The Crusher Process

The Crusher Process. Kelleys Island State Park. You are standing in the remnants of the Kelleys Island Lime and Transport Co. Crusher Building. It was here that raw stone was transformed into usable pieces of limestone. This operation was innovative, consisting of just six steps., Steam shovel loads a train of four-wheel dump cars., Lime Kilns. Some could be as much as 65 feet tall., Example of a steam boiler powering the Stedman Hammermill crusher via leather belt drive., The Six Steps to Crushing , 1 Raw Stone Delivery Railroad cars, loaded with freshly quarried limestone, backed up through a hole in the upper part of this crusher building and tipped the stone down into the crusher., 2 Crushing The crusher wheels broke down the large limestone pieces into smaller, uniform pieces., 3 Conveyor Transport Once the stone was processed, belts carried the crushed stone into a series of storage troughs. Each of the troughs was equipped with multiple "chutes." Workers controlled the flow of stone through each of the chutes with gates., 4 Loading Railroad cars backed up underneath this "tunnel" where the crushed stone would drop into the cars through the chutes., 5 Steam Power The steam plant was constantly monitored and fueled, with smokestacks releasing steam and smoke as the fuel burned off., 6 Shipping Trains carried the loaded cars out onto the pocket dock, where the stone was either loaded into the kilns to produce lime or dumped into dock bins and loaded onto boats bound for ports across the Great Lakes., (Left) Photo Credit: KIL&T Co. fans., (Right) Kelleys Island North Bay dock., The north crusher plant was accessed via an inclined ramp at the rear, where cars were emptied beneath a corrugated metal building and then pushed out onto a timber trestle. Crushed stone was loaded from beneath a concrete bin using a gate system operated by lever mechanisms connected through cables and pulleys, allowing workers to control the gates safely from ground level. These gates could be opened partially or fully to regulate the rate of stone discharge, ensuring proper loading without overfilling the railroad cars.