Under Ground
By the time he’d been operating the continuous miner for a month, Carl felt completely at ease while at the controls. He was steadily gaining confidence in his ability to mine large amounts of coal safely, during his half of the shift.
The crew was driving this section of the mine. That meant that Carl was building up experience as a miner operator, but all of his experience was for driving a section. If something happened to Pat, and the crew was assigned to move to a retreat section and then do retreat mining, he wouldn’t be able to do the job.
As a reminder, retreat mining a section is more dangerous than drive mining a section, as ultimately the plan in retreating is to remove as much of the coal as possible, and then to have that specific area fall in, with little to no roof support remaining.
If a miner operator’s experience had come exclusively from driving sections, he’d need additional training before doing retreat mining. So, while being trained at driving initially was good, operators who’d only worked at driving, would be behind those whose training took place learning retreat mining from the beginning.
It was actually very easy for a retreat-trained miner operator to start mining in a driving section for the first time, with no need at all for additional training.
Carl was glad that nothing had happened to Pat, when he found out that the crew would not be going further in the section they’d been working, but rather, on their next shift, they would start retreating it. He just hoped he’d be able to grasp all that Pat would try to teach him about retreating.
They would begin to retreat the section at the same location where they’d stopped driving, and they’d work back toward the mine entrance from that point.
Once enough of a block of coal is removed, and the roof has collapsed, the pile of debris that is left is called the “gob.” The gob expands as the crew removes each remaining block of the coal supporting the roof in that section of the mine.
This diagram shows an example of what’s referred to as the pillar-type mining technique, in which Carl and the crew were involved, with the “pillar”, being a block of coal. The gob on the diagram are the areas where the word goaf is found; “goaf” being an alternate for “gob”, which refers to areas full of the collapsed roof debris.
While the diagram still shows the “tunnels” as though they are intact, in reality they would be debris-filled as well in the gob-filled areas.
Retreat mining could be made more complicated (and more dangerous) for all crews working the section, by the actions of one crew’s miner operator, depending on how he would go about working on removing the block of coal during his shift. The main goal was to chew up as much of the block as possible, resulting in a quick and safe fall-in.
The way in which the coal block got chewed up was only one of the factors to be taken into consideration for planning when and how the fall-in would occur. The number of, and the positions in which wooden posts would have been placed, could present a danger of delaying a fall-in, if too many were left supporting the roof.
The posts did the job of roof bolts, but they would snap under the pressure… as long as there weren’t too many remaining once the miner operator backed the continuous miner out of harm’s way, that is.
Too many posts left behind would present a big problem. Especially if they were beyond reach of being taken out.
Pat was always aware of the roof’s status, even under the sometimes extreme conditions of the retreat operation. Carl’s own skill in judging the roof increased with Pat’s help, and he learned some things that would have taken him a long time to pick up on his own.
Pat also showed Carl how to keep one foot on the dead-man switch inside the cab and stand with the other foot outside the cab of the machine while operating it. This was so he’d be ready to run if he saw the roof was about to come down. Being inside that cab would not be a good place to be if a fall-in suddenly occurred.
If the roof was already bad, the dangers were multiplied, and concentration on the roof would be even more focused.
Although seeing Pat in that position outside the cab might seem like a bit of showboating to an outsider, doing that actually increased his survival potential if the roof was coming down prematurely. With his eyes and brain constantly analyzing and reanalyzing the roof, he’d be able to get away a split-second before a fall-in would occur.
Since the roof-bolter would have less to do in a retreat section, Gregg Cardillo was moved to a different crew that was driving another section. A younger roof-bolter joined John Cooper’s crew; a guy by the name of Randy. Randy was tall and thin, and seemed to have a lot of energy.
A different mechanic also took the place of Art Crankshaw; a guy who went by the nickname of “Trapper John.” He claimed he didn’t get the name from the MASH TV series or the movie of the same name. He was skinny, wiry and he had a temper like you wouldn’t believe. His real name was John.
Carl, Doug the utility guy and Randy the roof-bolter were friendly to John, as he could be a really funny guy when he wasn’t angry. They called him Trapper, and though he was at least twenty years older than them, they enjoyed his humor.
Trapper had turned his home’s basement into a really cool bar, with a juke box and lighted beer signs and things, and sometimes he’d invite the guys over on a Friday evening after work. He’d have his wife serve the guys snacks.
Carl liked going over to Trapper’s home bar after the last shift of the week and partying with the guys. It was a nice, innocent type of partying, with a guy that really enjoyed having company over. Carl thought that Trapper’s bar probably didn’t see many guests ordinarily, and he felt good that they were making the guy happy.
Under Ground © free-reign 2020
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Sources for images used in this post:
(Public Domain photos are from Wikimedia Commons)