750 MM and 20" Gauge Benguet Mine

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jon-monon

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First off I would like to thank John Eagles for taking the wonderful shots during his journey to the Philippines, and also for granting permission to post them here.

These are all copyright 2004 John Eagles, please do not use them without permission.

Also thanks to Brad Peadon, the Engineer and Conductor for the

Philippine Railways Yahoo Group, the Philippine Loco Shed, and the Philippine Railways SIG site. Gee, I hope I got all those links in the right places!

We believe this to be a 24" gauge Plymouth diesel:
 

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jon-monon

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If this is the GE we think it is, it was born a 750 MM gauge.

I speculate the 2 footers or the 750 MM gaugers may have been locally regauged so they all ran on the same track, but that's just an opinion. They may well have had more than one gauge, being the largest mining company in the Philippines.
 

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shamus

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Thats a very nice set of photos Jon, I also liked the website Philippine Loco Shed. Some very interesting articles indeed.
Shamus
 
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jon-monon

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Glad you like them, Paul, and I'm really glad John took the time to grab all those shots and upload them and let us use them here! And of course, Brad Peadon was instrumental in pulling hte Philippine Railfans together into a group.

If you go to the Binguet Mining Co., you get to ride one of these trams. But you have to bring your own ladyfriend, you don't get to use Brad's, John's or mine!
 

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Wyomingite

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Hi Jon,
Well by golly you bring back some very pleasant and unpleasant times in an old miners life. I spent twenty five years as a hard rock miner in a Pennsylvania iron ore mine. We operated GE locos but a lot bigger then the ones your showing. I don't remember the model numbers anymore but we did have two types. One the smaller one operated in the production drifts using three twenty ton cars. The other we called the mainliner which hauled six twenty ton cars loaded from the production drifts sidings to the bottom dump out at the production shaft.

The mine your showing is going into the side of a mountain like many of our coal mines in the south. Our mine was a vertical shaft four thousand and eight hundred feet deep. The first level was at the eighteen hundred foot level and we laid one hundred pound rail for three miles on each of the five levels. All of which was laid by hand and strong backs. We drilled twelve foot rounds with three drilling machines mounted on a flatcar. We mucked up the rounds with a mucker like your showing but again a lot bigger. Can you imagine the noise one of those things make. They were fed with a four inch air line. In those days the only ear protection was rolled up cotton and at least once a month you needed your ears cleaned as when you took the cotton out some always stayed in. You get a pea sized ball out of your ear every time.

As far as operating the locos it was very basic. The smaller lever was direction control. The larger lever was pushed down and moving it forward increased the speed to as fast as you wanted to go. To brake you pushed the lever down and pulled it backward which reversed the wheels. A miners tools were basic which included a pipe wrench which also served as a hammer. Scalen bar which was used to trim the roof. Timber ax for setting timbers and each crew had a power driven chain saw. Timbers in those days were knot free oak twelve x twelve and ten x ten and all timber was set by hand. You heard the song big bad John? Well we had a lot of big bad Johns and they sure knew what they were doing. As far as the toilet I never seen one underground until I moved out here in 1978 to work in an underground uranium mine. We just did the best we could sending it out with the rock loads. In 1963 the iron ore mine changed over to diesel power which was quite an improvement but thats another story. I went on long enough.

Ron
 
F

Fred_M

Ron, I for one never get tired of reading such stories, I love them. Thanks for sharing, write more when you can. FRED
 
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