MINING. 127 
feet above the floor), a cast drum with large thread or spi- 
ral cast on it, with the numbers of the different rooms in 
large figures painted on the spiral, so that the pointer will 
show him the exact place to a few inches, where his 
‘slope tram ” is, in order that he may run slowly when ap- 
proaching the entrance toa room where he is to stop for a 
loaded car to be added; this cast drum must have a geared 
connection with the hoisting-drum shaft. The Engineman 
must also have the number of the rooms close to his hands, 
so that he can arrange them in the order in which the calls 
from below are made, and remove them as the orders are 
filled. The collection of wires extending from the Engine- 
man to the entrance of each room, must be bundled or 
twisted together and wrapped with thin sheet lead or tarred 
cloth, to prevent corrosion from exposure to dampness. In 
this method the wire rope has no sharp corners or small 
pulleys to drag around, and will consequeutly escape the 
breaking and tearing of wire strands so common where the 
ordinary hoisting rope drags the mine cars out of the gang- 
ways. 
To facilitate the quick delivery of the loaded cars at the 
top of the slope, the upper part of the slope track, (that 
portion next the large rope sheave), must be double tracked 
and be movable, so that the full cars when they arrive there, 
can be pushed to one side, the same motion bringing the 
track with slope tram containing the empties in line with 
the slope, so that the engineman is not delayed, but can let 
down the empty cars while the top men are emptying the 
full ones. Three tracks of wide guage are requisite for the 
screening and loading shute, one for “lump” or “run of the 
mine,” one for “nut and slack,” and one for slate. 
If this method, with the necessary machinery, were in com- 
mon use, it is probable that it would be used for “medium 
dips,” of even from five to thirty degrees. In cases where 
the dip of the seam is irregular, and becomes too flat to 
allow the “slope tram” to descend and overcome the drag 
of the rope, a light tail rope would have to be used. In 
this method the “long wall system” could be used to some 
extent, but considering that we use a ton tram mostly, and 
a kind of room track, different from that usually employed 
