#coal dust

[testormblog]

At the Railway’s Mercy

Nearly everybody including me, who lived beyond Brisbane’s boundaries, relied on trains for transportation.  Trams didn’t run outside the city’s perimeter.  Whilst motor vehicles had increased in number since the fifties, regional roads were still built for horse and cart traffic.  This reliance made the Railway a powerful organisation.  Such monopoly, its’ executives believed would continue forever.

The Railway treated its employees, passengers and freight customers alike with condescension.  It transported almost everything everywhere on its own timetable: the living, their animals, the dead and anything these needed for their existence and business.  It brought mail from all corners of the state to the General Post Office in Brisbane for sorting and onward travel.  People accepted their deliveries would arrive whenever and in whatever condition these eventually did, having passed through multiple pairs of hands.

The Railway’s lines crisscrossed the length and breadth of the state.  Even tinpot communities of a few hundred people had stations manned with staff and permanent track maintenance crews.  The Railway’s costs to operate as well as to maintain its infrastructure and to build more greatly exceeded the normal person’s comprehension.  Notwithstanding its volume of traffic, it didn’t earn a profit with the deficit of thousands of pounds footed by the taxpayers.  They didn’t complain.  Accordingly, the Railway saw no reason why it should change its antiquated, inefficient practices.

Every week day, I joined the thousands of its passengers.  Those days that I began my journey at Bethania Station, I waited for a suburban rattler pulled by a PB15 steam engine to arrive at 6.25 am.  Usually, the train came on time as it should have given that the station was its first stop.  I stepped up from the low platform on to a carriage’s running board and grabbed the metal handles to climb into one of the train’s six second class carriages.

Inside, I looked for the least dirty seat and brushed the coal dust from it.  Some people sat on the advertisement section of their newspapers.  I wasn’t sure which was worse on one’s backside, a coal smudge or an advertisement for unmentionables.  A few men smoked cigarettes and pipes even though the carriage may have been designated as nonsmoking.  Smoke was both outside and inside; there wasn’t any difference.  At least the nicotine smell cloaked the unwashed smell of some passengers.  The ticket snapper soon came along with the hope I was a fare evader.  This was not so and never so!  The guard leant out from the rear carriage and waited for the station master’s hand signal.  Upon receiving this, he waved his green flag and blew his whistle.  The engine driver released the mighty steam engine’s brakes and engaged its drive wheels.  The train lurched forward and began its slow thirty-two kilometre journey to South Brisbane Station.

As a child, I loved train rides to Brisbane.  As a young man, the opposite applied.  The route rarely varied so the daily scenes outside the carriage window didn’t either.  After thousands of journeys, I barely glanced at them anymore.  The constant clicky clack of the train’s steel wheels numbed my mind into a state of lethargy.  I usually battled to stay awake as one never knew what crooked characters were passengers too.  Everybody generally was suspicious of everybody else unless they knew them.  Consequently, I didn’t engage in conversations with strangers.  Whilst some people hid behind their newspapers, I didn’t take out a text book from my bag.  The train’s constant noise and movement as well as passenger interruptions made concentration difficult.

The journey was like a trip through history.  The train chugged through open country, over the Logan River and across the biggest bridge between Brisbane and Bethania.  Supposedly, steam engines faster than the PB15 were too heavy to cross the aging timber bridge.  The train stopped for a passenger at Loganlea sometimes.  This small farming hamlet existed as it did last century.  Onwards, the train steamed into the current century to Kingston, the area’s commercial hub where a prosperous butter factory operated and a once illustrious gold mine had existed.  Despite the fixed gold price, the mine hadn’t turned a profit.  Rumours lingered from its heyday that the miners themselves had pocketed the gold and become rich.  Alas, they left behind an environmental debacle for the politicians to resolve.  Next, at Woodridge, the train filled up with workers.  The place was posh in name only.  The government had encouraged migrants to settle there; yet had failed to plan a town or services for them.  This failure would condemn it and its residents to future impoverishment.

