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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Friday, February 05, 2010 at 00:28:06 :
In Reply to: Re: Aplidynes posted by Dave Royal [76.182.149.3] on Thursday, February 04, 2010 at 20:42:10 :
Sounds like an amazing machine. Someday I hope to see the hoist in the Caladay mine. I used to know a man who had worked on it (now dead) who said he needed to climb up 10' off the floor to change the brushes. He said it still has all the old-style controls like the two big levers instead of the modern little joysticks. The hoist was built around 1910 but never installed at the time. The buyers put it in storage where it sat until the 1960s when they decided to use it. It's still in use today. It's actually set up in a big room they blasted out underground. To get to it you have to go in a mile through a tunnel, which is why I've never seen it. It was quit an operation getting it back in there. First they made a plywood silhouette of it and took that in through the tunnel and everywhere it hit the rocks, they chipped a little bit out so it would clear. Then they rented pig lead ingots from the Bunker Hill smelter to match the weight of the machine and trammed them through the tunnel. Everywhere that the tracks sank too much under the weight, they shored them up. Then when they knew the tracks could carry the weight and the hoist parts would clear the tunnel, they brought it all in and assembled it underground. The sad thing is that when this mine closes down, as all mines do, they'll just leave it there.
Mine hoists have to run very smoothly because when you've got men in a skip at the end of a mile of wire, you don't want them bouncing around.
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