A photograph of a train of loaded coal cars adjacent to the shaft of the Short Mountain Colliery of the Lykens Valley Coal Company, Bear Gap, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, about 1920. These coal cars, after being brought up through the shaft, were bumped onto a siding and coupled together. When enough cars were together to make up a “trip,” mules were hitched onto the train and pulled it to the breaker. Each car was then dumped into the breaker where the “breaker boys” would remove slate and refuse, and the coal would travel downward through sizing screens and eventually end up in coal cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad. From there, it would be taken to market.
The steel structure of the shaft can be seen left of center in the picture and the steam emerging from the engine house (building at left), dates the photo as prior to construction of the electric plant which afterward powered the site.
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See also:
Lykens Valley Coal Company – Steel Shaft and Engine House, 1916