it: We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands... Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe." – from Up From Slavery
Washington finally collapsed in Tuskegee, Alabama due to a lifetime of overwork and died soon after in a hospital, on November 14, 1915.
For his contributions to American society, Dr. Washington was granted honorary degrees from Harvard University in 1896 and Dartmouth College. On April 5, 1956, the house where he was born in Hardy, Virginia was designated a United States National Monument. Additionally, the first coin to feature an African-American was the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar that was minted by the United States Mint from 1946 to 1951. On April 7, 1940, Dr. Washington became the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp. Numerous schools across the country are named for him, including the Dallas Independent School District's Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, Alabama where the choir there is outstanding.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
NS geeps hauling tankers on the old CB&Q line for asphalt binder formulation at an east side bituminous plant. Des Moines, Iowa. 1 of 2.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
Glass, 1400-1350 B.C.E.
Egyptian, 18th Dynasty, 1400-1350 B.C.
Opaque medium blue glass, inlaid with black glass and alabaster (?).
Lost wax cast, cut and polished.
Three major joining fragments, several smaller joining wedges and chips1); two nonjoining fragments; patches of limely accretion and some evidence of devitirification.
Largest fragment Height 16.8cm, Width (across the back) 16.2cm,
Thickness 10.5cm
An Overview
Three dimensional glass sculpture is rare in antiquity, it may be just chance that so little survives. So, even though it has been more than forty years since an Egyptologist, specializing in glass, published all of the sculpture in glass known from Egypt, his work still remains the basic catalogue2). A few additional works have come to light but not much more has been published3).
In the second and first millennium B.C. glass was a rare and costly material which was highly prized and its production jealously guarded. On occasion, objects seem to have been turned over to hard stone carvers in order to produce a work of three dimensions. The Miho glass head would appear to be one of these exceptions. Glass sculpture is even more rare in the Near East. Early pendants representing the goddess Astarte exist from various excavations4) but they are simple and pressed into an open mold. They date from the mid-15th to the 13th century B.C. The only materials remotely comparable to the Egyptian head are the fragments of inlays and appliques5) which suggest that glass was used primarily to embellish stone and wooden statues. To date, no evidence exists confirming that such statues in the Near East were made entirely of glass even later in the 1st millennium.
With the invention of glassblowing at the end of the first millennium and the subsequent popularity of glass as a common material, little evidence of glass sculpture exists. The foreleg of a horse in black glass provides a single clue that glass was used on a monumental scale for Roman sculpture6). Two small scale copies of the famous Greek sculpture of the Cnidian Aphrodite7) are known. A tantalizing diminutive head of the Emperor Augustus and a somewhat increasing assortment of imperial glass heads are preserved8). Thousands of inlays exist and hundreds of extraordinary luxury vessels attest to the virtuosity of the Roman glassmaker. Yet over this period of nearly two millennia, little evidence either in the literature or from archaeological study exists to establish glass as a medium of three dimensional sculpture.
With this in mind, the existence of a roughly life-size head of solid glass from Egypt is of incredible importance for the history of glass. For Egypt, it must assume a place at the forefront of glassmaking, perhaps as the most significant accomplishment of the Egyptian glassmaker's art. It is reminiscent of the astounding beauty seen in the fragmentary Head of a Queen possibly Nefertiti or Kiya carved in yellow jasper, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York9). Other Egyptian sculptures in glass are beautiful but diminutive masterpieces. This object, though fragmentary, compares in quality with the finest royal stone sculptures fabricated in the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Description10)
The glass is an opaque medium blue containing very few bubbles and is translucent only at the very edge, suggesting intense coloration11). A chemical analysis done by Dr. Robert H. Brill at the Corning Museum of Glass confirmed the glass composition was consistent with 18th Dynasty material excavated at Malkata12). The surface is unevenly covered with a medium brown limely accretion which retains some sandy inclusions. Similar to this layer but distinct from it is a thin light to medium brown glassy layer notably on the original worked surfaces of the face. This seems to be a layer of sugary devitrification and appears as a surface stain like a varnish or transparent shellac. Beneath this layer is a series of straight but random fissures or veins which run under the thin crust and are cracks in the matrix. These fissures occur on the interface between the massive fragment and the piece preserving the eye only on the massive side. Although the veins run randomly through the mass there appears to be a concentration at the center13).
Additional evidence of devitrification exists within the glass. The oval segment14) spalled from the cheek is covered with glossy thick patches of white crystalline structures. These bloom over a thin milky layer on the surface. The only related surface known to me is also Egyptian. The false beard on the gold mask of Tutankhamun15) has greyish blue glass inlays. The surface is also disturbed and may have been heated, perhaps to join the beard to the chin. The discoloration appears to be a result of devitrification.
The largest fragment16) preserves the flat top of the head probably where the forehead and crown joined and ran down to the base of the skull. Here the neck would have been added. It also preserves the proper lower right cheek and a sliver of the lower lip. The back is flat and has a large central mortise into which the tenon extending from the crown or wig was secured17). A similar mortise exists for attachment to the body on the back of the jasper fragment in the Metropolitan Museum. It is less likely that the channel secured the head to the body of the sculpture. The second largest fragment18) preserves the proper left side of the head including a portion of the forehead, eyebrow channel, inlaid eye, cheek and part of the upper and lower lip. A portion of the lower cheek spalled from the surface and was reattached.
The third and smallest fragment19) is a small wedged-shaped element which retains two thirds of the lower lip. Joining the three elements reconstitutes the entire area below the lip. It forms a roughly triangular flat surface with three holes worked through the wedge-shaped fragment and into the mass behind the chin. The flat surface begins immediately below the lower lip and runs back at a sharp diagonal down toward the neck, appearing as if the chin was purposely cut away.
The larger of the two nonjoining fragments is triangular with two short straight sides and a longer markedly curved side20). The polished surface has 19 cut parallel grooves with a cut curved line defining the long edge. The curved side and the one parallel to the lines are finished by polishing. Although the bottom edge is straight, it is unclear if this too is a finished surface or a smooth break. The other large nonjoining fragment21) is a short curved strip with relatively straight edges which may represent finished surfaces. The face is well-polished while the back is left rough and unfinished.
Technique
Evidence suggests that Egyptian craftsmen worked hard stones and obsidian with ease22). The technique of lost wax casting was also known to craftsmen working in related pyrotechnical areas23). It seems incredible that given this technology, glass craftsman would expend the considerable additional labor and material expense to carve the head from a solid glass block24). The distinct line or ridge along the triangular area above the chin and a similar ridge along the base of the skull at the neckline were created during casting and not reworked. The head was cast in several pieces most likely by a lost wax process.
The flat surface at the chin where the false beard might have been attached is relatively rough and uneven at its center while the outer edge has been carefully smoothed25). This suggests a glass to glass join. No such ridge exists at the top of the forehead. Either this area is not completely preserved or the crown or wig was of a material more easily fashioned and affixed. The figure was complex and large enough that craftsmen cast several smaller pieces of glass rather than casting in a single mold.
The central hole used to secure the chin element to the head was enlarged while the glass was hot, the edge is deformed. The smaller holes on either side also have rounded lips, appearing to have been formed while the glass was soft. However, a section examination confirms that some type of hollow core drill (0.5 cm. In diameter) fed with abrasive was used to enlarge the hole26). A translucent reddish brown resinous material and a small fibrous black rod were found floating within the hole. An analysis might confirm that the resinous material was a binder which held the pin in place. The fibrous rod may be one of these pins27). The same drill mentioned above, was used to create or enlarge the mortise in the back of the largest fragment.
The eye socket and the eyebrow channel were modeled in the wax original and were worked when the material was soft. The elements of the inlaid eye, composed of black glass and alabaster, are secured with a grayish green material. It is neither a glassy material or a resinous binder and differs from the reddish brown resin noted in the holes on the chin. A black bituminous material was used to affix the eye unit into its socket. The cornea and retina seem to be scratched during fabrication rather than polishing. There appear to be no polishing marks on the surface of the blue glass and yet it is highly unlikely that the sculpture could have been fire polished after casting.
The examination suggests that the head was lost wax cast in several pieces. Following the casting, the annealing process or slow cooling must have been quite lengthy and well-understood to produce such a large object. Nevertheless, some devitrification occurred and caused the object to fracture and separate over time. After casting and annealing, the pieces were mechanically joined with wooden dowels and resinous binders. The glass eyebrows and eyes were secured with bitumen. The surfaces were finished with rotary and fine polishing.
Style and Date
The fragmentary nature of the object makes a positive identification very difficult. Nevertheless, the quality of the object suggests an extraordinary and important individual of the New Kingdom, probably 18th Dynasty. The mass of the figure and the substantial weight in the cheek would suggest an individual after the time of Hatshepsut. The only parallel which can be cited in glass is the diminutive head of Amenhotep II in the Corning Museum of Glass28). The lips of the large head are different than those of Amenhotep II as is the shape of the eye. The Corning head seems more youthful and less formal.
The flatness at the juncture of nose and cheek as well as the formation of the eye is consistent with the representations of Amenhotep III). His lips are variously treated in 3 dimensional sculpture. A thin line often highlights the outer edge of both lips. Nevertheless, the overall facial features are consistent with the Miho glass head. Finally, The likeness of Tutankhamen seen in the face of Amun at Karnak30) should also be mentioned. This more stylized treatment of Tutankhamen may appear closer to the Miho head because of the head's fragmentary nature. However, the importance of the sculpture and its purpose might suggest a ruler more influential than Tutankhamen and thus the suggestion of Amenhotep III as the pharaoh represented. The existence of a glass face from a life-size composite statue, a unique and extraordinary object will require much additional stylistic and scientific study. Its importance to the history of glassmaking in Egypt and to the understanding of 18th Dynasty sculpture cannot be overstated. This entry is only an introduction to a new chapter in the history of ancient glass.
Dr. Sidney Merrill Goldstein
Bibliography:
EAmerican Research Center in Egypt, Catalogue of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Luxor, Cairo, 1979
EDan P. Barag, Catalogue of Western Asiatic Glass in The British Museum, vol. 1, London, 1985
ERobert H. Brill, Chemical Analyses of Early Glasses, 2vols.,Corning, 1999.
EJohn D. Cooney, "Glass Sculpture in Ancient Egypt," JGS 2, 1960, pp. 10-43.
ESidney M. Goldstein, "A Unique Royal Head," JGS 21, 1979, pp. 8-16.
ESidney M. Goldstein, Pre-Roman and Early Roman Glass in The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, 1979
EDonald B. Harden et al, Glass of the Caesars, Olivetti, Milan, 1987
EWilliam C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, Part II, Cambridge, Mass., 1959
EMetropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Winter 1983-1984, Egyptian Art, New York 1984
EAxel von Saldern, Ancient Glass in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1968
Notes:
1. There are three chips which fill various finished surfaces. One fits into a triangular loss where the two large fragments meet near the base of the nose. A one centimeter square chip fills a place in the lower lip and another triangular fragment fits a loss on the base at the neck line.
