Why Coal Breakers were Horrific Places to Work (Coal Breakers Explained)
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- Coal breakers were the machines that broke big chunks of coal into smaller pieces. The coal breaker was the heart of the coal mine. Coal breakers were loud and dirty, and they often needed a lot of maintenance. But without them, the mine would've been useless - even so, they were a horrific place to work
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I still remember my grandfather would have to walk 4-5 miles to work at the paper mill, and on his way there, he would pick up pieces of coal along the tracks that fell off the cars and he would set it aside in piles. When his shift was done at the paper mill and he would walk back to home, he would pick up the small piles of coal he made earlier that morning to bring home to the family for heating the house and for heating the stove to cook on.
“Where’s you get that Timmy?”…..”it fell off the truck ma, don’t worry about it”.
Lol, jk, clever resourceful man. Should be darn proud.
@@Logic-101 Thanks for the cool comment, and yes sir, I am certainly proud of him still to this day and miss him and my grandmother very much. Their wedding picture even stays beside me on the night stand as a steadfast reminder for how a husband and wife were to support each other and their family
Well hey hope you have a good night and hang in there considering the ludicrous stuff going on in our country.
@@tymz-r-achangin I purchased my grandfathers house and understand the pride in one’s family and their accomplishments. You hang in as well fine sir.
@@tymz-r-achangin Bless you and your family, wish you the best.
@@lj6284 Thank you for the kind reply and may God bless you and your family as well ....in fact may God bless our whole nation once again.
In 1970 I started work at Magma Copper in Superior Arizona. I was assigned to the mill and crusher section and most new hires were "pickers" for a couple of weeks. All sorts of garbage comes out of a copper mine as the miners use the ore chutes as a garbage dump. Wood, broken "jacks" (sledge hammers) and lots and lots of blasting caps. As a picker you had to pull out as much as you could before it hit the jaw crusher. There was another picker before the Symons crusher to get what the first guy missed. The Symons crushed the ore into pea gravel size.
Occasionally the first guy missed a sledge hammer head and it was important for the second guy to get it. If not, a sledge hammer head being bigger than pea gravel size makes a hell of a racket in the second crusher. They said you could hear it in downtown Superior when it happened.
Insane that they didn't install a magnet or eddy currrent kicker as a last safety catch. Oh well, lots of companies then and now are pennywise and pound foolish.
Were the blasting caps capable of exploding in the machinery if not handled carefully and go out in time???
@@jgdooley2003 Usually not because most of the caps that were missed were picked up by a magnetic drum roller on the conveyor belt. If one did explode, the machinery was so massive that it didn't affect anything.
@@tetrabromobisphenol There was a magnetic drum roller on the head of the conveyor belt that was great for picking up small blasting caps and small pieces of metal, but a 7 pound sledgehammer head would just sail past it.
@@Javelina_Poppers Always assumed blasting caps were paper...
As a state worker from Philadelphia I first got to see some of these massive buildings in my travel for my job. As noted most of them are now inactive since coal useage has dropped off. I grew up with coal heat when I was younger and did notice the difference in coal quality that we used to heat our house. A good load of coal resulted in a nice fine white ash. Coal with slate or other impurities did not burn as well and resulted with ash with lumps of unburnt coal attached to whatever the impurity consigned of. It is nice to see someone put up the history of the hard work that went into processing coal for consumption.
*I've never seen coal burn... Do you light it like wood and it just catches or what? I imagine the flame eventually sticks to it? Grew up in California in the 1960s and 70s...*
@@JungleYT you need a good fire to get it going. A good bed of hot wood coals will get it lit. Or a torch@ it takes a good bit of heat to get the coal going. In a coal stove it doesn't have much of a flame when the stove is properly set up. It just put off a warm glow and alot of heat.
@@leokarasinski4217 Thanks... I had a feeling it didn't light so easily. Amazing it become such a staple for heat. But it sounds like if added to an already going fire it works real good...
