by jmchitvt
As I enjoy old age and retirement on a sheep farm high on a ridge above the Florence VT Omya limestone mills , I reflect how basically similar this operation is to what I remember growing up in Oxford Furnace.
We've got the steady flow of the same little white and blue slurry tanks constantly flowing in and out much the same as the steady flow of the two pocket DL&W black hoppers up and down the hill to mine.
For the boyhood enthusiast that ride up and down hill to Alan Wood in the cab of that new RS-3 or the wood-sided hack (rarely did we see a main line steel one) to his hearts content - this was as good as it gets. My father was a long time employee of the mine, loaded the cars and weighed them when the scale was still used west of the station. He stayed on a year or so helping to dismantle the mill after the sudden closing (a notice was posted on a Wednesday of a permanent shutdown
in two days!!), I was in the service a month after the closing and this got me away from the sadness.
Service was usually five days for sure, sometimes a Saturday and never remember a Sunday run. Don't remember the GP-7's used, sometimes a 930 class little FM, and almost always a mid-day run, except for the experiment with the road freight (I'll save that story for another day).
All this is just for the record as I type this on a lazy Vermont summer Saturday after chores.
Does anyone remember the mine run?...
We've got the steady flow of the same little white and blue slurry tanks constantly flowing in and out much the same as the steady flow of the two pocket DL&W black hoppers up and down the hill to mine.
For the boyhood enthusiast that ride up and down hill to Alan Wood in the cab of that new RS-3 or the wood-sided hack (rarely did we see a main line steel one) to his hearts content - this was as good as it gets. My father was a long time employee of the mine, loaded the cars and weighed them when the scale was still used west of the station. He stayed on a year or so helping to dismantle the mill after the sudden closing (a notice was posted on a Wednesday of a permanent shutdown
in two days!!), I was in the service a month after the closing and this got me away from the sadness.
Service was usually five days for sure, sometimes a Saturday and never remember a Sunday run. Don't remember the GP-7's used, sometimes a 930 class little FM, and almost always a mid-day run, except for the experiment with the road freight (I'll save that story for another day).
All this is just for the record as I type this on a lazy Vermont summer Saturday after chores.
Does anyone remember the mine run?...
