The company that helped create the American Industrial Revolution is back
The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company is back. Contrary to the rumors of its demise forty years ago in the book, The Death of a Great Company, LC&N is alive and well and living in Coaldale.
Part 3 The Greenwood Breaker Renovation
LC&N’s No. 14 coal preparation plant, known as the Greenwood Breaker in Tamaqua, is midway through a multi-million dollar renovation. And while this facility, LC&N’s only remaining coal processing plant is closed during the refurbishment, the company is only able to sell raw coal. It hopes the rebuilt processing plant will be operational by February 2007.
It was once the site of the #10 Greenwood Colliery, built in 1904. In the early 1960s, the Greenwood Company rented the coal lands and constructed the steel-structured breaker. As the remaining breakers were taken down, the No. 14 was the only breaker remaining in the Panther Valley. After the new LC&N took over the breaker in 1989, it made upgrades to its process units in 1990.
In the late 1990s, LC&N recognized that the No. 14 Breaker was obsolete. It required excessive maintenance, a large crew to operate, had significant downtime, was not up to environmental demands, and was not the right system for processing coal silt. Times had changed; the breaker was designed for producing coal nuggets up to six inches while the market had come to require nuggets no larger than three inches.
Tom Lynott - LC&N’s Breaker Superintendent is in charge of the breaker renovations. Lynott has been a coal miner since he started in 1984, driving dozer and drills at a Centralia strip mine. He came to LC&N in 1991, two years after it was reborn, and worked in the lab at the Greenwood Breaker, before becoming a second shift repair foreman for five years.
First out, the new Greenwood facility will not be a breaker. It will be a processing plant. The breaking of the coal now takes place at the strip mine, using portable equipment. The Greenwood Processing Plant will efficiently remove wood and stones, then separate the coal into various sizes from “stove” at 2-7/16 to #5 at 35 mesh – almost a powder.”
“In the past, we discarded minus 100 mesh,” Lynott explained. “In the new plant, this will feed into a belt press system to produce a product to sell to a cogeneration plant in a future market.”
LC&N currently has 60 employees—22 union and 40 salaried. The Greenwood plant is planned to process 300 tons per hour with eight men on two 10-hour shifts.
The amount of coal on LC&N lands is enough to last for generations. They are digging at #99 pit while working off the piles of silt that have accumulated for over a century. They have also located coal veins under the silt piles.
The world demands energy and Northeastern Pennsylvania anthracite is a part of the solution. With its new structure, modern breaker, and a management team that is willing to work with the communities, LC&N has hopes to live up to the reputation of its namesake as, “The Great Company.”
