Bellevue Mine Blairmore, South and Greenhill Mines Coleman Mine Hillcrest Mine Leitch Collieries Lost Lemon Mine

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An increasing market for coal and coke was rapidly developing, a market which the Byron creek property could not handle. As the Leitch Collieries evaluated their holdings they found there were fourteen seams of high quality coal. There was room and a flat building surface here for large coke ovens, — for a coal washing plant to clean and prepare the slack separated from the coal, for placement in the coke ovens. There was a limestone cliff, jutting out conveniently close from the hill, which would provide the quarried rock for building the ovens, as well as the large power plant, to generate their own power. All the coal was at a higher level than the projected tipple site, which would allow for transport by gravity from the mine mouth to the tipple. The shape of the hill at the projected tipple site was also perfect for the construction and support of a large coal holding bin. From here the coal would drop to the picking table conveyors, for removal of foreign material, on its way to the box cars on six loading tracks below. As an added inducement, there was a fifteen foot seam of fireclay lying above one of the coal seams. This would save considerable expense in the future, if used on the coke ovens. Last, but by no means least, much of this coal was royalty free — a very great bonus. So a decision was made to develop on the Police Flats.

There was a tremendous amount of construction work involved in doing this. Two long trestles, one ninety, the other one hundred and ten feet high, had to be built on the haulage route from the mine head to the tipple. A spur track had to be built to connect with the C.P.R. main line, so that machinery could be brought in, as well as coal and coke shipped out later. At first one and then two engines of their own, were purchased for handling cars on this track and a one hundred and twenty-five ton scale on the track for weighing box cars. Two good dynamite drillers and quarrymen by the name of Barnhill and his brother-in-law Reid started to quarry rock from the limestone cliff. Alight track was used to carry the rock to the men building the coke ovens, and a large building which under one roof would house a battery of boilers, a generating plant capable of supplying power for all the equipment, a machine shop for repairs and fabricating, and an engine house with stalls for two engines for switching. A bucket conveyor was built to carry the slack to the one hundred and twenty foot high coal washing plant. This was filled with large bins and expensive equipment; experienced men from the States had to be brought in to assemble it. The slack was dropped from one water vat to another and finally fed into ten ton trolleys which ran along a track on the top of the one hundred and one coke ovens, feeding slack into the top of each oven. Large levelling machines ran along the side of the ovens on very wide gauge track and levelled the coal which had been dropped into each oven. Men then bricked up the doors, so that little air and white hot temperatures could produce good coke. When this was achieved a large pusher ram, also on track, emptied the coke out the other door, where it was rapidly cooled with water hoses and loaded into box cars on a depressed railway alongside. The inside linings of the ovens were made of over one million fire and silicon brick imported from Pennsylvania, as only such quality could withstand the terrifically high temperatures necessary to produce first quality coke.

There was much ancilliary equipment and buildings, such as boilers at the mine-head to run a large fan and pumps to keep the air and water moving in the mine. There was also the important lamp house where the Wolfe safety lamps were stored and serviced. They not only lit the way in a mine where there could be pockets of gas, but acted for the miner like a punch in, punch out time clock. Each man hung his lamp on his own special peg when he came off shift. If he was supposed to be working note would be taken that he was, but if he was due off shift and hadn't "covered his peg" it was cause for immediate investigation. Similarly there was the necessary bath house. A modern installation was a very heavy underground haulage engine, powered by enclosed electricity, to haul trips to the mouth of the mine. And there was a large steam hoist and cable to let the trips of cars run under control by gravity down to the tipple a mile and a half away, and then haul the empties back. There was a boarding house capably run by Mrs. Barnhill, a bunk house for singlemen, an assay house, timekeeper's office, horse barns etc.

This article is extracted from Crowsnest and its People: Millennium Edition (Coleman, Alberta, Crowsnest Pass Historical Society, 2000.) The Heritage Community Foundation and the Year of the Coal Miner Consortium would like to thank the authors and the Crowsnest Pass Historical Society for permission to reprint this material.

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