Occasionally Aaron is able to find old mine car wheels in the gob piles that come into his work. Gob is coal that has been rejected and deemed unusable. Big gob piles can be found all throughout WV and they are far from attractive. Aaron's plant is able to take the gob and process it again for electricity. It burns clean and what is left over is a very fine dust or ash. His plant is considered a recycling plant since it uses reject coal. The primary benefit of this clean up effort is that WV streams that where once considered dead or void of life because of run off from the gob piles now have fresh water trout, small mouth bass, and other species of fish thriving in them. The secondary benefit is that the unsightly piles of gob are slowly disappearing from WV.
In the old piles of gob, treasures can be found such as the two mine car wheels that sit in my gardens. The first one, Aaron found several years ago. It is complete and was used between 1899-1902. I believe it has a date stamp on it somewhere but its been awhile since I've seen the bottom side of it. It was the last style of mine car wheel before the mines quit using ponies to pull the cars. 
The second wheel has curved spokes which suggests it is a bit older although I am not certain of the date. This one is also not complete but it still looks beautiful sitting in my money plant.
I have been trying to research mine car wheels to make sure my information matches but I have been unable to find anything. If anyone knows anything about these wheels I'd love to hear what you have to say.
3 comments:
what great little pieces of history to have in your garden!
i discovered a piece of old willow plate in one of our flower beds and wondered how it got there as our house was, until our house was built, just open land going back hundreds of years!
I like those wheels, Jaime, but I had no idea they were so old. How cool is that! You might visit some railroading blogs to ask about them.
They do look pretty!
Old mine car wheels in the gob piles are really useful since it could be use for garden decoration. It really looks so cool and it’s somehow giving a garden a historical look. Now, I just need to think of something on how I could use my old wheel and tire package in my garden.
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