Coal Loaders Operating 2001

Consol No. 10 Ocean Maryland

February 19,2000. This location is the end of the CSXT Georges Creek Subdivision, in sight of I-68 between the 2 Frostburg exits. The line was built in the mid 1800's and was acquired by the Cumberland & Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of Consoldidated Coal. Coal could flow north (via a tunnel underneath Main Street in Frostburg) or south from here for connections to the B&O. A huge amount of coal came from the Ocean Mine in World War I era. This vicinity is also on maps as Carlos Junction.


This Winner Brothers tipple was recently assumed by United Energy
75 hoppers bound for Baltimore and overseas

Clark No. 7 Barton Maryland

Tri-Star Mining has surfaced-mined high above George Creek on the flanks of Savage Mountain for years.


Their load out is about as basic as it gets. (I believe they are trucking a lot of their coal to Cumberland's AES Warrior Run generating facility.) Georges Creek, long the poster stream for stopping strip mining, is today stocked with trout. Some of the surface mining actually reduces acid water flow by recovering left over coal from post and pillar deep mines and then permanently shutting off the oxygen supply by backfill.

Shaw Mines, Salisbury Branch

January 2001, looking north toward village of Romania


February 2001. Note contrivance to move cars. I asked Robert Oom about it, his reply: Dave, That's a car puller. Most of the mines had those unless the tracks were built on a grade so the cars would roll by gravity. I'm not exactly sure how it works but I think one drum is always turning but if you put tension on the line it winds up and pulls the car towards the winch. If you look closely at hopper cars they usually have a "roping staple" or a U-shaped piece of steel on the side sill to hook a line to. Sometimes large grain elevators have the same device to move the cars as they load them. Today cars are often moved with a front end loader.


March 10, 2001. Coal stock pile at Shaw Mines. Sign on conveyor reads Action Mining.


A couple of weeks later in March 2001. Empty hoppers waiting to be loaded follow the curve around the Casselman River. This is far as one can go on the road north of the loader. The Salisbury Branch 3 mile marker is at the crossing at Romania, so a guess is that the branch is extant for about 4 miles. It is definitely gone at Boynton, between this location and West Salisbury. The B&O ended in PA, but variously owned and named short lines extended the tracks north to near Bittinger Maryland, high up on the plateau between Meadow and Negro Mountains. This line was out of service in 1959 but one can still trace the line. A dip in US Rt 40 immediately east of Penn Alps at Grantsville marks a road crossing. In the 1970's talk was of a large mining complex near Foxtown, wonder if any rail transportation was envisioned?


Be interesting to see how all of these cars will be moved through the loader.



Note the weird color of the last 2 scans, I specified the "superduper" processing on this roll of film and the prints were glossy to the extent that I had to do a major gamma adjustment (whatever that is) to get these rather sick looking shots. The next great experiment was to have a local processor go directly from film to floppy disk. See the York, PA page for those results. Please bear with me, I am still learning.

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