Limestone quarry questions and great prototype info web sight

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I want to say thanks for the information I recieved about 1900 era modeling. I have decided to post-date my layout to the 1910-1920 era. By this time my prototype was connected to other lines to the east and a full loop would be acceptable. This will add more interest for my children as they watch the through trains instead of constantly swiching on a point to point. I will have 4 main spurs. A coal mine with battery coke ovens "Bradford", A limestone quarry and camptown "Compton" , A lime plant "Cheney Lime" and a open pit iron ore mine "Champion Mines.
My first question cocerns the limestone quarry of Compton. Several hundred workers worked at this sight in the early 1900s. Ive been to this place, all woods now, and seen massive piles of rock between the cliff face and the old railraod bed. The rocks in the piles are about the size of riff-raff that you would find under a modern highway bridge. No pictures exist to my knowlege and my atempts to find information about early quarries has been unsuccessful. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I assume the rock was blasted from the sides of the quarry after holes were drilled for charges. This rock was being quarried for the steel industry so I assume it was not processed completly into lime. What size lime rock was commonly shipped by rail from a quarry like this? The larger pieces, were they blasted again on the quarry floor? Were they hammered by workers? The smaller pieces were loaded into horse drawn wagons or trucks and moved either to a ramp were it was dumped into the gondolas or did it go first to a crusher to be reduced to a more uniform size?Was it common to process it all the down into lime? Would an opperation of this size 900 workers and of this era 1915 have a "dinky" narrow gauge engine to assist in the opperation like the open pit iron mine of Champion which I have Photographs.
The Bradford Coal mines have a long battery of coke ovens. These were loaded from the top. After the coal was cooked into coke. The side doors were opened and the coke was pulled out by hand with long hook like tools and then shoveled into waiting rail cars below the platform. A photo from another mine shows a " dinky" locomotive being used to charge the ovens from the top. Would horse drawn carts be used for the same purpose?
Check out www.bhamrails.info for some great information and vintage photos.

[orsonroy]

I just did an MSN search on "limestone mining history" and came up with 16000+ hits. There are good bits and pieces in many websites, so I suggest you start searching around online for basic information on limestone quarrying.

As for a facility having it's own switcher, yes, it was very common. In researching the history if the IC's steam roster, I noticed that they sold well over 50 engines to a used steam engine reseller during the 1915-1930 period. Virtually all of them were small engines such as 0-6-0s and their 2-4-0T commuter engines. Records indicated that most of these were sold to mines and quarries all over the IC's home region. There's a quarry near where I work that's not too old (50-75 years), and they've got trackage connecting to the old C&NW line to chicago. There are still three diesel switchers on the property, and rumor has it that they worked with steamers into the 1960s. The quarry isn't all that big, but it pumps out a lot of product, which is why they needed the engines.