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COMPARISON OF ELECTRICAL
AND AIR EQUIPMENT IN MINES.
Iii a recent article on the subject, G. E. Lynch,
thus sums up the comparative advantages of
electricity and compressed air in operating coal
cutters. The advantages of electrical equipment
are given as follows:
1. Greater power economy, amounting to 54
per cent, over the punchers and 37 per cent, over
air-driven chain breast machines.
2. Possibility of use without change of equipment
for coal cutting, haulage, and lighting of
plant and town.
3. Ease of extension with growth of mine.
4. Possibility of moving machines by power
trucks driven by the machine motor, thus with the
use of small gathering locomotives, dispensing
entirely with mules and horses underground.
5. Smaller number of machines as compared
to puncher work, repuiring fewer skilled operators
to maintain the production.
6. Smaller outlay necessary for the installation
of electric power plant as compared with air plant
and less expense of maintenance.
7. Copper feeder wires in mines do not materially
depreciate in value while air pipes in mines
depreciate very rapidly, due to action of mine
water and rust.
A summary of the disadvantages includes:
1. Possibility of explosions and fire from sparking
at machines, leaks or short circuits in line,
etc., in gaseous mines.
2. Injury to men and animals from leaks in line,
accidental contact with live wires, etc., and reluctance
of men to handle machines on this account.
3. Losses due to difficulty of insulation in wet
mines.
The advantages of compressed air may be
stated as:
1. Safety in gaseous mines and freedom from
danger to men and animals from line.
2. Aid to ventilation from exhaust of machines.
The disadvantages include:
1. Lack of economy in power.
2. Losses due to lack of care in maintaining
proper proportion of pipes and keeping joints and
valves tight and from depreciation in value of
pipes.
3. Impossibility of using the compressed air
for haulage without compressing to 600 or 800
pounds, and consequent losses if an attempt is
made to utilize this high pressure for coal cutting
by lowering to 80 pounds with reducing valves.
The Pall Mall Gazette, of London, announces that
it has received information that an American
syndicate is negotiating for the purchase of several
coal mines near Bolton in Lancashire.
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN. 47
• LONG WALL BRUSHINGS. •
New England editors are lying awake nights estimating
the important consequences of the Boston
& Maine railroad experiments with peat fuel taken
from the beds near Lexington, Mass. They have
figured that Lexington is about to put the coal
trade out of business for the next 250 years, but
the producers of black diamonds have not yet
begun to cut prices in that section.
—o—•
Some of our esteemed contemporaries are pathetically
calling attention to the fact that Muchakinock
the once famed mining town of Iowa has
been abandoned because its supposedly limitless
supply of coal has petered out. It doesn't seem
to have occurred to anyone that the coal seam
might have sunk under the name imposed upon
it.
—o—
So great was the interest in the historic Nottingham
breaker of the Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal
Co., at Plymouth. Pi., tnrough which more coal has
been run in a day than any other similar structure
on earth, that its demolition was attended by a
crowd of relic hunters, four of whom were seriously
injured in the scramble for souvenirs.
—o—
The city of Baltimore enthuses over the scarehead
announcement that a record tow of 10,000
tons of coal has been pulled out of that port. If
such a tonnage formed the top figure of an Ohio
river shipment it would be regarded as little short
of a calamity.
— o —
Evidently there is something in a name. A halfdozen
men employed in the Maule mine near Belleville,
111., are in jail for "mauling" a fellow miner
whom they accused of working too hard.
Low Fares West and Southwest.
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information as to fares, through time, etc., will
be freely furnished upon application to J. K.
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