Miners Operating a Cutting Machine at Mine No. 32, Consolidation Coal Company, Owings, W. Va.
Date:
1950/10
Description:
Caption on back reads, 'Making a cut in the coal face is this Mastodon of the machine age - an underground cutter. Rubber tired for mobility, and mounting a 9-foot cutting blade armed with whirring steel bits, it can cut a full 360 degree arc. This and similar machines give America's bituminous coal mines almost unlimited capacity for production.'
'This miner has just completed loading a mine oar of coal weighing net about two and one-half tons, and is waiting for a locomotive to come along and take it out and give him another empty oar. An industrious miner will load about six and sometimes eight of these oars in one day. This is a wooden mine car that is now being rapidly replaced by steel mine car equipment. The number of posts shown in this picture indi- again [sic] the immense amount of timber required to conduct operations in a safe manner.'