Office views

[upnut]

Wimedley- Interesting picture! I spent 30 years on the other end, burning coal to make electricity.....


Can't say that I miss that either....

Scott B.

[Magicman]

Before I retired this was my office view.Not a tree in sight.

Help me, is that coal or a rock quarry?  To me it looks like rock. 

[upnut]

Magicman- I was just guessing coal....re: open cast coal mining. Much processing takes place after this phase.


Scott B.

[Wlmedley]

It was a surface coal mine.I spent almost 10 years working there.I wasn't employed by the coal company.I worked for a Komatsu dealership and initially was supposed to stay 6 months to take care of warranty work on that excavator and some other equipment.Coal company liked me (I guess) and after 6 months was up they paid for me to stay.

[Wlmedley]

After mine shut down they kept a small crew of men to finish up by reclamation of land.At that time excavator in picture had approximately 40,000 hours on it and was tore down and moved to another job to be used for parts.I went up two days a week during reclamation to keep equipment running.

[Magicman]

Thanks, that coal doesn't look anything like the open surface coal mines that I saw in NE Wyoming, West of Newcastle.  Also there the tires on the trucks looked to be 8' tall. 

Of course the only thing that is mined here is gravel so I know nothing.  :

[Wlmedley]

Trucks on this job were 150 ton.Cat 785's and Komatsu HD1500's.This was a relatively small surface mine.Larger mines in West Virginia used 300 ton Komatsu electric drive trucks and electric shovels to load them.Years mining on this job didn't make economic sense to bring in larger equipment.

[Resonator]

Help me, is that coal or a rock quarry?  To me it looks like rock. 

It could well be just rock, along with sand, dirt and anything else on top of the coal. In open coal mines coal runs in seams, and depending how close it is to the surface, determines how much "overburden" is dug away to expose it. A big part of mining is moving this overburden (the largest dragline shovels ever built did this). Along with moving the material back to reclaim the land, which is then planted to grow grass and trees.

[KEC]

There's a limestone quarry near me and they had to deal with the overburden. When a highway project was done in the 1980's they got an order for 1 million tons of coarse fill and they filled it with overburden. A guy who worked at the quarry told me they got 2 years ahead on removing overburden and it involved handling it a lot less.

[barbender]

Aren't most open pit mines essentially overburden removal operations with a minor mineral or coal extraction component?

[Wlmedley]

On this coal surface mine there would be maybe 2 or 3 seams of coal maybe 3 or 4 feet thick with maybe 50' or more of solid rock above them .Once they got down to the first seam there was less rock to get to the next seam but still hard to figure how they made money.Not sure if information was accurate but remember one of the bosses saying break even was around $50 a ton for the coal.They had a lot of Met coal on this job which is used to make steel and is worth a lot more than steam coal.

[KEC]

The Jamesville Quarry near me, origionally, wanted a vein of high grade kiln-stone to send to their Syracuse Works, a plant in Solvay where the stone was burned in kilns to make soda ash. So there was overburden and layers of lower grade limestone to deal with. They crushed, washed and screened the lower grade into "commercial stone" for runner crush, stone dust, and various sizes of stone for fill, concrete aggregate, etc. It is much like a sawmill wants to saw select and better lumber but needs to market bark, sawdust, chips and low grade lumber to be profitable. Today the quarry produces commercial stone and the plant in Solvay is long gone.

[Resonator]

Aren't most open pit mines essentially overburden removal operations with a minor mineral or coal extraction component?

Yup. Any mine comes down to what the rock-mineral-metallic ore is worth on the national and global market, and how great the cost is involved to extract it from the ground. 

[teakwood]

Pretty crazy numbers in gold mining. remove thousands of m3 of overburden to process thousands of m3 of gravel to get a few onces of gold. it's a numbers game

[Don P]

This was the worst case of moving dirt I've ever seen;
The Open Cut - Lead (sdpb.org)

Underground they were at the 8,000' level going after a metal that won't hold an edge 

[doc henderson]

 

 

 

headed home after work, 7 am.

[Satamax]

Chains win the traction game every time.
That looks like a great machine👍👍

Absolutely. My rear set came in so I could finish the worst part of the job and now it's like having velcro tires. I was able to climb a bunch of limestone rip rap without much slippage. Actually, the chains crushed many of the rocks into smaller pieces. It's certainly nice to drop the pucker factor a few levels.



 

I love "spider diggers" (don't know how you call those in the US) Here these are "pelle araignée"

[BAN]

 

out my back window

[treemuncher]

Watching the barges pass by on the Tennessee River while I work a selective clearing job, including mulching up tornado damaged trees & stumps from two different events. This place was hit hard. Numerous trees over 30" flipped over or tops ripped off. Customer is saving the big logs. Big stump on the closest tree already mulched to bits. Every flipped up stump will be treated the same and left with a smooth finish when I'm done. Nice to have a view of the water for a day or three.



 

[doc henderson]

from the back yard.



 

sun coming up and Libby scratching that itch!  

[DDW_OR]

 to put thing in perspective



 

[Log-it-up]

 

My view for the day, I've got to go out and put wood in the boiler shortly 

[Resonator]

Need to fire up the BBQ too... ;D

[Walnut Beast]

I was thinking the same thing! Brush that snow off. Start happy hour and take in the beautiful views! Then get a big steak ready! 

[cutterboy]

My house from across the beaver pond.