coal mine region scenery

[gregc]

i'm wondering how to realistically model the scenery around coal mines. Based on old photos, it looks like the area around a coal mine or breaker are denuded of trees. But i'm not sure the denuded slopes are exposed earth or covered in mine tailings? I would not think there would be much greenery around a mine.

another question is are mine tailings used for railway ballast in these areas? if the waste material is mostly slate, wouldn't the color of the ballast be the color of slate.

and since most of the rail freight is coal, wouldn't much of the rail right of ways, yards or terminals be black with coal dust?

 

[jbaakko]

I found that in areas of underground mining, trees were scarce, as they were all chopped down to shore up the mines...

 

[UP2CSX]

The first picture shows some of the tree stumps from land clearing operations. In early mines, the trees were cut to fuel the boilers, since there was no point in using a revenue product like coal if they could get wood for free. In both the first two pictures, the large hills are tailings or waste piles. As the coal was broken, there was a considerable amount of waste and water. Waste rock was usually dumped in tailings piles and water was dumped into a convenient stream if one was available or a tailings pond if there was no stream available to pollute. Some of theose tailing ponds got quite large and they are a hazard today, as some of the recent TVA tailing pond collapses have shown.

Coal mine tailings were rarely used as ballast except maybe ofr the mine branch itseld. Slate is the wrong shape for ballast, doesn't drain well, and has very little vertical strength. It's great for roof but not good for roadbeds.

In the days of steam, railroad facilities were more likely to be black from the products of steam engine exhaust than from coal dust from hoppers. Shipped coal was cleaned and washed pretty well at the colliery and had very little dirt or grit by the time it was ready for transport. Coal companies paid by the ton for shipping coal and non-coal debris doesn't earn any revenue.

 

[Larry]

When I worked in West Virginia in 1988 for a First Aid company I had a lot of coal mines in the mountains for customers. At or around the mines there were lots of black coal close to the mine shafts & a lot along the sides of the dirt roads, but on the sides of the mountains going up & down the steep roads there were lots of trees & heavy foliage. There were also lots of houses hanging out on stilts on the side of those mountains. The roads were real narrow & you had to find a pull-off area to miss the big rigs coming down w/their coal loads or get run over. In the rail yards where a lot of coal cars were sitting was coal laying along the outside edges of the tracks, but they used stone ballast & not coal ballast like Jim said. This was in 1988 & the yards were just outside the Charleston area. You might be able to check the history of WV & find what you need.

 

[UP2CSX]

Larry has a good point. How a coal mine looks really depends on your era. In the early 20th century, most of the area around coal mines had been denuded of vegetation because of cutting and pollution from the power house stacks, which burned the poorest quality, highest sulpher coal. In the modern era, there are many fewer but generally larger coal mines and the antipollution laws are a lot more strict. Nature recovers quickly and those hollows that were almost completely stripped 100 years ago are now thickly forested again.

 

[gregc]

Larry has a good point. How a coal mine looks really depends on your era.

yes. I'd like to model around 1930, close to when I believe these pictures were taken. I had been reading up on how to make trees. But i'm realizing that that there may not have been many trees around the railroads.

so near the mine/breakers, i'm trying to figure out how to model coal mine tailings. it looks like a fairly uniform slope. i'm wondering if it would be like ballast? color (slate)?

 

[dave1905]

It will be the color of the native rock. The waste around Tamaqua was a brownish color. It also varied in size.

I would make it a mix of browns and greys in several sizes. After it was glued down I would wash it with a unifying color, a brown or grey, to tone down the individual colors.

 

[UP2CSX]

I agree with Dave. Even though the tailings piles look black in black and white pictures, most were the color of the country rock, which was a brownish conglomerate with some black slate. Assuming you are going to be modeling an anthracite mine like those in Pennsylvania, this is a typical piece of tailing rock:

As Dave said, you need several sizes of ballast to use for a tailings pile since the waste was not sorted and ranged from fist size to small boulders. I'd use a mixture of N, HO, and G scale ballast to get the right mix. Get it positioned and glued together using the same diluted white glue technique used of track ballast. Paint the tailing pile with acrylics in different shades of brown and then use and india ink was to provide some black for the slate and bring the whole thing together.

I think the first two photos were taken closer to 1910 than 1930. The third picture looks like it was taken in the early to mid 30's judging by the vehicles. You can see that the tipple looks a lot neater with a decent road, curbing, and even what appears to be a decorative fence. The picture of the Reading 1682 was probably taken shortly before retirement in 1951. It's in color and the headlight doesn't have the WWII blackout shield, which almost certainly places it in the late 40's.