Washington County
Five people on a mine four tenths of a mile out
The Ostop/Schneider mine works crushed stone with five people on the books at Mine Safety and Health Administration, and it sits 0.40 miles from the centre of this place. That is a small crew and it is effectively in the village.
What follows is about the ground around it rather than about a cluster of workings.
Ten miles from here reaches into West Virginia
That circle does not stay in one state. Within 10 miles the National Bridge Inventory records 174 structures, 166 of them Pennsylvania’s and eight West Virginia’s, so the road environment is read from both files rather than from this state alone.
The lowest that clears the commercial floor is 12.7 tonnes, about 14.0 US tons, set by a structure 8.89 miles out, which admits roughly 1.7 tonnes of stone over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump. That is a crossing a loaded truck can reach and not pass.
Hard roads, but only one office to ask
Those restricted crossings are mostly one authority’s. Washington County maintains 104 bridges of its own against a small township share, and 40 of them are coded posted for load — so unusually for this state the county figure really is the local road environment.
That cuts both ways and the second half is the good half. Many restricted crossings with a cap a loaded truck can actually reach is a route constraint and a load constraint at once, and with the nearest of them 0.98 miles out it starts early. It ages running gear ahead of structure.
But because the county owns the bridges, an operator here deals mainly with one posting authority rather than a different township every few miles. Hard roads, simple permitting.
Three states inside thirteen miles
Those bridge files are a hint at the wider shape. West it is the Ohio valley steel country: the Weirton acid regeneration plant about 9.2 miles and the Weirton Steel yard about 11.8 miles, both in West Virginia, and the Coil yard about 11.1 miles.
Carry on west and it is Ohio — the Steubenville yard about 12.1 miles at Mingo Junction, the two Mingo yards about 12.5 and 12.8 miles, and the Gould yard about 13.4 miles.
East and north-east stays in Pennsylvania: the Westland yard about 8.3 miles south-east, the Amrox plant at Allenport about 9.5 miles south-east, and the two Pittsburgh airport installations about 13.0 miles north-east at Carnot-Moon.
With a 12.7-tonne cap on the binding crossing, a truck from this ground carried part loads wherever that crossing fell on the route. That ages springs, hoist and pins before the engine, and the odometer usually reads low against the work done.
- Common this close to the line, and not a problem. Tell us where the truck is and where the title is.
Across the 8.3 miles to the Westland yard and the 11.8 miles to Weirton Steel they turn up steadily.