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Wednesday, August 14, 2002

By Bob Batz Jr., Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Quecreek Mine accident near Somerset made people around the world want to avoid going into coal mines -- including some of those nine rescued miners. But at the Tour-Ed Mine near Tarentum, the curious have been queuing up to go deep.

	Larry Kurtik of Plum has managed the Tour-Ed Mine since May 2001, but he has 33 years in working mines as well. As he puts it, "I started at the bottom and worked my way up." (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette) Other places where you can get the shaft

The Tour-Ed -- "Ed" as in "educational" -- Mine and Museum is an otherwise sleepy little tourist attraction on the northern fringe of Allegheny County. Even if you've never driven out there, chances are you've heard of the place, which has been taking people in since 1970, soon after they stopped taking coal out.

With Quecreek putting mining so miraculously on the map, so many more visitors than usual have been taking the plunge that Tour-Ed has decided to extend its season past the usual Labor Day closing and stay open on weekends through October.

"It's very noticeable," general manager Larry Kurtik said last week, pointing to his desk calendar, on which he's been scribbling daily visitor numbers in the 30s and 40s and higher -- about twice as many as usual.

It's a welcome boost for a nonprofit place that just happens to have been planning ways to raise and update its profile. What may be most likable about the Tour-Ed Mine is how it seems to take you back in time -- at least back to when family vacations were taken in wood-paneled station wagons.

Following the hand-painted miner's helmet signs up the tire-lined gravel drive, past the huge dragline and other heavy equipment scattered around a few faded buildings, you feel more like a trespasser than a tourist. Disney-fied this ain't.

"We're a real coal mine. This is what you get," growls Kurtik.

The grizzled guy seems to have stepped straight out of the earth, and not just because he's wearing a battered hard hat, blue coveralls and scuffy steel-toed boots. He actually was a miner and mine manager for 33 years. The handful of guides he employs also are former miners, including 83-year-old Em Girdwood, who can explain hand loading coal from personal experience.

The main block building at the portals looks as though it's still a working workplace, cluttered with tools and machinery and signs such as "DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE." The rack where miners hung brass tags denoting whether they were "in" or "out" still hangs in the assembly room where Kurtik's desk is (along with a motley assortment of old school desks for school groups).

	One hundred and twenty feet below the surface, Tour-Ed guide Bob Black, left, demonstrates why many coal miners are hard of hearing by turning on one of the mine's many pieces of antique equipment: a 1936 "shaker conveyor." After tossing a chunk of wood on to see how the conveyor works, Jacob Thomas covers his ears. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Kurtik still uses the old crank phone to talk with the guides in the mine -- and to whoever is staffing the gift shop in the metal Quonset hut that was built on top. That's where, to a soundtrack of mining tunes, you can view mining memorabilia and displays ranging from the "Miner's Kitchen" peopled with mannequins to the miniature "dog collection from around the world" and shop for souvenirs such as thimbles ($1), Indian bead bracelets ($2), lump-of-ceramic-coal banks ($8), even an amazing, grow-it-yourself chemical "coal plant" ($1.50).

All this -- plus the 1785 log house, the 1938 Pennsylvania Turnpike toll booth, the working sawmill, and more -- is the legacy of Ira Wood. Now 89, the West Deer man acquired the mine in 1964. It had been bearing bituminous since 1900 for the Allegheny Steel plant in Brackenridge. Via Wood and his small company, the Upper Freeport seam continued to supply area customers such as PPG, Tarentum Power and the Allegheny County Workhouse until he stopped mining with the coming of the Allegheny Valley Expressway. He has preserved the site for the public because he wanted "to leave something worthwhile behind."

The mine itself is a "drift" mine, which means it enters a hillside and follows the coal seam more or less horizontally underground (as opposed to a graded "slope" mine like Quecreek and a vertical "shaft" mine). Parts of this site also were surface- or strip-mined, and visitors can see that, too.

Starting next spring, Kurtik envisions shuttling visitors out to the newly opened pit past freshly signed -- and freshly painted -- working pieces of multi-ton mining machinery that could be explained by a recording.

But the real draw probably always will be the inside tour. Unless they're in a group that has reserved a specific time, visitors may be asked to wait for a while until a bigger crowd assembles. Then they put on hard hats and troop down to the assembly room, where Kurtik gives them a no-nonsense talk covering the past few centuries of coal mining. His props range from a fake caged canary named Ed to a pile of actual artifacts including carbide lamps that he very convincingly demonstrates how to start up, starting with spitting on the carbide crystals.

Even with periodic stops for questions, Kurtik gets to the present pretty quick and warns those about to go underground to keep their hard hats on at all times; to keep their body parts inside the "mantrip," or low rail car they'll be riding; and to stay with the guide.

"I don't want to lose ya," he says. "We actually lost 15 boys yesterday.

"Still lookin' for 'em."

OK, these guys are coal miners, not comedians, but that doesn't mean they don't dig for a few yucks.

Tour guide Bob Black warmly welcomes visitors who might get cold in the 52-degree mine to borrow a sweater from the ragtag collection hanging on a piece of pipe. "We get 'em from the morgue."

Seven-year-old Becka Thomas isn't the only visitor to be a bit nervous. But she's encouraged by her dad, Larry, and 10-year-old brother Jacob, who've come with her from Burgettstown, Washington County. The children's great-grandfather was a miner, and the whole family was riveted by the Quecreek saga.

No amount of television watching or reading could teach them as much about what it was like in that mine as what they are about to do as they squeeze onto a bench seat of the mantrip. Pulled by a small locomotive with Black at the helm, the mantrip leaves warm daylight for cool darkness as it clanks and rattles over about a half-mile down the rough-cut tunnel.

Dad, whose helmet hits the metal ceiling a time or two, manages to fire off a couple of flash pictures. The passage where the car stops is lighted and the ceiling has been raised, but Thomas still has to stoop as Black leads them on a journey of coal mining over the years -- 120 feet below the surface.

They can feel the vibrations as he whacks a pick into the roughly 44-inch-thick seam of black formed hundreds of millions of years ago. When Black offers Jacob the chance to be the first human to touch a piece (Becka: "I'll be the second!"), they can feel its cold crumbliness. They can smell the stony dampness of the entryway and see -- well, hardly anything after Black flicks off the lights and his electric cap lamp and holds up just his safety lamp's flickering flame.

As visitors have been doing since late last month, Thomas asks several questions about Quecreek. Black gives his educated answers complete with sound effects from ear-splitting machinery he periodically fires up, including an older version of the monstrous continuous miner machine that broke into the abandoned mine that flooded Quecreek.

Black even answers the question that thousands of people around the world have wondered: Where do miners go to the bathroom?

"Anywhere you want."

The only water here drips from the low ceiling as the tour circles around -- past the emergency escapeway -- to the waiting mantrip. Then, after another bumpy ride and a total of about half-hour, they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

You might never guess from Becka's and Jacob's smiles that their precious souvenirs are lumps of coal.

The mine is just off Route 28 at 748 Bull Creek Road in Tarentum. It's open from 1 to 4 p.m. every day but Tuesday from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and then weekends -- Fridays through Sundays -- through October. Admission is $7 or $4 for children ages 12 and under (discounted for groups of 25 or more). There is a portion of the mine that is wheelchair-accessible. For more information, visit the Web site www.tour-edmine.com or call 724-224-4720.

Bob Batz Jr. can be reached at bbatz@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1930.