@@JungleYT yea once you get it going and in a good stove or whatever you are using. Keep it fed and it will stay lit and stay hot. It's crazy stuff. The energy density of coal is absurd. The only downside is all the crap that it gives off when burnt. That's why it's going away.
@@leokarasinski4217 Right... Thanks
Just imagine the noise. It must have been horribly loud. At a time when going deaf was just considered "getting used to" the noise.
In my youth I worked a Wildcat grinder as an introduction . I went home with my ears ringing always . Thank God the advent of foam ear plugs was available .
My hearing was salvaged and I can hear many thing people are not aware of.
At most you would take cotton balls and roll them into your ears. Doesn't work that well.
A worse side effect is tinnitus. I deal with ringing in my ears all day every day
At the railroad I worked at (now retired) we were sometimes required to watch a safety video. One regarding hearing protection was titled, "Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow."
My grandpa was a breaker boy and only those of us who grew up in NEPA regularly saw these old abandoned breakers and the culm banks that were never cleaned up.
I am a 67y coal mine engineer from India.enjoy all coal mine related video of all country..can not forget joy and sorrow of the profession left 7y ago.
I had two Grandfathers who were miners as young kids in North Eastern PA, one was a breaker boy the other tended to the mules down in the mines.....the working conditions and the way the mining company treated its workers was hellish and unbelievably unbearable..
My late mother-in-law had a close friend, born in the early 20th century, who was a breaker boy in the Wilkes-Barre area. It was interesting to hear about his youth. He went onto Princeton.
I think coal mining is the top contender for most difficult job in America history.I heard miners had candles in their helmets for light. Industry was so dangerous in Pittsburgh around 1915 that on average ten people were killed weekly. It was either in mills or mines.
@@shawnpa My Grandfather had told my Dad that the mules had really good memories, they would remember it if one of the men would mistreat them, and even a few days later if they passed by the same guy they would squash him up against the wall of the mine....he also said the bosses treated the mules better than the workers, they could get people to work get all day long but the mules cost them money to buy.
If ever in North East PA and you get a chance to see the Eckley Miners village museum it is quite sobering how heartless the companies were, if a worker died on the job and lived in a company owned house the widow had 5 days to move out unless they remarryed to an existing employee of the mine. All the costs of the dynomite, wood to sure up the tunnels, tools etc was taken out of their pay checks and had to be bought through the company owned store. I cant believe what my families went through back then just to surrvive.
@@jasonrackawack9369 ya my grandfather worked as a breaker boy like a mile from Eckley. They had it rough.
This is exactly why I'm an Anti-feminist.
Poor women couldn't work 😭
Poor women couldn't vote 😭
While males are so privileged 😭
Yeah, fuck off. 🙄 It was an extremely rough and dangerous world for men.
I live in South Africa, just as much coal mining activities here, I worked at a mine on the Swaziland boarder for two years, my brother's both ten years, my dad the same place 28 years . All of us are artisans, I luckily moved to a papermill in the same area. The mines are treacherous places to work 👌
🚂 On a side note, many of the Pennsylvania coal mines have been repurposed to grow mushrooms that are rich in protein and provide jobs to the local community 🍄
The topic of repurposing mines is a fascinating topic in and of itself. Archives, science experiments, tourist attractions, even as you say growing mushrooms. (can't say I have heard of that particular one before, but it makes sense)
@@whyjnot420 I have grown mushrooms and many types of plants indoors. I have grown sweet peppers from seed to fruit in Solo cups under fluorescent lights. The stuff wants to grow if you provide the proper parameters. "Life uhh finds a way" 🤣 😂 I can foresee a future in which humans never leave the mines. All energy is harvested from the Sun to produce electrons that are channeled underground to grow food and purify water and produce hydrogen for utility engine purposes.
@@FarmerDrew I have some experience growing mushrooms from spores indoors as well. Though forgive me if I do not go into detail as to what kind >_>. It really is amazing how much mushrooms want to just grow. Once they get a purchase, they don't let go. Though it was a bit of a pain learning how to get everything going without being overrun by penicillium. Not hard, just a pain.
So yeah, not surprised in the least that people are using old mines for that. I have just never heard of that particular use before.