I absentmindedly watched more stations flit by.  At Runcorn, the foundations of the wartime military warehouses were still visible.  Later, the Bradford Kendall heavy machinery foundry would be built on them.  During World War Two, the surrounding suburbs had been the military’s manufacturing hub for equipment and armaments.  Onwards, the train chugged to Rocklea which perennial floods attempted to wash away.  It then picked up speed and ran express to South Brisbane.  At Moorooka, I glanced at the interstate goods yards, colloquially called Clapham Junction, where a long line of retired Bayer Garrett steam engines had been parked on a track indefinitely.  During the war, troops had erected a tent city close to here.  As the train passed Park Road Station, Boggo Road Gaol loomed above with its gloomy Victorian architecture, home to the perpetrators of heinous crimes.  At least, they saw the sunlight whilst working in the gardens.

The steam train thundered through the only tunnel on the route.  Anyone who forgot to raise the rattly glass windows beforehand ended up covered in soot and coal dust.  After nineteen stations, the train screeched to a halt at South Brisbane Station and disgorged hundreds of passengers.  A mass of bodies charged down the stairs to the street.  People boarded trams to the City or walked instead past the fish board, along the polluted Brisbane River and its docks then across Victoria Bridge.  The smell was nauseating.

Unfortunately, the whole return journey awaited me if I wasn’t at college that night.  I couldn’t believe that people endured this monotony for the duration of their working lives.  I wasn’t yet eighteen and had already decided I didn’t like adult life or the big city very much.  I also yearned for some respite from the Railway’s and its schedule’s control over my daily existence.  My childhood romance with it was waning.

[hldky]

In ever decreasing circles? by National Library of Ireland on The Commons Via Flickr: Mixing Culm? I've managed to mix up my Colms and my Colmcilles from time to time but I must admit that I have never heard of mixing CULM before. This appears to be a well set up and practiced process where the horses hooves and strength are used to crush something. What is it and where was it done? Photographer: Irish Tourism Association Photographer Collection: Irish Tourism Association Photographic Collection Date: 1942 - 1944 NLI Ref: NPA ITA 1254 (Box VI) You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

[dangerdust2]

Caplan Syndrome

Caplan syndrome was first described in 1953 by Dr. Anthony Caplan, a provider on the Cardiff pneumoconiosis panel, as radiologic evidence of intrapulmonary nodules in coal miners with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).It is also called rheumatoid pneumoconiosis.

Caplan syndrome is caused by work exposure to coal, asbestos, or silica which causes pneumoconiosis, an inflammatory reactive lung condition to dust particles, in patients with a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. 

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“MINE SHAFT BLAST OUSTS 84 WORKERS,” Toronto Star. April 30, 1942. Page 2. --- Explosions in Same Pit Have Killed 95 Men ---- Halifax, April 30 (CP) - Hon. L. D. Currie, minister of mines, said 84 miners, all uninjured, were evacuated early today from the Nova Scotia Coal company's Allan shaft at Stellarton, N.S. A small explosion occurred in the workings. The shaft will be closed for 24 hours to enable an investigation and to determine whether any damage was caused to the workings, the minister said.

At Stellarton, Mine Manager Badoux said: "The men said they did. not hear the explosion, but there was a disturbance of the air and some dust."

During the last war 88 men were killed by an explosion in the Allan shaft in 1918. In 1935, seven men were killed by an explosion in the same pit.

[mizzlebloom]

Canary in a Coal Mine

[orangesand-lemons-234]

The freights all have a shared bedroom in the shed, and it is the messiest room in the whole yard.

Porter and Lumber are on bunkbeds, while Slick and Hydra are on single beds on opposite sides of the room. Momma asked if they wanted bunks when Hydra first joined- he very much wanted one, but Slick said she'd rather die than bunk with him.

The room is a disaster. There are oil stains everywhere, twigs and sticks are hiding in every nook and cranny, and it everything's a little dusty thanks to the coal. Hydras corner is also quite messy, but just in an unorganised way. As in, everything is everywhere, and it's highly cluttered.