2. Cooney 1960, pp. 10-43.
3. Goldstein JGS 1979, pp. 8-16.
4. Barag 1985, pp. 45046, nos. 15-16, pl. 2; most recently published the sites in conjunction with his work on the Near Eastern Glass at the British Museum, see also Goldstein, 1979, p. 47, no. 1.
05. Barag, op. cit. pp. 75-77, nos. 62-71, pls. 8-9.
06. Harden 1987, p. 28, no. 6.
07. Harden 1987, p. 29, no. 7, see earlier bibliography; for the second example in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Saldern 1968, no. 28.
08. Ibid. pp. 21-24, nos. 1-4 and bibliography.
09. Hayes 1959, p. 260, fig. 156; Metropolitan Museum of Art 1983, p. 33.
10. This author had the opportunity to examine the fragments in early 1989. At that time a careful examination of the fragments was done with the aid of a binocular microscope. The descriptions and conclusions presented here were based on notes from that exercise. My recent visit to the Miho Museum allowed only a brief re-acquaintance with the object. I am indebted to Dr. Dorothea Arnold and Dr. Christine Lilyquist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for their thoughts on this important sculpture. Dr. Lilyquist saw the piece sometime ago. She has studied it quite carefully with the intention of publishing an article on this small but extraordinarily important group of composite statues in stone and glass.
11. There is no apparent impurity within the body of the object but there are numerous "platelettes" and roughly spherical opaque white formations. These do not appear to be stone or unmelted batch material but rather traces of devitrification within the body of the glass itself. This process is seen in varying stages by examination of different fragments, again rather atypical but not unknown for this particular color.
12. Brill 1999, vol.1, p. 36 sample 3389; vol. 2 p. 39, (for tables). I am grateful to Dr. Brill for his analysis of the glass sample. He felt that it most closely resembles Malkata material rather than glass excavated from the other 18th Dynasty glass factory site at Amarna; per correspondence 11/26/1990.
13. Crystals of silica (?) appear to be growing out the fissure structure in this central location. In fact, there is a marked contrast in the fissures on this surface with those on the finished surfaces. Here the crystalline growth is colorless or opaque to translucent white. On the finished surfaces the material is stained with a brown resinous-looking matter. It is the same material which gives the characteristic color to the overall surface. It is tempting to suggest that the growth of this crystalline pattern may have caused the piece to fracture rather than a blow from the excavator's tool. If not the cause for the fracture, perhaps these internal "fault lines" determined the paths of least resistance.
14. Length, 5.8cm; height, 3.3cm; thickness, ca. 0.5cm
15. The author has not examined this object in person but had discussed its condition with Dr. Brill in 1976. He had examined many glass objects exhibited in the "Treasures of Tutankhamun" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
16. The head is difficult to measure in its present unrestored state. The preserved height is 16.8cm.; the width across the flat back is 16.2cm; the depth is 10.5 cm
17. The chips along the sides of the back channel make the measurements of this element difficult. The preserved length is 14cm with a distinct taper apparent from the middle to the base of the element. At midpoint, the channel is 2.7cm wide tapering at the base to 2.4cm. The channel is about 1.5cm deep and is cut as a dovetail to receive a tenon. Long triangular strips of glass have snapped away from the upper sections of the groove as if extreme pressure on the tenon sheared these elements. The rectangular surface below the channel on the flat back and at the base of the fragment is scored with five parallel grooves. Why these purposeful grooves are cut here in unclear.
18. Preserved height 17cm; preserved width 13.8cm; roughly 4.5cm thick. An oval shaped fragment has spalled from the cheek; height, 5.8cm; width 3.3cm; thickness 5cm
19. Height from bottom of lip to top edge, 4.8cm; width along front surface, 4.6cm; depth from front to back, ca. 11cm
20. Preserved height, 7.4cm; width, 7cm; thickness 4cm: approximate measurements taken from drawings for this fragment only.
21. Greatest dimension, 4cm; width, 1.6 cm; thickness, 0.85cm
22. Goldstein JGS 1979 p. 11 especially footnotes.
23. Goldstein 1979, p. 33.
24. Goldstein JGS 1979, p. 11.
25. This technique reminds the author of the way in which Greek stone craftsmen prepared large blocks for architecture. Only the outer edge was carefully ground and polished to receive the adjoining block. The central area was cut lower and remained rough in order to eliminate the extensive final finishing of the entire surface.
26. The hole was not large or deep enough as there were two smaller channels drilled into the surface 1.7cm. Deeper than the original floor. The floors of these smaller holes are quite different. One is rough and uneven while the other is almost smooth at the base. Both have a circumscribed groove at the base suggesting that a hollow core drill was used. In raking light concentric grooves can be seen on the walls reinforcing this suggestion.
27. Less likely, the rod may represent a segment of tree root that grew into the hole.
28. See above, footnote 2.
29. American Research Center in Egypt 1979, no. 104, p.80, fig. 60-61, this seated figure with clenched fist has characteristic pursed lips with a light groove carved around the outside to form a highlight.
30. Ibid, p. 127, no. 183, figs. 99-100.
Text and image from the website of the Miho Museum.
Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.
Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.
Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.
The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.
The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.
By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.
Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.
Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.
The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.
The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.
Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.
Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.
Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.
The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.
The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.
The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.
Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.
No doubt about it; #346 is a Rockies favorite. And this is a terrific model train even if it is 12 inches to the foot.The first excursion was not quite full but is grande for first early Sunday morning runby. I readied myself when I heard the engine chuffing it's way up the hill. Nice light here, better than Delay Junction. IMHO. I found a great venue that provides nice lighting on the train. They may have been sanding the flues to clean the accumulated soot buildup and make a more impressive exhaust show what with extra coal, soot and lubricants. Of course, the flues won't last as long, if not done judiciously. It's a show; in looks like a bituminous cloud. There is steam trailing from the electric generator situated boiler top just in front of the cab to help set the scene. I think they must only be running the headlight that can be seen in this shot. The usually spiffed engine is already sooty from Saturdays runs; is it any wonder? Red and green cars; the yellow No Aqua building is a nice touch as is the curve of the fence.
I don't know if you can see the moisture dripping from the fins on the air compressors. The top cylinders are the low pressure stage while the lower finned cylinders are the high pressure stages that create the load of the heat.
Egad, is that Eddie at the Delay Junction crossing down the line? I'll check his photostream. Apparently, the fence is holding him up. Maybe I could trade him in on a Chia Pet Homer. Other than him nobody is sullying this shot. It's nice to know a photographer can still capture life-like shot at the CRRM. This presents a nice countryside sort of scene; it could almost be real..
The History of Tynewydd Colliery.
Tynewydd Colliery was opened by J. Brogden and Sons late in 1865 to work the No. 3 Rhondda seam, a bituminous coking and house coal seam; domestic coke was manufactured in nearby coke ovens. For a short period, the fireclay and shale produced during the working of the coal seam were processed and burnt for brick making in nearby beehive type brick kilns.
The colliery was worked with naked lights and, originally, with furnace ventilation which was replaced by a steam driven fan in its later years.
During its lifetime the colliery was owned by:-
T. Thomas, John Brogden and Sons (The Llynvi and Tondu Iron and Coal Co. Ltd.), The Llynvi, Tondu and Ogmore Coal & Iron Company Ltd. and North's Navigation Collieries (1889) Ltd. Tynewydd Colliery was abandoned on the 10th January 1905.
This is a composite image created to celebrate the mining industry that was once prevalent in the community in which I now live.
This is a Mississippian-Pennsylvanian boundary section in eastern Ohio. At most sites in North America, the boundary is a significant unconformity - it's actually a megasequence boundary (Sloss sequence boundary) between the Absaroka Megasequence (above) and the Kaskaskia Megasequence (below). The boundary is just below the middle of the photo.
The cliff-forming unit in the middle and upper parts of the picture is a quartzose sandstone that represents the basal-preserved Pottsville Group at this locality. Mixed siliciclastics occur above. The sandstone unit is here interpreted to be the Massillon Sandstone, a variably-developed member in the lower to middle Pottsville Group.
Laterally at this site, a relatively thin bituminous coal horizon is present just below the sandstone. The identity of this coal bed is uncertain, but it may be the Quakertown Coal (or Number 2 Coal), or an unnamed coal, or the Wellston Coal (a name from Jackson County, Ohio). If the sandstone unit is misidentified (i.e., it's not the Massillon), it could be the Sharon Sandstone. If so, the underlying coal is the Sharon Coal.
The grayish rocks in the bottom part of the picture are siliciclastics of the Vinton Member, the uppermost of four members of the Logan Formation. The Vinton consists of marine mixed siliciclastics - principally shales, siltstones, and sandstones.
Stratigraphy: inferred Massillon Sandstone (lower Pottsville Group, upper Lower Pennsylvanian) over Vinton Member, (upper Logan Formation, Osagean Series, upper Lower Mississippian)
Locality: Trinway West 6 Outcrop - roadcut on the northwestern side of Rt. 16, 1.0 miles northeast of the Rt. 16-Old Riley Road intersection, northeast of the town of Frazeysburg & west of the town of Trinway, northwestern Muskingum County, Ohio, USA (40° 08' 41.54" North latitude, 82° 05' 06.18" West longitude)
This is a beautiful Coke burner oven. 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. Cokes made from coal are grey, hard, and porous. While coke can be formed naturally, the commonly used form is man-made.
Taken in train being renovated in a great little museum located in Hermeskeil, Germany.
A morning turn on British Railways Standard 2 2-6-0 78019 made a bit different by being the guinea pigs (again) for a new version of the dreaded ovoids!
In fact these ovoids were a great improvement on the ones tested a couple of years earlier. On shed they ignited quickly and burnt very hot just like bituminous coal. We are now in platform 1 waiting to depart with the 10.00 train to Leicester. Graham the coal/ovoid company rep travelled with us to see how the fuel would perform in the real world.
Atlas No. 3 Mine sub-bituminous coal sorting and loading facility, built in 1936 and 210-foot high, is the last wooden 'tipple' still standing.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Coal_Mine
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Nikon Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX
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Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Vellore (formerly known as Rayavelur or Vellaimaanagar) is a sprawling city and the administrative headquarters of Vellore District in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the banks of the Palar River in the north-eastern part of Tamil Nadu, the city has been ruled, at different times, by the Pallavas, Medieval Cholas, Later Cholas, Vijayanagar Empire, Rashtrakutas, Carnatic kingdom, and the British. Vellore has four zones (totally 60 wards) which cover an area of 87.915 km2 and has a population of 423,425 based on the 2001 census. It is located about 135 kilometres west of Chennai and about 210 kilometres east of Bengaluru. Vellore is about (100) Km South West of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. It is Hotspot City Of Bengaluru - Chennai National Highway. Vellore is administered by Vellore Municipal Corporation under a mayor. Vellore is part of Vellore (State Assembly Constituency) and Vellore (Lok Sabha constituency).
