PRECIOUS PARTNERSHIP

( This article is reprinted from Tracks Magazine - February 1949 )

The tipple for Mine 27 is now taking form; when completed this preparation plant will clean and size some of finest bituminous coal mined in W. Virginia.

SOMETIME in early spring, perhaps by mid-March, Island Creek Coal Company and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway will launch their newest partnership venture in a series extending over nearly half a century.
A new mining operation, to produce 5,000 tons of high quality bituminous coal every working day for an estimated forty years, is being readied along one of the innumerable forks of Pigeon Creek in Mingo County, W. Va. To reach it, C&O engineers charted a tunnel through the mountain barrier separating Logan and Mingo counties, and built a six-mile spur from the Trace Fork extension just beyond Holden in Logan County.
Island Creek will spend in excess of $2,000,000 on the new project, designated as Mine 27. The C&O's portion will be at least $2,500,000.

Some who helped plan and drill Trace Mountain tunnel were, from left, H. S. Purdom, C&O district engineer, Chapman Goodwin, Haley, Chisholm & Morris Co.; C. G. Irvine and D. W. Preston, C&O engineers.

From an engineering standpoint, the most formidable part of the undertaking was the tunnel, pushed through half a mile of solid rock. Engineers had estimated it would take a year to penetrate the mountain and complete the spur. But actually the tunnel was "holed through" a few days before Christmas, less than six months after blasting started.
Meanwhile outside work had gone forward just as rapidly. The mountain bench for the three-mile spur from the Mingo end of the tunnel to the mine site also was hewn from solid rock. On the Logan side of the mountain, grading for the tunnel approach was delayed by heavy water drainage, but it, too, is ready for the new track.
Back of all this activity, and heavy investments by the C&O and its largest coal shipper, is a story of business friendship almost unmatched in American industrial history. For the fact is that Mine 27's annual output of 1,500,000 tons would have been carried by another railroad if Island Creek executives had not held out for the C&O connection.

James D. Francis, president of the Island Creek Coal Company, emphasized the close relationship between Island Creek and the C&O, a relationship that began back in 1904. Since that time nearly 200,000,000 tons of coal have been shipped by Island Creek and its lessees over the C&O. Service supplied by the railroad has been "almost perfect," and when questioned more specifically he declared:
"Over the period of many years of working together on transportation and marketing problems, the Chesapeake and Ohio and Island Creek have learned each other's businesses and have established contacts and mutual understandings which have enabled them to carry on to the benefit of all concerned. Island Creek desires to continue those relations for its own benefit and for the benefit of its customers."
This was high praise indeed. But in the opinion of some observers, Mr. Francis made his point more effectively, and really clinched his case, with a bit of homely philosophy. Pressed to say why he "liked" C&O service and apparently "disliked" that of a competing road, he smilingly replied:
"You know, you don't always have to dislike some things to like other things. I have been buying a certain kind of shoe for twenty-five years. I like that shoe. It fits my foot; and I used to have trouble. There may be better shoes made, but I like that shoe so I always go back to that store.
"We have a lot of customers who like our coal and like the service we have given them and the C&O has given them. We are not going to ask them to change that service unless hey want to, and we don't believe they want to! "

Completed in less than six months, this tunnel will soon be echoing with the rumbling of C&O trains carrying coal from a new mine. Right, "holed through" means inside ends of tunnel meet when final blast is made.

Blasting for the tunnel got under way on June 2 on the Mingo side of he mountain. Six weeks later the crews on the Logan side began blasting.
Special equipment, designed and built on the spot by the contractors, Haley, Chisholm & Morris, helped devour yardage in the 2,875-foot bore at a furious pace. The key devices were huge, mobile scaffolds known as "jumbos," which accommodated seven drilling crews on upper and lower platforms. Pneumatic drills, water-sprayed to reduce dust, punched up to 100 holes in the face of the rock at each bite. Up to 1,400 pounds of dynamite were packed into these cavities and the primers so adjusted that the center shots fired first. Subsequent shots then fired in series of 10's on the outward periphery of the widening hole. Each blast ate from eleven to fifteen feet deeper into the mountain.

This is one of two jumbos which were used for drilling the tunnel. Seven drilling crews were accommodated when the big scaffolds were in place. Right, inside, looking out. All photographs by William T. Chambers.

Working from both ends toward the middle, everything depended on proper alignment of the jumbos checked daily from calibrations made both inside and outside the tunnel. As the two crews drew nearer, excitement mounted. Would the holes meet in perfect union? They did. The tunnel was "holed through" on the morning of December 20 and the two bores made a juncture so perfect that it could not have been detected save for the pile of rock blown down by the last explosions.
In all, some 74,000 cubic yards of rock were removed for the twenty-four foot-wide, twenty-nine-foot-high tunnel. To accommodate the outside trackage, 875,000 cubic yards of earth and rock were moved.
While this work was going forward, construction crews were assembling the big tipple and preparation plant at the mine-site. Endless-belt machinery is being installed to move the coal underground and bring it up to the 500-foot slope to the surface.
Island Creek engineers say No. 27 will be one of the most modern and efficient mining operations in the world, and that the quality of the coal will match anything in the high-volatile field. Those superiority's, plus tried and proved Chesapeake and Ohio service, persuade them that Mine 27 will be something to watch, as the coal moves through Trace Mountain, in the years to come.