Bluefield Daily Telegraph
Industrial Edition
Bluefield, West Virginia November 1, 1896
The Crozer Coal and Coke Company
The Crozer Coal and Coke Company was organized in 1887, with Samuel A Crozer as President; Samual A. Crozer, Jr., Vice President, and Treasurer, and Francis E. Weston, Secretary, and the work of development was at once gotten under way on the company's holdings of 1,800 acres of coal land acquired by lease from the Crozer Coal Land Association. In the year following its organization, the Company was incorporated under the West Virginia laws, with the same officers chosen at the organization, and who still retain the position to which they were originally elected, with the exception of Samuel A. Crozer, Jr., who has relinquished the office of Treasurer, being succeeded in that position by Lewis R. Page.
The operation embraces two openings and 300 coke ovens, with all the necessary buildings and equipment for the prompt, systematic and economical handling of the product of both mines and ovens. The productive capacity of the mines is about 1,500 tons of coal daily, and that of the ovens 400 tons of coke per day, some 700 men being employed when the mines and ovens are working to their normal capacity. The motive power used at the plant consists of two Porter mine locomotives, one Porter 8-ton coke oven locomotive, and one Baldwin-Westinghouse electric locomotive. This locomotive deserves more specific mention because the requirements of the work demanded a radical departure in many features from the plan upon which electric locomotives had hitherto been constructed. The locomotive in complete running order weighs 44,000 pounds and hauls its train of forty loaded mine cars with ease. Its operation has been attended with the most satisfactory results in every respect.
The tipple is equipped with elevators, screen, scrapers, crushers, etc. all operated by a powerful stationary engine located at the tipple. The plant also includes an extensive machine shop, provided with lathe, planer, pipe-cutting lathe, punching machine, shearing machine--in short, a full complement of machinery at such and extensive plant. It is the most complete machine shop in the Field, and its work is not confined to the Crozer Company alone, as it receives a liberal patronage from its neighboring operations.
|
By:Buddy French