Vellore City is the home of two of India's top ten educational institutions, Christian Medical College & Hospital and VIT University. It is also a major centre for medical tourism in India.
Vellore region is the top exporter of finished leather goods in the country. Vellore leather accounts for more than 37% of the country's export of leather and leather-related products. Vellore is also home to several manufacturing and automobile companies such as Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, MRF Limited, TVS-Brakes India, Tamil Nadu Industrial Explosives Limited, Greaves Cotton, ArcelorMittal Dhamm Processing, SAME Deutz-Fahr (Italy), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan) and KRAMSKI (Germany).
Vellore Fort, Government Museum, Science Park, Vainu Bappu Observatory, Amirthi Zoological Park, Religious places such as Jalakandeswarar Temple, Balamathi Hills [Murugan Temple)Vallimalai (Murugan Temple) Rathnagiri (Murugan temple) [Sripuram|Srilakshmi Golden Temple]], Big Mosque and St. John's Church and Yelagiri Hill station are the among top tourist attractions in and around Vellore.
The Government of India has released the next round of smart cities project list. The Tamil Nadu state district Vellore also got a place on the list of 27 cities in the project.
ETYMOLOGY
In Tamil, the word vel means spear that is seen as the weapon of Hindu god Murugan and oor means place. As per Hindu legend, Murugan is seen as a tribal hunter who appeared in a lotus pond with his weapon to attack the enemies. Thus "Vellore" is seen as the place where Murugan appeared.
As per another legend, the region was surrounded by Velan trees (Babul trees), resulting in the place to be called Vellore.
HISTORY
The recorded history of Vellore dates back to the ninth century, as seen from a Chola inscriptions in the Annamalaiyar Temple in Tiruvannamalai. Further inscriptions made before the ninth century indicate the rule of Pallava kings, whose capital was Kanchipuram.
The Chola Kings ruled over the region from 850 to 1280.[citation needed] After the rule of Cholas, it came under the Rashtrakutas, the later Cholas, Reddy's and Vijayanagar kings. The Vellore Fort was built during the time of Chinna Bommi reddy, a subordinate of the Vijayanagar kings Sadasivaraya and Srirangaraya during the third quarter of the 16th century.
During the 17th century, Vellore came under the dominion of the Nawab of the Carnatic. As the Mughal empire came to an end, the Nawab lost control of the town, with confusion and chaos ensuing after 1753. Subsequently, there were periods of Hindu and Muslim stewardship of the region. The poligars opposed British rule but were subdued. During the first half of the 19th century, the town came under British rule.
GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
Vellore is at 12.92°N 79.13°E, 220m above the mean sea level. The city has a semi-arid climate with high temperatures throughout the year and relatively low rainfall. It is in Vellore district of the South Indian state, Tamil Nadu, 135 km west of the state capital Chennai. Vellore lies in the Eastern Ghats region and Palar river basin. The topography is almost plain with slopes from west to east. There are no notable mineral resources. Black loam soil is found in parts of Vellore Taluk. The other type of soil in the city is chiefly gravelly, stony and sandy of the red variety.
Vellore experiences a tropical savanna climate (Köppen climate classification Aw). The temperature ranges from a maximum of 39.4 °C to a minimum of 18.4 °C. Like the rest of the state, April to June are the hottest months and December to January are the coldest. Vellore receives 1,034.1 mm of rainfall every year. The southwest monsoon, with an onset in June and lasting up to September, brings rainfall of 517.1 mm, with September being the rainiest month. The northeast monsoon which lasts from October to December brings rainfall of 388.4mm. The humidity ranges from 40%–63% during summer and 67%–86% during winter.
DEMOGRAPHICS
According to 2011 census, Vellore had a population of 185,803 with a sex-ratio of 1,034 females for every 1,000 males, much above the national average of 929. A total of 19,898 were under the age of six, constituting 10,093 males and 9,805 females. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes accounted for 14.16% and .18% of the population respectively. The average literacy of the city was 77.15%, compared to the national average of 72.99%. The city had a total of 42598 households. There were a total of 70,257 workers, comprising 297 cultivators, 395 main agricultural labourers, 4,387 in house hold industries, 59,281 other workers, 5,897 marginal workers, 59 marginal cultivators, 74 marginal agricultural labourers, 667 marginal workers in household industries and 5,097 other marginal workers. As per the religious census of 2011, Vellore had 70.09% Hindus, 24.28% Muslims, 4.79% Christians, 0.02% Sikhs, 0.03% Buddhists, 0.51% Jains, 0.26% following other religions and 0.02% following no religion or did not indicate any religious preference.
As of 2001, out of the total area, 69.88% of the land was marked developed and 31.12% of the city remained undeveloped. Out of the developed area, 55.76% was used for residential purposes, 8.34% for commercial, 1.58% for industrial, 3.3% for educational, 16.46% for public and semi public and 10.12% for transport and communication. The population density is not uniform: It is high in areas like Arugandhampoondi and lower in the peripheral areas such as Poonthottam. The average density of the city is 241 persons per hectare.
ADMINISTRATION AND POLITICS
Vellore is the headquarters of the Vellore District. The town was constituted as a third-grade municipality in 1866, promoted to first-grade during 1947, selection-grade from 1970 and a municipal corporation from 1 August 2008. The Vellore municipal corporation has 60 wards and there is an elected councillor for each of those wards. The functions of the municipal corporation are devolved into six departments: general administration/personnel, Engineering, Revenue, Public Health, city planning and Information Technology (IT). All these departments are under the control of a Municipal Commissioner who is the executive head. The legislative powers are vested in a body of 60 members, one each from the 60 wards. The legislative body is headed by an elected Mayor assisted by a Deputy Mayor.
Vellore is a part of the Vellore & Katpadi and it elects 2 members to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly once every five years. From the 1977 elections, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) won the assembly seat once (in 1977 elections), four times by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (in 1980, 1984 and 1989), twice by Indian National Congress (INC) (in 1991 and 2001 elections) and twice by Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) (in 1996 and 2001 elections). The current MLA of Vellore constituency is P.Karthikeyan from DMK party.
Vellore is a part of the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency & Arakkonam_Lok_Sabha_constituency. It had the following six assembly constituencies before 2009 delimitation: Katpadi, Gudiyatham, Pernambut (SC), Anaicut Village, Vellore and Arni. After delimitation, it is currently composed of Vellore, Anaicut Village, Kilvazhithunaiankuppam (SC), Gudiyatham, Vaniyambadi and Ambur
From 1951, the Vellore parliament seat was held by the Indian National Congress for four times during 1957, 1962, 1989 and 1991 elections, AIADMK twice during 1984 and 2014 elections, CWL once during 1951 elections, and independent once during 1980 elections, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam five times during the 1967, 1971, 1996, 2004 and 2009 elections, once each by NCO during 1977 elections, and twice by Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) during 1998 and 1999 elections. The current Member of Parliament from the constituency is B. Senguttuvan from the AIADMK party.
Law and order is maintained by the Vellore subdivision of the Tamil Nadu Police headed by a deputy superintendent. There are four police stations in the town, with one of them being an all-women station. There are special units like prohibition enforcement, district crime, social justice and human rights, district crime records and special branch that operate at the district level police division headed by a superintendent of police.
ECONOMY
According to Indian Census of 2001, the urban workforce participation rate of Vellore is 43.64%. Vellore, being the headquarters of the district, has registered growth in the tertiary sector activities, with a corresponding decrease in the primary sector. Major employment is provided by the leather industry, agricultural trading and industries in and around the city. Approximately 83.35% of the workforce is employed in tertiary sector comprising transport, services and commerce. The secondary sector activities like manufacturing and household industries employs 13.52% of the workforce. Male workers participation (43.64%) is high compared to the female work participation (24.39%).
Hundreds of leather and tannery facilities are around Vellore and nearby towns, such as Ranipet, Ambur and Vaniyambadi. The Vellore district is the top exporter of finished leather goods in the country. Vellore leather accounts for more than 37% of the country's export of leather and leather-related products (such as finished leathers, shoes, garments and gloves). Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is one of the nine major government owned enterprises in the nation. The Boiler Auxiliaries Plant of BHEL in Ranipet is the industrial hub of Vellore. Chemical plants in the Ranipet-SIPCOT economic zone are a major source of income to the residents of Vellore. EID Parry is a sanitary-ware manufacturing company with 38% of the world's market share in bathroom accessories. Tirumalai Chemicals and Greaves are among the international brands that have their manufacturing units in the city. Automobile and mechanical companies of global Brands, including SAME Deutz-Fahr, TVS–Brakes India, Mitsubishi, Greaves Cotton and MRF have their manufacturing units in the area. Brakes India Sholingur's foundry division is located at Vellore-Sholingur and is a major employer in the area. Vellore is known as the Leather hub of India.
Asia's biggest explosives manufacturing company, Tamil Nadu Explosives Limited (TEL), is in Vellore at Katpadi. This is India's only government explosives company with more than a thousand employees.[clarification needed] The company is headed by a senior Indian Administrative Service officer. Kramski Stamping and Molding India Pvt Ltd, a German precision metal and plastic integrated-component manufacturing company with automotive, telecommunications, electronics and medical applications is in Erayankadu, near Vellore. Major businesses in the city center are on Officer's Line, Town Hall Road, Long Bazaar and Bangalore, Scudder, Arni, Gandhi and Katpadi Roads. Many boarding and lodging houses are in and around Scudder and Gandhi Roads. Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt. Ltd. announced the launch of 14 Microsoft Innovation Centers (MICs) in India. Trichy, Vellore, Coimbatore, Madurai and Salem in Tamil Nadu.
Christian Medical College & Hospital (CMCH), on Ida Scudder Road in the heart of the city, is Vellore's largest private employer and has a large floating population from other parts of India and abroad. Lodging, hospitals and allied businesses are among the major sources of income generated in the central part of the city. The Government Vellore Medical College and Hospital (VMCH) is located at Adukamparai in Vellore. With the advent of hospitals such as Apollo KH Hospital in Melvisharam and Sri Narayani Hospital & Research Centre in Sripuram, coupled with colleges such as CMC & VIT and other engineering and science colleges, the health care industry is growing rapidly.
The mainstay for people in the rural areas, more than agriculture, is industries such as weaving, beedi and matchstick rolling. The Indian Army has a number of recruits from the Vellore district (especially from Kammavanpet, which is known as "the military village") and military spending is a major sources of income.
EDUCATION
Vellore is considered a prominent destination for medical and technological education in India. It has a state-government university, a private technological university, one government and one private medical school and several engineering and arts and science colleges.
The country's first stem-cell translational research centre was established in Vellore in December 2005. The central government's biotechnology department selected the Christian Medical College (CMC) as the first in a series of centers, since it already had world-class clinical hematology and biochemistry departments. The college has made a breakthrough which attracted the attention of the country's medical and scientific community: the Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Christian Medical College succeeded in reprogramming cells from adult mice to make them function like stem cells found in the human embryo. The agricultural research station at Virinjipuram is in the Northeastern Zone of Tamil Nadu. It is one of 32 research stations of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU). The Government of India-sponsored National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA) scheme has been in operation since October 1997, with the main objective being trials of conservation measures conducted in water and soil of 18 watersheds in the Vellore and Tiruvannamalai districts.