Are these anthracite or bituminous coal mines if you know the difference?
@@whyjnot420 My problems were generally trichoderma or cobweb, occasionally bacterial contamination from an errant dog hair. If you do most of your growing during the season that produces your desired species' fruiting conditions, you can always simply take a contaminated substrate outside to finish. Yep, they want to grow. On damn near anything, for, um, certain species. (~);}
As someone who fell down a research rabbit hole and hyperfixated on breaker boys at two in the morning four months ago, it is absolutely AMAZINF that there’s a whole documentary on it. There was very little information on the internet on coal mines unless it was about the strikes, and every new website had a repeat of old information. Stoked when a friend sent this to me.
I work at a coal processing plant in West Virginia it’s a mill that crushes coal into dust, it’s about the consistency of baby powder or women’s foundation, it’s used as filler in rubber, tar and other industrial applications. Depending on what brand your tires on your car are it might just have coal in them that was processed at my facility, ironically most big name foreign tire companies have more American made product in them then the national brands
Do you have the tism
For anybody interested, the National Park Service established the Blue Heron Mining exhibit near Stearns, Ky. The original coal processing plant was refurbished and ghost buildings built to show how the old mine camp used to be. Just look it up online and maybe make a visit someday.
Many years ago my wife at the time and I took the train to it . I wanted to go back but she didn't so one of my goals is to go back there.
Shout-out to Breaker Brewing Co. In Wilkes-Barre. Great beers, food, and history to be observed about Breaker Boys and coal in the tap room.
Sounds awesome
Don’t forget Gibbons beer & Stegmaier Gold Medal Beer, also in Wilkes-Barre. Actually, I graduated from Wilkes College.
My uncle used to work as a miner. He was picking up wooden chocks from a moving conveyor when he had an accident. The chock stuck in the convayor as he picked it up and the forward force of the moving belt pushed the chock upward with my uncle's hand holding the other end. His fingers was crushed between the chock and the rails which were above the belt. He said there was so much force that the wood split and the whole machine jammed up and he was stuck there. He lost one finger and half of another.
Brutal
i started my apprenticeship in 1976 in UK coal mines, and one of the first things we learned during our induction training, was ALWAYS pick up from the trailing edge
@@BigBadLoneWolf It's funny you should say that. My uncle said the same thing! XD
We refer to these as tipples or preparation plants in the Bituminous coal regions in West Virginia and Kentucky. I work at a coal mill, we grind coal into powder in a similar consistency to talc or baby powder, and sell it to some big name tire and rubber companies, it’s absolutely filthy work, but it pays well and like the breaker in the video we suffered a fire that crippled the plant for almost a year. People don’t realize how hot coal can actually burn when it gets set off.
I used to explore the St. Nicholas, the Huber, the Locust Summit, and other breakers here in PA.
All gone now. Watched some of the disassembly of the Huber. Very sad to see.
I'd call them pretty hazardous if you're not paying attention, or just aren't too bright. Sometimes saw kids in them..when parents are that careless, property owners and lawyers get nervous- probably part of the reason they're gone.
All that I entered were steel structures, not wood. Although plenty of coal around on all floors to burn. Slowly.
I really miss them..tried to bring friends, all were sort of amazed and fascinated, even if it at first sounded like a weird way to spend an afternoon. Something you'd never forget. An amusement park is a contrived waste of time compared to things like this!
It seemed more correct to think of it as a large machine, covered to resemble a building from the outside, rather than a building containing machinery.
Growing up I knew an old man in his 90s who was a breaker boy when he was young.
Didn’t have all his fingers I’m guessing
I was at NRG coal plant outside of Rosenberg Texas several times, and the process is still much the same with better technology. It's pretty cool actually!
I’ve worked in many of the coal wash plants (as we call them) in Queensland, Australia and also still very similar principles to this day. We also call them CHPPs (Coal Handling and Preparation Plants)
For those who are wondering why these buildings are uniquely Pennsylvanian, according to geologists, Pennsylvania contains approximately 90% - 96% of the *entire world's* supply of anthracite coal.
