Even though this is a Chicago area mine, there are some interesting facts

http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/coal_ ... #topofmine

2 of the facts are
Coal underlies 458,600 square miles of the United States, about 13% of the country's land area

and

one ton of bituminous coal equals equals 4 barrels of oil

yeah the coal mine exhibit at the chicago museum of science and industry is really nice.

a good second runner up is the mining exhibit at the deutsches museum in munich, germany:

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhib ... on/mining/

i've been to both and i remember being surprised at how familiar and realistic they look. now if i could only remember where i saw a real coal mine....


john

_________________
-Thou shalt not little vein-

Haven't been to either exhibits, but they would probably be pretty interesting. So I assume they have a mock up of a mine at the museum? Done right it could look decently realistic.

Miner Greg

Damn it John I was in Munchen a week ago!

_________________
This ain't longwall... this is long hole!

this is a cool museum.....

http://www.ncm.org.uk/museum_history.asp

its called caphouse colliery and the guided tour actualy goes down the shaft and around the higher passages of the mine...no false tunnels here,this museum has a two pronged reason for existance firstly its the last coal mine in england that you can saftley decend on a tour and secondly they have to keep the pumps running all the time to stop the mine flooding and also keep mine water from bursting out of old adit levels, the pumped water goes through reed beds to be purified, all the machinary is in situe along with the lancashire boilers and original steam winder.
the staft is wound now by a kope winder powered by electric. unfortunatly as with 90% of british mines its very gassy so cameras are prohibited contraband so i cant post any underground pics.

Wow, that is pretty neat. Too bad the mine is gassious, that might be an interesting mine to have photos of. I would guess for insurance reasons, they can't allow anything that is not permissible. As a result you are probably using miner grade wheat lamps and so forth. So the pumps are running for keeping the tour dry, or are they running because of flooding reasons?

Miner Greg

I've been to the Chicago museum's coal mine exhibit, many times in the 1970s. Very well done as I remember, by far my favorite part of the museum, but what do I know I was just a kid then.