Thiruvalluvar University was split off from the University of Madras, previously in the Vellore Fort campus. Nearly all the government-run arts and science colleges in Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Villupuram and Cuddalore districts are affiliated with Thiruvalluvar University. Thanthai Periyar Government Institute of Technology is the only government engineering college in Vellore. The Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) has been ranked best private engineering university in India by the magazine India Today.
Christian Medical College & Hospital (CMCH), one of the largest hospitals in India and Asia, is based out of Vellore. It is a major health care provider for the surrounding districts.
Auxilium Women's College (founded in 1954) is the first women's college in Vellore district; Other arts and sciences colleges in the city are the Dhanabakyam Krishnaswamy Mudhaliar Women's College (DKM) near Sainathapuram and the Muthurangam Government Arts College (MGAC) in Otteri, near Bagayam. Voorhees College (founded 1898) is the oldest college in the district and known as the institution where S. Radhakrishnan (former president of India) studied; a commemorative stamp for the centenary of the college was issued by the government of India. C. Abdul Hakeem College is in Melvisharam. Arignar Anna Arts College for Women(AAA) is located in Walajapet.
The Government Law College, Vellore was established in 2008. It offers a three-year Bachelor of Laws (BL) degree with an annual intake of 80 students. The college is in Katpadi, Vellore. There are several Arabic colleges in Vellore such as the Madrasa Al-Baqiyathus Salihath, popularly known as Baaqiyaath, founded by A'la Hadrat Maulana Shah Abdul Wahab, which is the second oldest Arabic college in India after Darul Uloom Deoband in Uttar Pradesh.
TOURISM
Vellore Fort is the most prominent landmark in the city. During British rule, Tipu Sultan's family and the last king of Sri Lanka, Vikrama Rajasinha, were held as royal prisoners in the fort. The fort houses a church, a mosque and a Hindu temple, the latter known for its carvings. The first rebellion against British rule erupted at this fort in 1806, and it witnessed the massacre of the Vijayanagara royal family of Emperor Sriranga Raya. The fortifications consist of a main rampart, broken at irregular intervals by round towers and rectangular projections. The main walls are built of massive granite stones, surrounded by a broad moat fed with water by subterranean pipes from the Suryagunta reservoir.
Within the fort is the similarly aged Jalakanteswara Temple. It is a noteworthy example of military architecture in South India. The fort houses the Tipu Mahal where Tipu Sultan is believed to have stayed with his family during the war with the British; the graves of Tipu's sons are found at Vellore. It is administered by the Archaeological Survey of India. Vellore Fort has been declared a Monument of National Importance and is a noted tourist attraction.
The State Government Museum is inside the fort. It was opened to the public in 1985. It consists of objects of art, archaeology, prehistory, weapons, sculptures, bronzes, wood carvings, handicrafts, numismatics, philately, botany, geology and zoology. Historical monuments of the erstwhile composite North Arcot District are contained in the gallery. Special exhibits include a bronze double sword from Vellore Taluk dating to 400 BC, stone sculptures from the late Pallava to Vijayanagar periods, ivory chess boards and coins used by the last Kandian King of Sri Lanka, Vikrama Raja Singha. Educational activities at the museum include an art camp for school students and the study of inscriptions and iconography for college students.
Jalakandeswarar Temple, Srilakshmi Golden Temple, and the Wallajapet Dhanvantri Temple and Ponnai Navagraha Kottai Temple are among the temples in Vellore. Sri Lakshmi Temple, popularly known as Golden Temple, is a newly built temple and spiritual park in Thirumalaikodi, Vellore. It is approximately 8 km from the Vellore bus terminus. The temple covers an area of 100 acres and has been constructed by Vellore-based Sri Narayani Peedam headed by Sakthi Amma. It has intricate carvings, hand-made by hundreds of gold artisans specializing in temple architecture. The exterior is laid with gold sheets and plates, with construction reported to have cost Rs.300 crores (US$65 million). About 1,500 kg of gold was used, the largest amount in the world.
Ratnagiri Murugan Temple is another prominent Hindu temple in the city.Virinjipuram, 17 km from Vellore is noted for its 1000-year-old ancient Margabandeeshwarar Shiva temple.
Assumption Cathedral and the 150-year-old St. John's Church inside the fort are among the churches in Vellore. The Big Mosque, in the heart of the city, contains the largest Arabic college in India. The city is also houses over 50 mosques some of which are over 100 years old.
TRANSPORT
The Vellore municipality maintains 104.332 km of roads. It has 50.259 km concrete roads, 6.243 km kutcha roads and 47.88 km bituminous road. The National Highways passing through Vellore are NH 46 (Bangalore - Chennai road), NH 234 (Mangalore to Viluppuram) and NH 4 from Ranipet to Chennai and the Cuddalore-Chittoor. Vellore is connected with major cities in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Bus service is available to Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Tirupathi, Kadapa, Anantapur, Salem, Chittoor, Kuppam, Kolar, Kolar Gold Fields, Madanapalle, Vijayawada, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Karur, Pallapatti (Karur), Aranthangi, Mannargudi, Nagapattinam, Goa, Hosur, Nagercoil, Marthandam, Thoothukudi, Thiruchendur, Sengottai, Cuddalore, Kurnool, Trichy, Thuraiyur, Thammampatti, Thiruvannamalai, Tindivanam, Pondicherry, Kallakkurichi, Viluppuram, Kanyakumari, Arani, Madurai, Tirunelveli, Kanchipuram, Tiruttani, Kalpakkam, Pallikonda, Gudiyatham, Dharmapuri, Erode, Tirupur, Palakkad, Krishnagiri, Gingee and other major towns and cities in South India. Vellore is served by a city bus service, which connects the city, suburbs and other places of interest. The bus service extends about 30 km from the city center. There are two bus terminals: the Town Bus Terminus (opposite the fort and near CMC Hospital) and the Central Bus Terminus (Near Green Circle). Other bus terminals are located at Chittor Bus Stand (near VIT Road), Bagayam and Katpadi(Junction bus stop). The bus stands are maintained by the Vellore Municipal Corporation.
Vellore has three main railway stations: Katpadi junction, Vellore Cantonment and Vellore Town. The largest is Vellore-Katpadi Junction, 5 km north of CMC hospital. This is a major railway junction on the Chennai-Bangalore broad-gauge line running to Chennai, Bangalore, Tirupati and Trichy. There are direct rail links to Vijayawada Junction, Tirupati, Bhubaneswar, Nagpur, Bangalore, Bhopal Junction, Mumbai, Mangalore, Tiruchchirapalli, Bilaspur, Korba, Patna, Ernakulam, Trivandrum, Kanniyakumari, Shirdi, Kanpur, Gaya, Dhanbad, Jammu Tawi, Madurai, Bhilai, Gwalior, Chennai Central, Howrah Station, New Delhi Railway Station, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Jaipur and other major cities. More than 150 trains cross the Vellore-Katpadi Junction daily.
Vellore Cantonment is in Suriyakulam on the Viluppuram-Tirupati broad gauge line, 8 km from Katpadi Junction. EMU and passenger trains to Tirupati, Chennai and Arakonnam depart from here. The 150-km broad gauge line was extended to Villupuram in January 2010 and connects Vellore and South Tamil Nadu; however, as of October 2010 it was not serviced by passenger trains. The line was opened for goods trains in June 2010. An EMU from Vellore Cantonment to Chennai Central was introduced on December 22, 2008. Vellore Town Station is in Konavattam on the line connecting Katpadi Junction with Viluppuram Junction via Tiruvannamalai.
The city has an airstrip near Abdullapuram; as of 2010 it was not open to the public and was used for aeronautical training programmes. The nearest international airports are Chennai International Airport (130 km) and Bengaluru International Airport (230 km); the nearest domestic airport is Tirupati Airport (100 km).
UTILITY SERVICES
Electricity supply to Vellore is regulated and distributed by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB). The city and its suburbs forms the Vellore Electricity Distribution Circle. A chief distribution engineer is stationed at the regional headquarters. Water supply is provided by the Vellore municipal corporation from the Palar river through Palar headworks and Karungamputhur headworks and distributed through ten overhead tanks. As of 2005, there were 16,371 connections against 33,772 households. In 2000–2001, a total of 7.4 million litres of water was supplied daily for households in the city. The other sources of water are Otteri Lake, Sathuvancheri town panchayat, Ponnai and street bore wells.
As per the municipal data for 2011, about 83 metric tonnes of solid waste were collected from Vellore every day by door-to-door collection. The source segregation and dumping was carried out by the sanitary department of the Vellore municipal corporation. The municipal corporation covered 16 wards for waste collection as of 2001. There is no underground drainage system and the sewerage system for disposal of sullage is through septic tanks, open drains and public conveniences. The municipal corporation maintained 145 km of storm water drains in 2011. As of 2011, 24 government and private hospitals and one veterinary hospital take care of the health care needs of the citizens. As of 2011, the municipal corporation maintained 5,241 street lamps: 735 sodium lamps, 73 mercury vapour lamps, 4,432 tube lights and one high mast beam lamp. The municipal corporation operates the Nethaji Daily Market that caters to the needs of the city and the rural areas around it.
WIKIPEDIA
Asphalt (US Listeni/ˈæsfɔːlt/ or UK /ˈæsfælt/,[1][2] occasionally /ˈæʃfɔːlt/), also known as bitumen (US /bɪˈtjuːmən, baɪ-/,[3][4] UK /ˈbɪtjᵿmən/[5]) is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product; it is a substance classed as a pitch. Until the 20th century, the term asphaltum was also used.[6] The word is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄσφαλτος ásphaltos.[7]
The primary use (70%) of asphalt/bitumen is in road construction, where it is used as the glue or binder mixed with aggregate particles to create asphalt concrete. Its other main uses are for bituminous waterproofing products, including production of roofing felt and for sealing flat roofs.[8]
source: wikipedia
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...
The Ruhr Valley
The Ruhr is an important tributary of the lower Rhine River. It rises on the northern side of Winterberg and flows 146 mi (235 km) west. The Ruhr valley is a major industrial and mining region; it includes the industrial cities of Essen, Düsseldorf, and Dortmund. The Ruhr coalfield is one of the world's largest and produces the bulk of Germany's bituminous coal. Industries begun by the Krupp and Thyssen families flourished in the 19th–20th centuries ( Thyssen-Krupp Stahl). The river was militarily important in World War I, and the river valley was occupied from 1923 to 1925 by France and Belgium ( Ruhr occupation). As the industrial heart of Nazi Germany, it was heavily bombed in World War II and occupied by Allied troops in 1945; full control was returned to West Germany in 1954. It is now a centre of steel production and diversified chemical manufacturing.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007
www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1B1-377294.html
After leaving Xanten, we travelled through the Ruhr Valley area of the Rhine. Mile after mile of barges, each of which travelled faster than did we (we averaged fifteen knots per hour). I've never seen so much industry in my life. I would think that pollution levels are still high here.