Yet there's virtually no coal mining happening in Pennsylvania anymore
They are not unique to just Pennsylvania....I lived not 200ft from one growing up here in Southern West Virginia in fact the 18 mile valley I grew up in known as Buffalo Creek must have had at least 5 or 6....The newer ones were made out of steel instead of mostly wood and were known as Coal Tipples
@@100pyatt China will change that when they buy Pennsylvania during the US debt liquidation auction.
@@100pyatt Pennsylvania will produce around 40 to 50 million tones of anthracite and bitumen this year. Which is about normal. The Bailey mine alone produced around 37 million tonnes of Bitumen last year alone. The issue here is that we need a fraction of people to actually mine the stuff as opposed to a century ago. Don't get it twisted.
NO. Germany has a lot of brown coal. One valley in VICTORIA AUSTRALIA has the majority of the REMAINING worlds known brown coal reserves. I drive past them every second year and it's MILES long
The way they processed coal on conveyor belts, reminds me of the conveyor belts in the fruit packing houses. My two aunt's, Elsie and Louise worked in the packing houses up in Sacramento while in their teens. I use to work in a industrial laundry in my early 20's, and they had conveyor belts in one laundry I worked at, it was called Hospital Linen Supply, and was on North Broadway here in Fresno, but it got torn down years ago when they put in the 41 freeway.
No they didn't, and no you didn't. Stop with these tales. You made sambiches and pizza at Gordos Pizzaria. They fired you for eating the pizza before you served it. Then you copped a job in Peters Pet Shop sorting goldfish and turtles.
Reminds me, my grandfather told me about his time at a coal plant.
The train would come and mechanically be triggered to dump thousands of pounds worth.
He remembered once a hitchiker mistakenly was riding along, and they frankly had no way to stop him from being crushed immediately by all the coal let alone the grinders past that
I heard that same story when I worked in the mines
Big mistake. Served him right for riding without paying.
Got a ton of Anthracite coal today at superior coal processing and they seemed pretty happy.
When I was younger we lived by a cold breaker in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania what a big noisy building that thing was and like all the other ones they tore it down and funny as hell they put up a old age home there LOL great video brings back a lot of memories👍👍🇺🇲🇺🇲✌️
My dad went inside the coal mine when he was 12years old helping his dad load coal by hand
Breakers were unique to anthracite country. In bituminous coal country, "Preparation Plants" are a lot smaller and perform many of the same functions to this day. Bituminous or soft coal is a lot easier to grind up into saleable sizes.
Did you work the Chessie System / B & O yard in Fairmont, WV? My dad used to take me to the roundhouse at Bellview and the beginning of the main yard near the high level bridge back in the early 80s when I was 5 and 6 years old. I used to climb up on what were mostly the Chessie "cats", and ones painted B & O and C & O, as I was ecstatic to actually climb onto a locomotive after only seeing them roar by the house blaring the horn at the crossing up until then
Those days of when it was "railroading" sure turned over and died. Now, it's just a shipping company that spies on its employees
@@chuckshartz2722 No, that's just a handle I picked up because I was always interested in tower operations and dispatching. My late grandfather did work out of Fairmont as a trainman and conductor from 1943 to 1975.
I grew up in Wilkes-Barre, PA (just south of Old Forge). My grandmother's house was located near one of these old breaker buildings in Ashley. We used to sneak over the old slate left over coal mining mountains and into the building. Was abandoned for decades and it was a very scary place for a little kid. This was back in the late 70s. Coal mining was dead by that time in NEPA due to the mines flooding but it was still very much part of the cultural zeitgeist back then. All our grandparents worked in the mines etc. Video takes me back!
Likewise, I grew up in Glen Lyon in the 1950’s, mines & breaker were still operational. My aunt lived in Ashley.
I live in Madrid NM, an old ghost/coal mining town that at one time had a breaker the size of the one featured here. There were both anthracite and bituminous, layered on top of each other. Many stories of mine explosions and accidents, with some of the dead buried in the old graveyard on the other side of town.
