A Busy Bench

A Busy Bench. New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. This tight workspace (bench) was carved out of the mountainside to support the movement of mined coal. From 1899 to 1962, thousands of miners and over 16 millions tons of coal passed through these drift mine openings along this edge. With space at a premium, everything on the bench had a purpose., How Things Worked , 1 Miners typically arrived at the bench by riding the mountain haulage., 2 Miners picked up a supply of explosives at the powder house., 3 Miners picked up a head lamp at the lamp house., 4 Miners waited in the locomotive opening until an empty car was available to carry them deep into the mine. There they blasted and cut coal, then loaded it into a coal car., 5 Full coal cars were hauled from the mine through the main drift opening (miners stayed in the mine to continue working)., 6 Coal cars were weighed and unloaded at the headhouse., 7 Cars filled with waste shale were switched to the slate track to dump at the waste piles on top of the mountain., 8 Coal cars that needed repair were diverted to the car repair shop., 9 Locomotives that needed repair were sent to the electrical repair shop using a different exit track from the mine., Electric-powered locomotives replaced mule power to transport coal out of the mine at Kaymoor in 1914.