We did this leg of the Rhine on a very overcast day. The smoke from the stacks didn't help much.
After travelling this portion of the Rhine, we stopped at Bingen for a while, but did not disembark. At about 9PM, we left for the overnight trip to Cologne.
Detail of the base of the belltower on the church's northwestern corner. Note the water table or projecting ledge that deflects dripping water outward and away from the foundation.
To provide context for the photo above, see Part 36 and Part 37.
As glorious as Regional Silurian Dolostone usually is, there are times it doesn't look its best. Or it looks like something it really isn't.
Every source I've found for the St. James exterior stone lists it as Lemont-Joliet Dolostone (LJD), and nothing but. And yet the bituminous blobs on the water table suggest that it might not be Sugar Run Formation rock from the Lower Des Plaines Valley after all, but rather Racine Formation rock from quarries on Chicago's West Side. The Artesian Dolostone produced there was renowned for its asphaltum-spotted appearance.
However, I've come across a surprisingly large number of LJD buildings in the Windy City that in their lower reaches have been splattered in one or two places with roofing tar, sealant, or some other sort of glop that attracts and gets covered with dark soot.
It does seem that black sealant has indeed been applied in the cracks between the lowest ashlar course and the sidewalk. So perhaps someone was just really sloppy with an applicator or tarbrush.
In addition, though, there seems to be some greenish-black biofilm buildup in more recessed portions of the rock. If that's right, it's most likely cyanobacteria, though it could be Chlorophyta (green algae) instead.
This mention of biofilming leads me to reflect that the more I learn about architectural geology, the more I come to realize that the buildings we human beings regard as purely our own domain are in fact scenes of egregious microbial settler colonialism.
If one takes a truly dispassionate view of this situation, it becomes evident that we amazingly ephemeral multicellular creatures exist primarily to give this planet's dominant lifeforms the nooks and crannies and surfaces they need to thrive. We live and work to serve the ancient little ones.
The other photos and descriptions in this series can be found at Glory of Silurian Dolostone album.
And for even more on this architectural and geologically impressive building, immediately and unhesitatingly get a copy (or two or three) of my book, Chicago in Stone and Clay. Here's the publisher's description: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...
Another 12,000 tons of southwestern Pennsylvania bituminous coal, loaded in Northern Indiana Public Service Company (reporting marks NORX) hoppers, makes its way toward a power plant in the Hoosier State. Here, we see a manned helper set shoving the rear of the train.
Dr George Deacon (1843–1909) started the design of the Vyrnwy Dam in 1879 at the age of 36. Following Vrynwy Dr Deacon founded his practice in London in 1890 which subsequently became Sir Alexander Binnie Son & Deacon, Mr Binnie and Partners, and finally Black & Veatch.
Dr Deacon was instructed to prepare the Parliamentary Plans for the scheme in 1879. The dam construction started in 1881 and was completed seven years later in 1888. It was the first large stone-built dam in the United Kingdom, and is built partly out of great blocks of Welsh slate. When built it cost £620,000, which today is around £22,000,000. The dam is 44 metres (144 ft) high from the bottom of the valley, and 39 metres (128 ft) thick at the base; it is 357 metres (1,171 ft) long and has a road bridge running along the top. It is decorated with over 25 arches and two small towers (each with four corner turrets) rising 4 metres (13 ft) above the road surface.
Vyrnwy was the first dam to carry water over its crest instead of in a channel at the side. At the bottom of the dam is a body of water known as the Stilling Basin, this is necessary to absorb the energy when the water flows over the crest and into the valley, and stops the water from eroding the foundations of the dam.
Underneath the West Tower is a building known as the Power House, which contains an electrical generator driven by water leaving the reservoir. Before mains electricity arrived in the 1960s this was Llanwddyn's only source of power.
The West and East Towers release compensation water by huge valves, which are controlled by Severn Trent Water. This water is purely for the River Vyrnwy, which would otherwise dry out unless in flood. Depending on the Water Levels downstream the reservoir could release anything from 25 to 45 megalitres (5,500,000 to 9,900,000 imp gal) of compensation water per day. Only a few hundred metres downstream is a weir, which the Environment Agency use to measure the daily amount of compensation water. This weir also holds back enough water to create the stilling basin.
Earlier dams in Britain had been built by making great earth embankments to hold back the water. This new type of stone dam would change the face of the Welsh landscape over the coming years. The next stone dams to be built in Wales on an even bigger scale than Vyrnwy were those built in the Elan Valley. 1
[edit] The Straining Tower and Aqueduct aka The Vyrnwy Large Diameter Trunk Main (LDTM)
Approximately 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) from the dam is the reservoir's straining tower. Standing only 30 metres (98 ft) from the shore its purpose is to filter or strain out material in the water with a fine metal mesh, before the water flows along the aqueduct to Liverpool. Its architecture is Gothic and built during the same time as the dam. The tower as a whole is 63 metres (207 ft) tall, 15 metres (49 ft) of which is underwater. The other 48 metres (157 ft) is above water, and is topped with a pointed copper clad roof, which makes it look light green.
The sixty-eight miles of aqueduct bring water from Lake Vyrnwy to Liverpool, and are part of extensive works that also involve Britain's first high masonry dam at Vyrnwy.
The aqueduct originally consisted of two pipelines, made largely of cast iron. To help maintenance work on the 9 ft (2.7 m) diameter cast-iron tunnel which took the aqueduct under the Mersey, riveted steel piping was also used. This was an early use of the material which was to become the norm for trunk water mains piping.
Brick and concrete lined tunnels carried pipes at Hirnant, Cynynion and Llanforda, and a fourth later added at Aber so that the Hirnant tunnel could be made accessible for maintenance. The first section of a third pipeline was laid in 1926-38 using bituminous-coated steel. To increase capacity, a fourth pipeline was added in 1946.
Re-organisation of the pipe crossings beneath the Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal were undertaken in 1978-81. The current provision relies on three pipes 42 inches (1.1 m) in diameter delivering up to 50 million imperial gallons (230,000 m3) per day into reservoirs at Prescot, east of Liverpool.
The aqueduct carrying water away from Lake Vyrnwy to Liverpool was constructed across the valley from the reservoir between 1881-92. It crosses the valley floor near Penybontfawr and then runs north of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant and Efail-rhyd on the north-east of the Tanat Valley. The aqueduct is largely hidden from view although there are a number of visible surface features including air valves, the Cileos valve house, the Parc-uchaf balancing reservoirs, and a deep cutting to the west of Llanrhaeadr-ym-mochnant. In terms of the history of roads in the Tanat Valley, it is interesting to note that complaints were made about damage to local roads during the construction of the Lake Vyrnwy reservoir.
Enjoyable day out with www.flickr.com/photos/cygnus_ra21/
www.flickriver.com/photos/juddersstuffok/
BEST VIEWS HERE.
VIEW ON FLICKRRIVER OR SLIDESHOW
"BEST VIEWED ON BLACK"
Wanted the shot coming at me and waited for the train to pass under...*BUT* for you railfans, the smell of diesel fuel burning will not replace the smell of good old bituminous coal smoke as a steamer comes by...Just no comparison.
Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
The old Northern Pacific across North Dakota is a conveyor for sub bituminous coal from the Powder River Basin to power plants in the midwest and east.
Die Grube Messel in Messel (Landkreis Darmstadt-Dieburg in Hessen) ist ein stillgelegter Tagebau. Bekannt wurde die Grube Messel durch die dort gefundenen und hervorragend erhaltenen Fossilien von Säugetieren, Vögeln, Reptilien, Fischen, Insekten und Pflanzen aus dem Eozän. Besonders die Weichteilerhaltung bei Säugetieren macht die dort gefundenen Fossilien einzigartig. Am bekanntesten ist die frühe Pferdeart Propalaeotherium, von der über 70 Individuen gefunden wurden. Weitere bedeutende Funde sind Messelornis cristata, ein Kranichvogel, dem ungefähr die Hälfte aller in der Grube Messel gefunden Vogelfossilien zugeordnet werden, sowie Darwinius masillae („Ida“), ein ausgestorbener Primat.
Die Grube Messel ist die erste der drei UNESCO-Weltnaturerbestätten Deutschlands.
The Messel Pit (German: Grube Messel) is a disused quarry near the village of Messel, (Landkreis Darmstadt-Dieburg, Hesse) about 35 km (22 mi) southeast of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Bituminous shale was mined there. Because of its abundance of fossils, it has significant geological and scientific importance. After almost becoming a landfill, strong local resistance eventually stopped these plans, and the Messel Pit was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site on 9 December 1995. Significant scientific discoveries are still being made, and the site has increasingly become a tourism site as well.
Wikipedia
Granted, #844 was mostly never laboring like this tea kettle over at the Colorado Railroad Museam's Christmas steam up. Another difference is that #346 was climbing the hill to the tank and burning coal unlike the oil (of any kind) that #844 uses. Even Eddie kept out of the way for this shot of Delay Junction! I have been collecting Clouds & Skies for ages but this is a Colorado December day that is far from unusual. It even kind of foretold of the coming of a very short spring and glaring summer. Are you ready for some steam? The early excursion was not quite full but is grande for an early Sunday morning run by.I did a significant amount of editing to try to keep the remaining white snow and the black engine shadows in range, hoping to make a bold enough statement from the original that I found unretouched in my awaiting work directory. Still, I am amazed by the realistic shots that can still be snapped of the run bys of steam up days at the Colorado Railroad Museum.
Nice light here for the bold steam, IMHO. I found a great venue and you might finally realize why we picked the Christmas steam up on Sunday fully knowing it might not be terribly busy. Steam is a winner in winter even if most of it can be explained, The cylinder cocks were open on this first run. They are open to help bring the pistons and cylinders up to an equalizing temperature for extending the operating life. Who knows, it might help loosen up the piston lubricator. In any case the engineer didn't do many displays like this when up to operating temperatures and pressures. I kind of expected the blow down valve could be opened along here too even though once a run would probably do for us photographers. They also may have sanded the flues slightly to clean them and make a more impressive exhaust show what with extra coal and lubricants. There is steam trailing from the electric generator situated boiler top just in front of the cab. More would mean that the relief (pop off) valve was open too. I think they must only be running the headlight. Show-offs? Fine by me, but someone forgot to open the blow-down valve under the cab! The usually spiffed engine is already sooty from Saturday's run. I suppose a wash and wax in in store for #346 when done with the show of runs and rides.
I did the best that I could with this very small segment of a much larger negative in order to show what the Superior side of St. Louis Bay looked like circa 1905. This shot was taken from the bluffs above Duluth on a remarkably clear day so that we can see the newest concrete elevator at Superior East end (all the way to the left) to the coal docks adjacent to Great Northern Elevators S and X and the Great Northern's Merchandise Dock (all the way to the right). Click on the image to enlarge it slightly. Then pan left and right to see how much work is going on in this view. Connor's Point is barely larger than it was to begin with. Only a pair of early coal docks front the Point at this time.