Awesome video I live maybe a 300 yards from where the Sibley Breaker used to be again great video.
Hi from Keyser Valley
@@paulaschaffer2418 Hi to you as well Paula.
I live in North East PA and this is some great history from our area! Thank you!
Thank you so much for all the wonderful videos you offer. I have learned so much.
Hello from ND. Our daughter and son in law moved to NH in 2011 so every June my wife and I travel through eastern PA. We have taken our time share week in several resorts in that area. We then travel around on day trips seeing tourist things. Took a canal boat ride, took an electric train ride into an old coal mine, went to that old coal mining town where The Molly Maquires movie was filmed in 1969. Bought the DVD at the gift shop and a book about that river that flooded the mine in april of 61. Went to the steam locomotive museum in Scranton also to Jim Thorpe. Every state in our great country has unique history. I went down 100 ft into an old gold mine in Colorado, I understand that there is a deeper tourist iron ore mine in Minnesota that one can go down into, thats on my bucket list. Great lakes bulk carriers are in several towns on our Great Lakes coast line, Cleveland, Ohio, Sault Ste Marie, MI, Duluth, Minnesota, ect. Ive even been on a WW2 submarine in Manitowoc WI. Also the Nautilus in Groton. So get out there and travel and see all these great attractions.
In west Virginia these things were everywhere growing up. Most have fallen down or are covered in vegetation now.
There’s still a few, a lot of the reason many don’t exist or are in operation is because they’ve centralized all mines to one big facility and the companies buy out the smaller operators and shutter the plants and keep them for tax write offs.
I used to paint coal breakers in HS in Schuylkill County. Was still fully operated by Readin Anthracite. Never actually worked on the coal but painting it was more than enough.
Is that in Pennsyltucky?
I live in Coaldale Schuylkill County and I did some work as a project on the number eleven breaker on the Coaldale/Tamaqua border. I remember watching it burn back in the mid 90s
Hats off too all coal miners.🗽👍😊
Thank you sir
#eatshitbob
I don't know if this is beyond the scope of this channel, but imo an interesting subject is the mining of lapis lazuli over the past 7,000 years. In Afghanistan the Sar-e-Sang deposit has been actively mined for all that time. I find it simply astonishing. (plus lapis lazuli is one of the most gorgeous stones the Earth produces) I know this channel mainly focuses on more modern US history, but maybe something like that would be nice to do.
Just a random thought I had relating to mining while watching this video anyways. It's history afterall :D
edit: typos
Thanks for the story. I have some Lapis jewelry, and it is definitely gorgeous!
It's a nice blue rock. Surprised it has been mined for so long
"Child labour laws are destroying our country" -Ron Swanson
Children yearn for the mines, that’s why Minecraft is so popular
@Esther Com rich me go to college
Poor men go to work. After the 8th grade
Schools teach the same thing unless your in Vocational school.
What do you mean by that? No way children should be doing that kind of work
And nobody got the Parks and Rec reference
Well who else would fit in a 24" seam of coal 1 mile underground. Slinging a pickaxe sideways on their belly.
the image @6;45 in the video ...is of the ST. Nickolas brake between Shenandoah and Mahanoy City ...it was THEE last one to stand ...there is a video of it on youtube of it being blown up
Great presentation thanks xxx
excellent vid, great info very precise !
Hello from Wilkes-Barre , I'm the first generation that didn't have to go down .
I was thinking these would be unique to Pennsylvania Anthracite country. Anthracite is an extremely hard coal, and needs to be crushed before it could be used in MGP gas generators or power plant boilers.
It was the preferred fuel for Manufactured Gas Plants because of its few impurities. The use of Bituminous coal in MGPs would create a lot of waste and toxic byproducts.
We have similar in WV in the bituminous coal, and I work at a crushing plant, it’s a big ball mill turning coal into powder.
They turn it into COKE and use it in the steel mills. Cliffs(AK steel) in Middletown OH is rebuilding their Coke plant And there is a private Coke plant behind them on Yankee Rd. The US needs more Steel, Aluminum and other metal mills, Spar mines Coal mines and manufacturing plants in general. Less government.
