• Sunday-What'sUP October 9 - 04:10 am

Chuck Voelker is a wealth of information about the Copper Country on his Reflection pages, a giant sub-site within Pasty Central. What caught my eye on this photo are the pasty buckets. Wish we could buckets like that in our drive-thru "Pasty Central Express" window, which will open later this month.

If you're in the area, be sure to stop at the Hut in Keararge, opening Monday, October 9, from 11am - 9pm. It's been a long time coming...

Have a good week :o)

Good morning everyone. Does anybody know why that rock is so shiny? Almost looks like a coal mine.

Probably the shine is the photographic plate being overwhelmed by the flash powder, they didn't have a lot of control over the amount of flash, it was mostly the photographers experience that influenced the results. What I'd like to know is that an electric tram with power pickup from the open overhead line? It kind of looks like an insulator just down the tunnel(the bright spot with a line through it above and slightly right of the standing miner).

Probably as simple as moisture on the walls...the caves and mine shafts I've visited over the years always seem to have wet walls.

good morning. Question for my pasty cam friends.
I have a work record of my great grandfather. this record shows his job at the mine was trammer. what exactly did a trammer do?

Joanne,
A trammer was the worker who picked up the broken rock, placed it in a car, and then pushed the car out. There were slight variations from mine to mine, of course. As technology got better, the job got easier, but never easy. In the old days, a miner was the one who drilled and blasted. Today we think of all underground workers as miners, but in the old days, there was a distinction in pay and status between trammer and miner.Hope this helps a bit.

richard.
thanks for the information.much appreciated!!!

Richard Barclay-
Yes that is an electric loci. It picks up electric power from the over head lines through the pantograph (the arm on the loci) and is grounded through the rails. The power line is a bare copper wire with about 600v running through it, so you have to be very careful around these. This picture was probably taken around the 1910's to 1920's, back then for locomotive power you only had a few choices, Gasoline, Electric Pantograph (shown), electric battery, and compressed air. Electric battery locomotives need constant recharging and tended to be high priced requiring charging stations, etc. Compressed air locomotives also required charging areas to replenish their on board compressed air tanks, and were not used in the copper country. Finally gasoline engines were really nasty to use underground, and required allot of ventilation. Today electric loci’s like this are still used (only much more modern and efficient), along with Diesel, and battery loci’s. There is even a company that is selling fuel cell powered locomotives.

Joe D.
Thanks for the information, I worked in an old auto plant where we had "open" (uninsulated wire)feeders for 3 phase 440 VAC running the length of the plant. We sat on piles of cardboard not touching anything except the wire we were tapping. Another electrician handed tools to us by placing them in reach on the cardboard and then backing off. We were at whatever potential the wire was while making the tap. I remember talking with a man who had a diesel from the mines in an old Jeep that he'd repowered. He had a piece of brake tubing from the air intake to the cab of the Jeep that he could inject starting fluid directly into the air stream on cold days with ease from the drivers seat.

I guess OSHA wasn't big back in those days?? YIKES !!

Another bit of information, this scene was probably photographed at Quincy, not a C&H operation due to the gauge of the track.