At left, if you look closely you'll spot Superior's Gasometer that sits slightly inland and roughly mid-point between the two coal docks while much work is being done to create more land and many more docks in between them.
Towards the center of the picture are the Great Northern's Interstate Draw Bridge and the Northern Pacific's St. Louis River Drawbridge. The former was used mostly by the Soo Line after this time because GN began using the NP's bridges to access Duluth. While the latter was actually made up of two (2) draw bridges; the Minnesota Draw and the Wisconsin Draw. If you follow the timber trestle work across the bay left to right you'll find the Wisconsin Draw in the open position with a train bound for Duluth waiting just behind it. These are the NP's original wooden draw bridges that were replaced with much larger steel versions in just a few year's time. Read more about that here: zenithcity.com/northern-pacific-pt2/
Just above the Minnesota Draw are the original flour mills once located in West Superior. Nearer to the Wisconsin Draw are the anthracite coal wig wams and the Globe Elevator complex. A large package freighter is unloading at the GN merchandise dock adjacent to Elevators S and X.
Coal was king during this era. Virtually every railroad locomotive and every steam ship was powered by coal. Most businesses had coal fired boilers that provided steam for powering machinery of every kind. Homes were rapidly converting from burning wood to burning coal in order to take advantage of this ready fuel source. The harbor front docks of Duluth and Superior were the primary storage facilities for millions of tons of anthracite and bituminous coals brought into the Twin Ports from Ohio and Pennsylvania via the Great Lakes.
While the limitations of photography allow me only so much wiggle room to squeeze extra resolution to show these kinds of details that are hiding within old negatives and photographic prints, I believe we are fortunate to be able to see as much as we do in this picture, especially given the fact that virtually every mechanized industrial contraption put in place here, and every ship, every locomotive, every business entity both large and small, and every home in the vicinity is actively burning coal. But the day this picture was taken the skies were relatively clear of the smoke that must have made the skies black with soot on many occasions. While millions of tons of coal were burned in the Twin Ports over the decades to fuel livelihoods and to provide comfort, many hundreds of millions more of those tons were trans-shipped west to the northern plains States and to Canada, to help grow those settlements and economies too. At the Head of the Lakes area, no commodity had a bigger impact than coal, on people's lives and the rapid growth of business throughout the northern States.
Clifton Drive, Fairhaven, Lancashire FY8 1AX The faience is by the Middleton Fireclay offshoot of the Leeds Fireclay Company, not the normal Burmantofts branch.
Fairhaven United Reformed Church
Also known as "the White Church". Congregational church, now
united Reformed church. 1904 and 1911, by Briggs, Wolstenholme
and Thornley; with stained glass by Luke S. Walmesley of St
Annes and Charles Elliott of London.
Mostly white faience, but hall to rear of red brick with buff
terracotta dressings; slate and bituminous asphalt roofs.
Free Byzantine style. The principal element is a square vessel
with a domed roof, a tall octagonal minaret tower at the
north-east corner and octagonal turrets with domed lanterns at
the south-east and north-west corners.
Each of these 3 corners has an extruded 3-sided porch with
pilasters, dentilled cornice and geometrical panelled parapet,
and a round-headed doorway in the centre bay; the roof of the
main porch, at the north-east corner, has swept and scrolled
brackets to the corners of the tower, which has tall
round-headed panels in the sides, a dentilled cornice, and a
3-stage lantern or belfry, the 1st stage open-arcaded, the 2nd
with latticed windows, and the top with a domed roof
surmounted by a cross.
The 2 principal sides are filled with wide projected gabled
bays which have large segmental-headed tripartite windows, and
parapets; and attached to the west side of the north-west
porch is an octagonal parlour with round-headed windows and a
domed roof.
Attached at the rear is a hall of red brick, on a parallel
axis, the east gable having a Diocletian window with run-out
vousoirs of buff terracotta.
INTERIOR: square main vessel with chamfered corners (porches
in 2 corners, choir vestry and organ chamber in the others)
and in each side a wide segmental-arched alcove illuminated by
stained glass windows illustrating biblical scenes, a large
number of historical religious figures, and events such as the
departure of the Pilgrim fathers and the Great Ejection of
Nonconformist clergy.
The item is an unusual design and forms a very conspicuous and
well-known landmark between Lytham and St Annes.
Listing NGR: SD3474527358
Source: English Heritage
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright
LLWYNYPIA COLLIERY, LLWYNYPIA, RHONDDA.
Any recollection of this colliery and its workforce is inseparable from the name of Archibald Hood, a Scotsman who bestrode mid-Rhondda and elsewhere as a colossus of the mining world, and beyond that distinction too. A brief summary of this man’s career –where to do justice, a volume is needed – is that in 1860, when he arrived in Wales from Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, he was merely thirty-seven, but in a brief twenty-five of those years in Scotland, he achieved more than most men of that time would achieve in a lifetime, becoming a qualified mining engineer and coal-owner, genuinely highly-respected in both spheres by his mining peers and workforce. His interest and concern in the latter extended beyond their daily duties, with the provision of good accommodation complete with gardens for food production, and also encouraging their purchase of domestic needs from co-operative initiatives. But, as illustrious as he was in Scotland, he would, over the next forty-two years in Wales, carve a second career that would overtake his first.
Hood’s first Welsh mining involvement was at Tylcha Fach Level in Coed Ely, which exploited the thin bituminous Ty Du seam of less than a yard thickness. The colliery was owned by the Ely Valley Coal Company, and its office and winding-engine house are still in existence, modified into three residences, sitting above Tylcha Fach Estate, an elevated, relatively-new housing development which sits on the valley-side opposite the former Coedely Colliery. He had arrived there in 1860, commissioned by Messrs. Campbell and Mitchell-Innes to determine if a proposed investment in small mines in the area would be profitable, but in an interim period and inexplicably not seeking Hood’s advice, Campbell and Mitchell-Innes were persuaded, unwisely, to buy the level. Although Hood later joined them there, his thoughts were focussed on deep mining at Llwynypia, and when the Ely Valley Coal Company was liquidated, he, Campbell and Mitchell-Inness formed the new Glamorgan Coal Company and began shaft sinkings at Llwynypia Colliery. Eventually, under Hood’s leadership two more deep mines were established at Penrhiwfer and Gilfach Goch.
Evidence of the beginning of Llwynypia Colliery, dated February 27th,1861, is shown on page four (pages 1-3 missing) of Glamorgan Coal Company’s Cash Book, which over the following twenty-eight days showed directors’ cash injections of £3,600, including £300 by Archibald Hood. It provides early-years evidence that though Hood was undoubtedly the driving force at Llwynypia, his periodical purchase of company shares was always much less than his fellow directors! A search for this colliery through officially-recognised sources will be unsuccessful if ‘Glamorgan’ or ‘Scotch’ is used as a search-word, for the correct name is ‘Llwynypia’, which broadly translates as ‘Magpies Grove’. However, for good reason, ‘Glamorgan’ and ‘Scotch’ soon became every-day alternatives, and they are unquestioned and accepted to this day – but why did they originate? Imagine, you are a Scot, beginning work as a miner in a very sparsely populated area, where the native language is predominantly Welsh, a tongue completely foreign to you. Inevitably, at some time, you will be asked your place of residence or employment: do you invite ridicule, by attempting to pronounce ‘Llwynypia’, or do you use your wits, replying with the easily-pronounced ‘Scotch’, a reference to the colliery’s predominantly Scottish workforce imported by Archibald Hood – or the equally easy ‘Glamorgan’, the name of the company owning the colliery?
To accommodate his workforce, Hood found it necessary to build, and eventually, 271 homes were constructed in fifteen terraces adjacent to, and overlooking the colliery, of which 256 are still in occupied existence, together with several impressive managers’ residences built in the proximity of the colliery. More dwellings were built near his Penrhiwfer and Gilfach Goch mines, and to this day, in all three villages, there remain references to the Glamorgan Coal Company, Hood’s nationality, and Scottish landmarks. Sherwood (several), Gilmour, Anderson, Thistle, St. Andrew, Ayton, Campbell, Argyll, Grange, Holyrood, Rosedale, Bruce (Penrhiwfer), Scotch and Dundonnell (both at Gilfach Goch), all are overtly Scottish-influenced place-names, but there were acknowledgements to Wales, with Cambrian, Glamorgan, Llewelyn, Glandwr, Llwynypia, Glyncornel, Iscoed, etc. Missing from all these is a landmark dubbed ‘Hood’ by Hood himself, and perhaps this remarkable, extraordinary man knew there was no need for self-acclaim, for in his modest way he probably realized that his achievements in South Wales would render that self-perpetuation superfluous.
There were six vertical shafts and two levels at Llwynypia. On the Llwynypia side of the River Rhondda Fawr were shafts 1, 2, 3 and 4. Nos 1, and 2 shafts were sunk to exploit the shallow Nos. 2 and 3 Rhondda seams but were eventually deepened to exploit the steam coals in the deeper seams; No. 3 shaft worked the shallow seams too, but, whilst reportedly sunk to also exploit the lower seams, it closed in 1908. The coal in the Nos. 2 and 3 Rhondda seams was bituminous, used as a domestic fuel and also as the basic element in coke production, fuelling the 281 ovens at Llwynypia and Gilfach Goch collieries, where an impressive 1,400 tons was produced weekly. Additionally important, at the floor of these seams was fireclay, a mineral consisting of the roots of dead plants, extracted along with the coal, the decayed vegetation above the plant-roots, both having undergone change, metamorphosis, through heat and deep burial over millions of years. This clay was a valuable by-product, an essential constituent of the 10,000 or so bricks made daily by women in the colliery’s above-ground brick-making plant.
The three shafts (1, 2 and 3) were sunk in a line, parallel to and near the Taff Vale Railway, their extremes contained within an incredible 35.33 yards. No. 4 shaft did not conduct minerals, it was sunk purely to accommodate water pumped from the whole of the colliery’s workings, and its former location is today bordered by a fast-food outlet adjacent to Llwynypia Road. When the colliery ceased production in 1945, the yard remained in use as a rescue-station and central workshop, and the shaft remained open at the No. 3 Rhondda seam, 108 yards level, for water-pumping only until 1966, when total colliery closure took place. The writer recalls, during the mid-1960s, many times travelling to his ventilation duties there, in a very small, single-deck cage, the only one that could be accommodated in this extremely narrow shaft. No. 5 shaft, on the Trealaw side of the river, did not conduct minerals, it was sunk purely to conduct the whole of the colliery’s stale air to the surface, but at times through the colliery’s life this function was fulfilled by other shafts, including No. 6, when No. 5 closed. No. 6 shaft, close to the Collier’s Arms at Ynyscynon Road, was sunk to exploit the deep, steam coals.
