Today we headed north to a few more coal sites, but first we stopped at New River Gorge. Despite the name, the New River is actually one of the oldest rivers in the US. It carved out about 900 feet of gorge during its 65 million years and at one time flowed into the Mississippi River. The last glacier buried the most northern parts, so now it empties into the Ohio River.
Yes, it flows north. We are across some Eastern Continental Divide, we first learned of it while in Maryland and all rivers on this side flow north. We have no idea where that Divide line runs. The Potomac, for example flows northwest to southeast. It is weird though to see the New River flowing north.
The noteworthy thing around here is the New River Gorge Bridge. Quite an engineering marvel. Built in 1977, it’s 3030 feet long and the longest, single span bridge. West Virginia is so proud of it that it is on the West Virginia quarter.
The gorge is pretty, but doesn’t knock your socks off. As you can see water levels are down maybe 3 feet, which likely detracts from its beauty.
We made a few stops to more coal heritage sites and learned a little more about coal. There are two types of coal; “hard” coal or Anthracite and “soft” or Bituminous. Hard coal is cleaner to handle and not brittle. It is preferred where clean burn is necessary, but it is hard to light and keep lit. Bituminous is pretty much the opposite and has given coal the bad name. Coal quality impacts BTU, smoke, ash, and sulfur. West Virginia’s coal is advertised as smokeless.
WV Coal has more carbon and less ash, making it most desireable. I wonder if that is what is used for the Cass train?
The next picture is of a tipple. This a semi modern gizmo (1920s) that transports coal to a waiting RR coal hopper car. We found this one in Nuttallburg. This mine is located in the New River Gorge.
This is the conveyor system that leads to the mine entrance. The coal is transported from the mine to the tipple via this conveyor, then to the hopper car. Now the interesting part. Henry Ford leased this mine between 1920 and 1928. He installed this tipple and conveyor to boost production. Due to the brittle nature of the WV coal, if a conveyor belt was used, the vibration would have broken down the coal and caused a high loss rates off the belt. A belt is also failure prone. So Henry used a trough with a disk and cable system to move the coal down the conveyor.
We thought it amazing he would come to WV for his coal. It must have been good stuff. He abandoned the mine after 1928 due to problems with the railroad. The gorge was a pinch point for moving coal out of it. Too many mines, not enough track.
The road getting us to this place was a real stinker. Rough, narrow, tight turns, and a big embankment on one side. You prayed you would not meet an oncoming vehicle. Fortunately, we were lucky!
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