Porter has frequent nightmares, and can some nights just wake up screaming, but he seems to fall back asleep after about ten minutes. Meanwhile, if he's woken up the others (which he usually does-) that's them awake for the night.

Lumber takes hours to sleep. He literally just can't fall asleep as quickly as the others. And, he makes it everybody's problem. He will watch videos, play games, or he'll just start narrating what's on his mind. Slick has thrown things at him to tell him to give it a rest.

Hydra sleep talks. It's not even him talking about what's happening in his dreams. No, Hydra the Hydrogen Tanker is talking about- you guessed it, hydrogen. All night every night. The others have given up trying to shut him up. (He also sleeps with a teddy bear but shush-)

Slick sleeps like a rock. There is no waking her up. An earthquake could shatter through Troubadour while she was asleep, and she probably wouldn't notice. Yes, Lumber has drawn on her face with markers before, and yes, he got a punch square in the jaw when she eventually woke up.

Early mornings are like rush hour, with everyone shouting at each other, Porter slipping on oil, Slick yelling about a stick in their shoe, Lumber coughing his lungs out from all the coal dust, and Hydra not being able to find his undershirt because it's hidden beneath about fourteen books.

[william-nilliam-was-taken]

i am the world's most normal person (is coping with the death of their favorite british man by drawing him as a ghost)

[brownsugar-chan]

Traintober day 1: Free day This is something I've been working on for a while based on a conversation @galushanationalrailways and I had!

[countesspetofi]

I was just remembering the other day how my Grandma and Great-Grandma, when they thought something or someone was worthless, would say it/they "ain't worth a pinch of bug dust." I used to ask my mother what bug dust was, but she didn't know, and it felt rude to ask Grandma.

I've had access to the Internet for thirty-odd years now, and it didn't occur to me until right this minute to put fingers to keyboard and find out. Apparently bug dust is the coal or rock equivalent of sawdust, a fine powder that's left over when you cut or bore into one of them. Which makes sense, since Great-Grandma grew up near one of the principal mining areas of Pennsylvania.

And thus a lifetime's mystery was solved. Maybe I'm worth a whole pinch of bug dust now.

[megabuild]

hi boss it's another mine worker here. since that other guy is being a PUSSY and NOT WORKING can I have his job. I need to fatten my linkedin like. wait didn't you make a post a while ago saying there was feedism drama within the mcyt community. I neeeeed to fatten my linkedin like etho fattens bdubs CONSENTUALLY!! or something. You'll be pleased to know I'm minmaxxing my smoke "breaks" (I should call them smoke "works" ahah) by chuffing back three marlboro reds at once. I hope to work my way up to four by next week but I'm still working on opening my mouth that much. BTW what's the budget looking like for next month? I'd like to propose a couple of fresh pickaxes. our current ones still work but they've turned yellow from nicotine and some of us are curious to compare the colours. think it would be real good for team morale to take two minutes to go "ooh sick", give a couple of high fives to the lads, watch the lit cigarette ashes trickle down like fireworks. Anyway if PTO is on the table can I get next Friday off. I need to get my wife pregnant but my penis is blocked with coaldust.

Atp im going to start discriminating against workers who have partners because yall are taking too much time off for "dates" and "anniversaries" and "birth of my child". Keep the smokes up though buddy youll be employee of the month in no time if you don't get fired before then

[jils-things]

im SO gonna make a bucket list of rpg games to replay and try out for the first time. im having an indie game kick rn...

[bottleofwormjuice]

do you yearn for the mines?

absolutely give me a pickaxe ill go wild

[lemonine]

i also got Really Really dirty. the ground was so dry everything turned into a sandpit. my black shoes are now brown. if i wipe my finger across my arm my fingertip comes up soot black

[digital-dryad]

girl, excuse me?

[the-last-butter]

TERM BREAK TME !!!! ☝️☝️☝️

[roylustang]

Oh my god I just saw my face and I’m used to my face feeling like, grimy after a run (usually bc of salt from my sweat) but it’s dirt this time and I literally have a dirt mustache jfkflzzbdvb