You don't work you don't eat mentality.
@@jerrykinnin7941 Government is a leech on the productivity of man. However legitimate its charter, it always grows to the point of oppression.
Great video
I grew up in the coal regions, grandfather was a miner …Scranton area.
Same here, I can still remember the culm piles and breakers through out the area. Been out of the area for years, I still visit every chance I get. Great area and great people.
@@harrier27 Culm piles are still easy to find.
Fascinating. Would love to see a video on the Huber Breaker! Remember driving by it as a kid. Something about "blue coal." So strange! Always wondered what it looked like inside.
When I read "stay tuned for the answer" I leave immediately.
Exactly! 5 to 20 minutes later, you finally get the answer! Unfortunately, I’ve long since closed out the video and gone elsewhere by then.
Unless I get to be the rich guy with a cigar who likes to twirl his mustache as the money comes pouring in, I want nothing whatsoever to do with mining. The people who willingly do that work are made of sterner stuff than I am.
Everything humans use started out being either grown or mined.
@@minuteman4199 What about fish?
@@drmodestoesq Exactly, grown and mined might cover 2/3 of the stuff we use, but still leaves plenty out unless you play silly games with semantics.
@@whyjnot420 Fish are mined. You never been to a fish mine?
@@user-ellievator Sorry I don't play minecraft or animal crossing. :P
Just thinking of a ten year old boy working in all that coal dust. A lot of those kids would take up smoking at an early age and then were sent to work in the coal mines when they were old enough.
All that coal dust in their lungs. If an accident didn't get them, I bet a lot never made it to 40. I wonder if they ever learned to read.
It’s sad to realise how little a human life was worth back in the day and how children were forced to work due to hard times.
There are still millions on children forced to work all over the world. It has never stopped.
Lol human life is still undervalued today.
My wife loves reading little house on the prairie. But she won't give up her AC and cell phone and big city life. I hated high school I was bored. I'm not athletic but I'll work 70 hrs a week driving semi's.
Child labor is a good thing. If not abused.
I'd call it apprenticeship. And when they graduate by passing their Journeyman's test. They know a trade and trades are better than government Quacks.
@@Drewsky840 it never will.
in Alberta Canada there is still one privately owned coal mine that still use this process to mine and sell coal all across western Canada. I use about 2000 lbs to heat my garage.
theres a huge cole braker musem in Estonia, i would reccomend people visiting it for more info.
One of the best channels on RUclips.
Good show! Now do one on the Marvine breakers in No. Scranton. PA., please.
Lived in eastern pa my whole life and didn’t realize these were unique to pa until my late 20s.
I live near Brownsville n there are remains of one of these still standing near by lol always wondered what it was used for. Fascinating
It's always nice to learn something new, but this was a "borderline" grim one...
Coal related industry is grim, its hot laborious dirty work but it pays well and its tradition at this point, it’s generational as well you follow your father in as your son will follow you in.
Interesting video
Coal. Coal. Coal. Coal. I think I heard the word coal so often it stopped making sense. Great video.
One factor presumably was the inconsistent grades of coal found in Pennsylvania, whereas coal-mines here in Australia have usually produced reasonably good quality coal, especially coking-coal, although Central Victoria yielded abundant quantities of the lower-grade brown coal up until the closing of the large open-cut mine and the power-station it supplied!
Those coal mines in Moe are STILL running and much of our power STILL comes from there. I drive past them every year or two going to my sisters place. ONE power station has closed or i scheduled to.
Pretty amazing stuff here
Got similar things all over the UK
I live next to the Wyoming valley, up until 2008? Iirc, there was a huge breaker along I-81/309, I remember when they knocked it down.
Hello do you have more I could read about bodies being left in the machine until the end of the day?
Very INTERESTING
I love your videos. You are a Jersey guy right?
