56 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



a 20-foot cross cut. Good ventilation is affoTd-ed by the use of a 

 9-foot Buffalo Forge Go's exhaust fan operated by a 93^-horse- 

 power motor. Excavation is done by contract, the miner buying 

 his blasting materials and hiring his assistant who loads the cars. 

 FoT drilling, Howell's no. 2 air drills are used. The air com- 

 pressor is driven by an 85-horsepower motor. This compres'sor 

 also furnishes power for the pump at the bottom of the shaft. 



At present the cars are drawn from the rooms to the shaft by 

 means of mules, but the managers are plannin'g a system of electric 

 haulage which will do away with all mule haulage in the gangways. 

 The mine is well lighted by electric lights, well ventilated and kept 

 dry. At the foot of the shaft the mine cars, hodding about one 

 long ton, are dumped by a side dump into a steel hopper which 

 carries the rock to a point where it is picked up in the buckets of a 

 vertical bucket elevator whioh hoists it to the mill overhead. This 

 elevator is no feet long, contains 175 buckets and travels 80 feet 

 per minute. 



The rock is thus hoisted into the mill built directly over the shaft, 

 is discharged into a 3,6-inch by 42-inch Jeffrey crusher where it is 

 immediately crushed and then screened, ail material over i inch in 

 size being reelevated to the crusher. The crushed rock is then ready 

 for shipment, the whole product being soild crude to cement fac- 

 tories. The dust arising from the grinding is carried by suction 

 through pipes into a series of long vertical cloth sacks where the 

 air escapes and the dust remains on the inner surface of the sack. 

 At intervals the bags are shaken and the dust allowed to collect at 

 the bottom. No use is being made of the dust at present, though 

 it seems adapted for certain purposes by reason of its fineness and 

 nearly pure white color. 



All the machinery in both mine and mill is driven by electric 

 power from Niagara Falls. The current furnished at 11,000 vodts 

 over a 3-phase 25-cycle line, is- taken to a concrete transformer 

 house where it is stepped down to 440 volts. It is then supplied 

 to an 85-horsepower motor for an Ingersol-Ramd compressor, to 

 a foo-liorsepower motor for the Jeffreys crusher and bucket con- 

 veyor, and to a 9^/2 -horsepower motor driving the 9-foot ventilat- 

 ing fan. For the electric lighting, the current is passed through a 

 5-kilowatt transformer. 



At the time the plant was visited in June 1909 a second shaft 64 

 feet deep had been sunk 1420 feet west of the working shaft, and 

 preparations were under way to erect a breaker and extend the 



