yeah, itll definatly be cool. Well have 2 cars from there and at least one axle set when were done. Lots of projects! It'll be cool to have different cars though. This car wil be neat, and probably not that hard to rebuild. The wood needs to be replaced, but a lot of the metal is in good shape.

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yea i was wondering how we were going to rebuild the franklin car since we are lacking heavy equip to lift it, but i think ive come up with a way to rebuild the bottom frame with out lifting it from above, or flipping it over and rebuilding it inverted. if we jack it up on the ends then we can rebuild the lower wooden frame, lower the "box" onto it and bolt it down. then replace the wooden sides and build a new dump door. should be a good next project. depending on how fast they get the other one dug out is whether we do this one or the original 190 car first.

got some cool info on the car we are going to get to keep. this car was built by american car and foundry company in bloomsburg pa. not sure when but thats where it was built. its a 4 ton mine car 36" gauge with loose wheels. that means the wheels spin on the axles. not like all our other cars which are tight wheels. that means the wheels are relatively tight on the axle and the whole axle/wheel assembly spins in the bearing block. on curves the wheels are free to rotate at different speeds but mostly the axles spin in the bearing blocks. so anyways back to the car..... it was built for the franklin colliery in wilkesbarre. it is one of 2 styles of mine cars they had there. this is a low vein car. the others were about 18 inches taller than this one. all the ones at the base of the tipple are high cars. this one is the same as the ones inside the mine. all of their cars at 190 are from franklin. when the county decided to open this mine they put bids out for the project. no.1 contracting got the job. thats who the suppe's worked for and thats who owned the franklin colliery. so thats how the franklin cars got there. now the franklin colliery used a rotator dump and the cars were tight end cars. meaning there was no dump door of any means on the car. just a box on top. the rotator would dump the entire car over and empty its contents into the conveyor going to the breaker. when 190 got the cars they built dump doors on some of them, the ones they used in the mine to rebuild it. this is one of those cars. so this car has some neat history. started life hauling coal at the franklin colliery then ended up at the 190 slope hauling rock and debris out of the slope. then when it was not needed any more it was discarded into the woods with the only original 190 car next to it. and there it would sit for 40 years until we came around. next weekend it comes to its new home

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here is the one we are picking up on saturday for us to keep

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Ours

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Chris, can I post these and some other of your pics on the PA Coal Miners myspace page?



I also wanted to tell you guys-- if you need any help with restoration let me know and I'll have to come up there some weekend. I used to do Historic Preservation work, ya know.

~S

sure, we can always use the help! and yes youre more than welcome to use the pics. you know we are building a wooden mine car this winter

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