We take so much for granted in this modern world what a bunch of madness our ancestors lived through
Some still do, my coworker’s brother is working in 30in coal (about the distance between the bottom of your foot to your mid thigh, so low that when the shuttle brings them in they have to lay on their backs and the shuttle driver has to follow a line of chalk on the ceiling because it’s impossible to look forward, and as for myself I work in a coal mill, crushing coal into powder so everyone can have nice new tires and rubber compounds to keep the world’s industry moving
The most valuable coal in British mines was large coal. This was used in the steam engines that powered trains, ships and factories. Miners were only paid for the amount of large coal they dug out. Small coal, despite being sold by the mine owners, was not paid for.
Should have left it down there and let the tight sods bring it up themselves.
:-)
I thought you were gonna say “5,260,855 tons of coal *per day* “ for a second 👀😂🫠.. Anyways, nothing quite like beating off a bunch of coal with likely a pickaxe, surrounded by coal dust with sparks flying at your feet. *Good thing coal is **_INflammable_** I guess!!!*
*Edit before being “corrected” and possible berated lol:* _Yes, I do know that coal is not actually inflammable, but rather flammable due to its it’s ignition properties. Just randomly thought about an old ass episode of the Simpsons with a similar joke lol_
Great video, however, the last two breakers are no longer there.
I worked for a coal company that had a mine in KY that used slate pickers. Similar to ‘breakers’, these folks were not underground qualified and often if an employee couldn’t make it to work he’d send his wife to work his shift. This was in the 80’s.
Im from one of the most coal dependent areas of Britain (Lancashire) where we have over 500 years of coal mining history. Instead of coal breakers we employed Pit Brow Lasses (women, usually wives and daughters of the colliers) to sort the coal at the pithead using pickaxes and sorting the pieces by hand.
They were a Lancastrian breed, they had them in the Welsh mines too but Lancashire was known in particular for their employ, and they were a curiosity for outsiders at the time, as they were probably some of the only women employed anywhere to wear trousers. This was for the sake of practicality (they worked outside in the cold all year round and the job was needless to say very dirty)They would wear them beneath their dresses along with a jacket and a shawl or headscarf. They terrified the higher classes, needless to say.
That breaker processed some 5 million tonnes of coal over many decades. I've worked at a mine that sends out sometimes 12 trains a day, at 110 tons per car, and 150 cars per train. roughly.
Interesting and top quality. Thank you for your time and work.
My grandfather worked at the St Nicholas coal breaker in Shenandoah Pennsylvania.
It's insane what sacrifices were made to build the modern world
I never heard of these extinct factories. They are magnificent in their complexity and size.
I worked my last 10 years in a coal prep plant. Essentially it was the newest modern version of this equipment. That said, look at 4.00 minutes. When our crusher was broken we still ran the plant and had to sledgehammer slabs about the same size as the pic shows. 8 hours for hammer work was plenty for me.
Used to work in one of these back in the 60s in Teufort county Arizona. As if the job itself wasnt dangerous enough, We used to get harassed by these groups of bumbling idiots shooting eachother for about 15 years straight.
Fascinating, especially the photo of the young coal pickers at 4:44. I had no idea that this was such a common practice. How is it done today?
All mechanically
@@OffGridInvestor Nope. Electrically, hydraulically, and pneumatically.
I’m a retired prep plant operator it is still brute work too this day.
My great grandfather was a child coal breaker in Cornwall in england and my grandfather worked in a coal mine here in Australia and my dad worked in one also (same mine as his father) but he was a teenager that had to work on mining machines but he was only there for a year before moving to another state
My great great great grandfather OWNED a coal mine in wales. One of his sons, that I'm a direct descendant of was CEO of a BIG gold mine in Bendigo that dug up about $350 million worth of gold. It's caving in these days and the government is trying to concrete those parts over. Needless to say, he was a powerful figure who once tried to cover up a family scandal by bribing cops and 2 newspapers and the 3rd newspaper wouldn't take the bribe and blew the lid on him.
@@OffGridInvestor Well aren’t you a spicy little one-upper LMAO
The thing that most people don't understand is that, for all those families who sent their children off to work, it was either do so or starve. I think it would be foolish to judge the 19th century by today's standards.