In descending order, the seams worked at Llwynypia Colliery were: No. 1 Rhondda (only at an inconsequential, almost mountaintop level, see below); No. 2 Rhondda; No. 3 Rhondda; Pentre; Two Feet Nine Inches; Lower Six Feet; Upper Nine Feet (Red Vein): Lower Nine Feet and Bute; Bute; Five Feet; Lower Five Feet. The Lower Five Feet was the deepest-worked seam and was found at 517 yards in the 525 yards deep No. 1 shaft. The two levels were established on the Trealaw side of the river, with the highly-productive Sherwood Level, whose entrance was adjacent to No. 5 shaft, shallowly traversing under Ynyscynon Nursery as it commenced its 950 yard journey into Rhondda Fach, extracting the No. 2 Rhondda seam. It was opened in 1905, in anticipation of the closure of No. 3 shaft, thereby maintaining the essential supply of bituminous coal and fireclay for the production of coke and bricks, but it closed in 1923 when those reserves were exhausted. That year also saw the closure of Llwynypia Colliery Mountain Level, situated high on the Trealaw mountainside; it was a largely-exploratory, short-lived venture into the No. 1 Rhondda seam for its much-sought bituminous coal and fireclay, but one which was of limited presence due to glacial action and erosion by the elements. Reliable and complete manpower and production figures for Llwynypia are not available, but the colliery was certainly prolific in both, with 4,200 employees in 1902, and 700,000 tons output in 1923 being quoted, although the latter figure, is much lower than the widely-held figure of one million tons per annum.
Archibald Hood was that rarity, a truly-respected coal-owner. He was canny and conservative but also a humanitarian, and at Llwynypia, as in Scotland, he sought to beneficially influence the lives of his workmen and their families. Whereas D. A Thomas, Chairman of Cambrian Collieries Ltd, injected nothing into the Clydach Valley communities, Hood’s hand was everywhere in Llwynypia, manifested by the provision of schools, St. Andrews Church, a Miners Institute, complete with library and billiards tables — a swimming pool, tennis courts, cricket, football and rugby fields, and even the winter-time provision of a large, outdoor ice-skating area! He encouraged his workforce to grow food by providing large garden areas at the fronts of their dwellings, simultaneously seeking to divert the male occupants from alcohol, an imperative, given the volatile temperaments of the Welsh, Scots, and the Irish that later inhabited the community! He was known for his attention to detail, often involved in matters which his minions might have been expected to supervise – the writer’s grandmother lost an arm at Llwynypia when sixteen in 1893, amputated when caught in brick-making machinery, and Hood, then seventy, personally attended the matter, obtaining a job for the one-armed girl at the Tonypandy ironmongery of John Cox – Hood, probably not needing to remind Cox of Glamorgan Coal Company’s patronage!
When he died, aged 79, in 1902, a fund was established to erect a statue, the first in Rhondda, and this likeness, with an arm horizontal, pointing to his colliery, stands to this day, overlooking Llwynypia Road. Such was the respect of his workmen that the fund was heavily over-subscribed, with the surplus being used to provide a gas-lit statue and animal drinking-trough, now modified and situated near Tonypandy Library, removed from its original site at Tonypandy Square. Six years after his death, Llwynypia Colliery was taken under the control of D. A. Thomas’s Cambrian Collieries Ltd, of whom Leonard Llewelyn was General Manager. Today, it is known that Llewelyn was a liar, impostor and opportunist, but when he and Llwynypia Colliery became newspaper headlines in the Tonypandy Coal Strike and the associated rioting of 1910-11, he excelled in concealing and distorting the truth, by manipulating Establishment-based newspapers, the only information source of those times. To expose Llewelyn, one needed mining experience and a source of publication, both possessed by, and available to the writer, but not so in the latter-essential to miners in the 1910-11 period. So, critically, the untruths in those newspapers passed unchallenged, and became immediate history, creating false perceptions of events that deceived many historians and others to the present day. Llewelyn’s lies would not have sat well with Hood, and one wonders, when at the peak of his powers, would he have vetoed the Cambrian purchase of Llwynypia? Had it been possible to configure that time-span, he might have prevented the immense suffering that occurred in mid-Rhondda in 1910-11.
Original Caption: Bud Redding is one of the Sarpy Basin ranchers who is resisting the Westmoreland Coal Company's attempts to buy their land for strip mining. Sarpy Basin is part of some 25,000 square miles in Montana and Wyoming with rich seams of sub-bituminous coal, 06/1973
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-6636
Photographer: Norton, Boyd
Subjects:
Environmental protection
Natural resources
Pollution
Billings (Montana, United States) inhabited place
Persistent URL: research.archives.gov/description/549122
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
The tea kettle made it up the hill and is headed onto the sweeping curve at the Colorado Railroad Museum's Christmas steam up. #346 was past the hill to the tank and was burning coal unlike the oil burner #40 on our 2013 outing. They may have been sanding the flues for the smoke effect. Even Eddie was out of the way for this shot toward Delay Junction down the track! The scene is still rather void of the crush of onlookers this morning. Nobody his cheated the fence yet; not even Eddie! I rather like this shot because of the lines and the train had already turned into the early morning sun on the curve. There would still be shade on #346 this early in the stark lighting. It seems the engineer is on the throttle a bit late considering it is now heading for the downhill drift. In any case, this looks pretty real to me.
This is a Colorado December day that is far from unusual. It even kind of foretold of the coming of a very short spring and glaring summer. Are you ready for some steam? The early excursion was not quite full but is grande for an early Sunday morning runby. I did a significant amount of editing to try to keep the remaining white snow and the black engine shadows in range, hoping to make a bold enough statement from the original that I found unretouched in my awaiting work directory.
Proud Miner
A coal miner bares his tattoo while working underground in the Central Appalachian Mine (CAM) in Cadiz, Ohio. CAM Ohio is the largest single employer in Cadiz, a town of 3000 people and Ohio’s leading producer of bituminous coal. CAM Ohio re-opened the Cadiz mine in 1990 after it closed in 1981 under Wino Mine Company. Of the current 172 employees, 80% work underground to produce about 1000 tons of coal per day. Due to the boom in demand, in the past two years CAM Ohio has invested $14 million for new equipment and expects to work the mines in the Cadiz area for about 15 years, or until the coal runs out.
Editorial Relevance: This image speaks to the current state of the coal industry in Ohio.
Larger species, especially those with short spires, cannot be held by plasticine. Instead, they can be gripped in plastic clothes pegs. To prevent the peg from floating and the snail from moving it, place a piece of lead on it. For photography, paint coloured pegs with black bituminous paint to avoid colour reflections. As individuals of the same species often vary in their willingness to extend, it is advisable to restrain several simultaneously to increase the chance of seeing an example of each sex.
Equipment Source
Ecoforce clothes pegs; use search on Ebay www.ebay.co.uk/
Full article of Anatomy of marine gastropods without dissection. below image 2 flic.kr/p/P7dYNq
Sub-bituminous coal in the Tertiary of Wyoming, USA. (photo stitch by Mary Ellen St. John)
This is the thickest economic coal unit in America - the Wyodak Coal. It's a 70 to 90 feet thick sub-bituminous coal interval in the early Tertiary-aged Fort Union Formation. As the name suggests, sub-bituminous coal is a rank of coal that has characteristics of both lignite coal and bituminous coal. Sub-bituminous has a higher carbon content than lignite and lower carbon content than bituminous. Western American coal is highly desirable as it lacks much pyrite, which is moderately common in eastern American coal. If air pollution treatment measures are not in place, burning pyritic coal produces acid rain.
A coal-burning power plant is present across the road (behind the photographer). Much coal from this mine is also shipped east via railroad.
Stratigraphy: Wyodak Coal, Fort Union Formation, Upper Paleocene
Locality: Wyodak Coal Mine, northern side of Interstate 90, 5 to 6 miles east of the town of Gillette, central Campbell County, Powder River Basin, northern Wyoming, USA (44° 18' 01.44" North latitude, 105° 23' 08.79" West longitude)
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See info. at:
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...
Skyline Drive Historic District
by Reed Engle, Cultural Resource Specialist
Whose Idea Was The Drive?
The first recorded mention of the construction of a Skyline Drive (not the phrase then mentioned) was by William C. Gregg, a member of the Southern Appalachian National Park Committee who suggested the idea of a ridge road to L. Ferdinand Zerkel, a member of the Board of Shenandoah Valley, Inc., during his five-day visit to Skyland. The idea ended up incorporated into the recommendations of the Committee.
Length: 105.5 miles from Front Royal to Rockfish Gap
Dates/Costs of Construction:
Official ground breaking was July 18, 1931, although the actual field survey began in January of that year.
First section of construction initially was to be from Rapidan Camp to the Skyland Resort, some twenty miles, but evolved into the 34 miles from Swift Run Gap (U.S. 33) to Thornton Gap (U.S. 211). Original funds were allocated by the Federal Drought Relief Administration to employ Virginia farmers and apple pickers suffering from the severe drought impacts on the apple and produce harvests in 1930.
Congress appropriated $1,000,000 the fall of 1932 to continue construction of the Drive and the Department of the Interior announced that the Drive would extend from Swift Run Gap to Front Royal.
Roosevelt forms Civilian Conservation Corps and first two companies in the National Park Service are formed at Skyland (NP-1) and Big Meadows (NP-2). Shenandoah National Park would eventually benefit from ten CCC camps. May, 1933.
Skyline Drive from Thornton Gap to Swift Run Gap was completed in the summer of 1934 and opened to the public on September 15, 1934. This section cost $1,570,479 or approximately $39,000/mile.
Skyline Drive from Thornton Gap to Front Royal (32 miles) was opened to the public on October 1, 1936 and cost $ 1,235,177 or, approximately $42,000/mile.
Skyline Drive from Swift Run Gap to Jarman Gap (32.4 miles) was opened to the public on August 29,1939 and cost $1,666,528 or, approximately $51,500/mile.
Skyline Drive (then Blue Ridge Parkway) from Jarman Gap to Rockfish Gap (8.5 miles) was completed on August 11, 1939 and cost $358,636 or, approximately, $40,000/mile. [The southernmost section of the Drive from Jarman Gap to Rockfish Gap was originally constructed in 1938-1939 as a part of the Blue Ridge Parkway and was deeded to Shenandoah National Park in 1961.