You should do one on the one in Ashley PA called blue coal were they painted it blue
One of the reasons it was called blue coal is if you had a good coal fire going it would produce a nice blue flame coming off the coal pile. So that company used that name to signify that they sold high quality coal that produced that nice blue flame. The color was just a marketing angle they used to differ their good quality coal from other mines.
Last year, I read a historical novel, "Coal River" by Ellen Marie Wiseman. It tells a painful tail of a Pennsylvania company town whose primary industry is coal mining and the plight of not only the woman protagonist, but the breaker boys. It is worth the read if you found this video interesting.
So, how is coal processes and sorted now? While coal is used less in the USA, coal is still used in many countries and many of the USA mines, including some in PA and WV are exporting coal to other places where the people are happy to get it.
Oh yes, this definitely needs to be an industry we need to bring back to its full potential. Sounds promising
As opposed to any other industry which surely couldn't possibly succumb to greed and lacking oversight and regulation. 🙄 Oh, wait, that's happened to literally every industry.
Try a little bit of critical thinking, you might just like it.
You go first
I got to see a new Coal Processing & Handling Facility that was recently commissioned in Australia. It does the breaking, crushing, sorting, cleaning, and final transfer of coal to railcars in a siding loop to be sent to the ports or industrial areas. Everything is fully automated. You only need a handful of workers to monitor the process in a room full of computer monitors & CCTV screens. And a team of engineers and technicians to do maintenence & fix any issues. Certainly no breaker boys, although we get heaps of interest from high school grads looking to get an upper 5-figure job scrubbing mancamp toilets or as kitchen-hands. The facility does around 10 to 12 million tons of coal per year... twice the total amount done by this breaker in its ~50 year history.
Only recently commissioned wash plants I can think of are Byerwen.
Only 12 tons per year?? How does it manage to even operate or make money?, my plant is no hotshot but I can process 2 tons in an hour and can store 90 tons in my finished product silo
@@loganbaileysfunwithtrains606 Whoops. I meant 'million tons'.
@@jonathantan2469 oh, lol that sounds more reasonable lol
@@jonathantan2469 so which plant was it?
Child labor laws. They're kind of a big deal and super necessary.
I'm only just turned 40 but watching this makes me feel really old coz when I was a kid we still had coal fires, coal bunkers, coal men, coal mines! My kids probably don't know what coal is.
Who is cole?
@@t1e6x12 My nephew. He just got married.
@@texaswunderkind Please send him my heartfelt congratulations.
I think I saw one while passing though Youngtown Ohio... I know its close but still technically not Pennsylvania.
Could it have been a barge loader?
they look so cool i wish it were still there
This was my second work place ( back in the day).
All these factories that just sit rotting away need to be claimed as historical sites
That's what some people wanted to do with the Ashley Breaker, along I-81 south of Wilkes-Barre. But it was torn down a few years ago.☹️
it's ugly. tear it down.
as far as I know all the breakers are gone. At least all I know of in Pa.
My g-father worked in the office of a anthracite coal company, he was in a film showing the coal being processed in the 1930s, explaining some of the sizes as Barley, Rice, Buckwheat, Pea and Egg, the trade mark was Blue Coal and they sprayed the coal in the hopper cars with blue dye as the hopper car was pulled out of the colliery.
There is no coal breakers from the 1800's left standing in in PA the last one standing was tore down in March of 2018
The incidence of lung-cancer must have been huge
They are not Coal Break, THEY WERE Called Screens too get the size of Coal Lumps, Look up Coal size price per ton
There is a rollercoaster ride in Hershey park Pennsylvania called the coal cracker
I now know why
The words "Pennsylvania" and "Coal" in the same sentence needs to be punctuated with the word "Greed" and "Irresponsible" - they pretty much cornered the market on it.
Interesting
They know the amount of coal processed to seven significant digits?
Didn't know about this part of history. Makes Red Dead Annesburg seem cooler.
what is wooder?
My great grandfather lost his index finger working as a breaker boy in nepa