Contractors for the Drive:
Thornton Gap to Big Meadows: Ralph E. Mills Construction Company, Frankfort, Kentucky
Big Meadows to Swift Run Gap: Keeley Construction Company, Clarksburg, West Virginia
Front Royal to Compton Gap (9.76 miles): Waugh Brothers, Fayetteville, West Virginia
Compton Gap to Hogback Mountain (10.4 miles): Sammons-Robertson Company, Huntington, West Virginia
Hogback Mountain to Thornton Gap (10.3 miles): Albert Brothers, Salem, Virginia
Swift Run Gap to Simmons Gap (8.04 miles): M.E. Gilioz Company, Monett, Missouri
Simmons Gap to Browns Gap (IO. 18 miles): M.E. Gillioz Company, Monett, Missouri
Browns Gap to Black Rock Gap (4.80 miles): Chandler Brothers, Inc., Virgilina, Virginia
Black Rock Gap to Jarmans Gap (9.39 miles): Albert Brothers Construction, Inc., Salem, Virginia
Jarmans Gap to Rockfish Gap (8.5 miles): Ralph E. Mills Company, Frankfort, Kentucky
Bituminous surfacing of the roadway was separately contracted and was awarded to either Corson and Gruman Company, Washington, D.C., Southern Asphalt Company, Richmond, Virginia, or Barrett Paving Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Marys Rock Tunnel
The tunnel, 670 feet long, was bored through the solid granite of Marys Rock in 1932. Although justified as avoiding the necessity of creating an expensive cut on the existing slope and filling the down slope areas, thus creating a massive man-made, visual feature, it has been suggested that the tunnel was built as a challenge to Bureau of Public Roads and National Park Service landscape architects. The tunnel was partially lined with concrete in 1958 to alleviate the formation of icicles in winter and water seepage in summer-a partially successful effort.
Guard Walls and Guard Rails
The CCC built many of the stone walls along the Drive, particularly those in the South District and those at overlooks. Beginning in 1983 many of the original walls have been rebuilt by the Federal Highways Administration with cores of concrete, reusing the original stone as a veneer. When built the Skyline Drive had miles of chestnut log guardrails, particularly in areas of open fields and meadows. The guardrails rotted and all were removed in the 1950s, not to be replaced.
Civilian Conservation Corps
The CCC "boys" did not construct the roadbed of the Drive as has at times been suggested. But there would be no Skyline Drive without the efforts of the CCC. They graded the slopes on either side of the roadway, built the guardrails and guard walls, constructed overlooks, planted hundreds of thousands of trees and shrubs and acres of grass to landscape both sides of the roadbed, built the picnic areas and campgrounds, comfort stations, visitor contact and maintenance buildings, and made the signs that guided visitors on their way. Many served as the first park interpreters.
Source: www.nps.gov/shen/learn/historyculture/skylinedrive.htm
An eastbound loaded PPLX (Pennsylvania Power & Light) unit coal train passes through West Park on a sunny and mild winter afternoon. This train, consisting of about 120 cars, each with 100 tons of coal, is likely headed for one of PPL’s three 1500+ megawatt coal fired power plants east of Pittsburgh—Conemaugh, Keystone or Montour.
It’s interesting to see both loaded and empty unit coal trains going both east and west through the Pittsburgh area. The reason is simple: coal-fired power plants are designed specifically to burn specific types of coal. The technical requirements for coal-fired power plants differ dramatically depending upon the type of coal they are designed to burn. It would be cost-prohibitive to build a power plant that could burn all types of coal.
Appalachian bituminous coal produces about 50 percent more energy than Powder River Basin coal; however, it also produces much higher sulfur dioxide emissions.
Powder River Basin sub-bituminous coal produces less sulfur dioxide and it costs about one sixth as much (at the mine). Unfortunately for coal-fired power plants east of the Mississippi, the Powder River Basin is in northeastern Wyoming. So, PRB coal, which is cheap at the mine, costs a lot more when transportation is figured into the business equation.
In the eastern US, particularly, power companies must decide, when building new plants, whether to use PRB coal that produces less energy per ton, but also emits less sulfur dioxide; or, to use Appalachian coal that yields higher energy output but requires significant investment in sulfur dioxide emission control equipment (e.g., scrubbers).
So, this is why it’s common to see unit coal trains from Wyoming, often with BNSF or UP run-through power, east of the Mississippi, and as far east as major Atlantic seaboard cities.
(Updated May 14, 2024)
As I write this, the Chicago region is blanketed by a pinkish-yellow haze (official Air Quality Index = 194, rated "Unhealthy" and close to "Very Unhealthy" for all ages). That's the result of the much-publicized Canadian-wildfire plume descending on this part of the Midwest. However concerning this nasty air pollution is, it's a temporary condition, albeit one that heralds more disturbing changes yet to come in the climate system.
But imagine living and working in Chicago where this sort of toxic brew had to be breathed in on a daily basis. In the late nineteenth century and earliest twentieth, when bituminous coal mined in the Illinois Basin powered this city, unfiltered soot and acidic compounds found their way onto every exposed surface, and into everyone's lungs. I discuss this meaner, grittier version of the Windy City at greater length, and even quote one contemporary visitor, H. G. Wells, in my Chicago in Stone in Clay (see link at bottom).
If this is indeed plain soot rather than biofilm, I suspect much of it on the Lower-Jurassic Portland Sandstone of the Chicago Club's northeastern corner actually dates either to the Age of Bituminous Coal. Either that, or at least to the days of abundant automotive exhaust before the activation of the Clean Air Act (various provisions beginning in 1970).
Because this cladding was apparently face-bedded (tilted up 90 degrees from its original horizontal bedding plane), it's especially susceptible to a lot of peeling and spalling as it weathers. The much brighter-toned patches of stone represent fresher surfaces exposed by that spalling. They seem to be very recently exposed, but I'm sure darkening proceeds at least somewhat more slowly than it did, for reasons discussed in the previous paragraph.
To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit
The Brownstone Chronicles album. And for more on this specific site, see my book Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...
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Note
Sorry for the lack of uploads on Friday and Monday - Other commitments took me away from my computer, so wasn't able to get a photo up on Flickr. Hopefully shall return to normal now! :)
About the Photo
Taken on a road outside of Adaminaby, on the way to Mt Selwyn, NSW. This photo caught the full force of the glorious morning light. The way that landscapes change and evolve during the so-called 'golden hour', before and after sunrise and sunset, never ceases to amaze me. Enjoy :)
Technical
Nikon D90 | Sigma 10-20mm
1/8 sec | f/20 | ISO100 | 10mm
About Bitumen
Bitumen is a mixture of organic liquids that are highly viscous, black, sticky, entirely soluble in carbon disulfide, and composed primarily of highly condensed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Naturally occurring or crude bitumen is a sticky, tar-like form of petroleum that is so thick and heavy that it must be heated or diluted before it will flow. At room temperature, it has a consistency much like cold molasses. Refined bitumen is the residual (bottom) fraction obtained by fractional distillation of crude oil. It is the heaviest fraction and the one with the highest boiling point, boiling at 525 °C (977 °F).
The use of bitumen for waterproofing and as an adhesive dates at least to the third millennium BCE in the early Indus community of Mehrgarh where it was used to line the baskets in which they gathered crops. The Sumerians also used it as early as the third millennium BCE in statuary, mortaring brick walls, waterproofing baths and drains, in stair treads, and for shipbuilding. Other cultures such as Babylon, India, Persia, Egypt, and ancient Greece and Rome continued these uses, and in several cases the bitumen has continued to hold components securely together to this day. In some versions of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, the name of the substance used to bind the bricks of the Tower of Babel is translated as bitumen (see Gen 11:3). A one-kilometre tunnel beneath the river Euphrates at Babylon in the time of Queen Semiramis (ca. 800 B.C.) was reportedly constructed of burnt bricks covered with bitumen as a waterproofing agent. This must be regarded as legendary but indicative that the concept was known.
The term bitumen comes from Latin. The Greek name for the substance was άσφαλτος (asphaltos). Approximately 40 A.D. Dioscorides described production of asphaltos (as distinguished from pissasphalt and naphtha): (1655 Goodyer translation). The terms asphalt and bitumen are often used interchangeably to mean both natural and manufactured forms of the substance.
Bitumen (or asphalt) is primarily used, when mixed with mineral aggregates, to produce paving materials. Its other main uses are for bituminous waterproofing products, including production of roofing felt and for sealing flat roofs.
Most natural bitumens contain sulfur and several heavy metals such as nickel, vanadium, lead, chromium, mercury and also arsenic, selenium, and other toxic elements. Bitumens can provide good preservation of plants and animal fossils.
Heavily rusted remains of the "SS LAWRENCE"
The "LAWRENCE" was a 160ft.two-masted twin-screw iron steamer. She was built in 1884 by Kish, Boolds & Co. of Sunderland, England, and launched originally as "BORTONIUS".
The following year, coal was discovered in the tiny West Coast hamlet of Mokihinui (the first high-grade bituminous coal to be mined in New Zealand), and the Mokihinui Coal Company was established. A second coal seam was soon found, even larger than the first, and in 1889 the flourishing business purchased the LAWRENCE [victoriancollections.net.au/items/555577b3998fc21654210829].
Good fortune continued to smile on the young company, and in early 1891 it won a contract to supply coal to the NZ Railways.
But the good fortune ran out on April 28, 1891. From the up-river wharf where the Mokihinui Coal Co.’s one-mile tramway delivered the coal from the mines, the LAWRENCE set sail at about noon. She became lodged in the sandbar at the river mouth, managed to break free but, owing to her damaged propeller blades, she then drifted onto the beach. The next day she broke her back in heavy weather and was declared a total loss [paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT18910430.2.22].
As the LAWRENCE was its only ship, the Mokihinui Coal Co. was subsequently forced to hand over its newly-acquired rail contract to the Grey Valley Coal Company...
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In 1935 a ship’s bell was found near Westport, about 40km south of the Mokihinui River. It caused considerable local speculation because, at first, no-one recognised the name inscribed on the bell: BORTONIUS.
CASS WV: CASS SCENIC RAILROAD STATE PARK: Shay #2, a Pacific Coast Shay, was constructed in July of 1928 for the Mayo Lumber Company of Paldi, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. A Pacific Coast Shay is a souped-up model of the class C-70 3 truck Shay. The Pacific Coast features superheat, a firebox that is 13 inches longer, lower gear ratio, steel cab, cast steel trucks, and steel girder frame (seen below). A feature of the steel girder frame is the large opening for exposing staybolts.
Also, the cylinders were designed so they attached only to the locomotive frame, rather than to the boiler shell as in other Shays. This allowed for easier access and maintenance. #2 is the only Shay of it's kind in the east. Shay #2, originally a wood burner, spent its working commercial life with four companies in British Columbia including Lake Logging Company, Cowichan Lake B.C. and Western Forest Industries, Honeymoon Bay, B.C. Later converted to burn oil then rebuilt to burn bituminous coal at Cass, #2 is the only known Shay to have used all three types of fuel. The locomotive ended its career switching cars on Vancouver docks in 1970, making it one of the last commercially-used Shays, and came to Cass in that same year.
Today, Shay #2 spends its time "relaxing" at Cass Scenic Railroad.
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
Original Caption: Sub-bituminous coal like the piece John Redding is holding lies under the surface of some 25,000 square miles of Montana and Wyoming. Much of that land is now used for farming and ranching the Westmoreland Coal Company wants to strip mine. Redding and other Sarpy Basin ranchers are refusing to sell their land, 06/1973
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-6635
Photographer: Norton, Boyd
Subjects:
Environmental protection
Natural resources
Pollution
Billings (Montana, United States) inhabited place
Persistent URL: research.archives.gov/description/549121
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