Rail trail
A rail trail is the conversion of a disused railway track into a multi-use path for walking and sometimes horse riding and snowmobiling. The characteristics of abandoned railways—flat, long running through historical areas—are appealing for various developments; the term sometimes covers trails running alongside working railways. Some shared trails are segregated, with the segregation achieved without separation. Many rail trails are long-distance trails. A rail trail may still include rails, such as light streetcar. By virtue of their characteristic shape, some shorter rail trails are known as greenways and linear parks; the only carrier to exist in Bermuda folded in 1948 and was converted to a rail trail in 1984. Some of the former right of way has been converted for automobile traffic, but 18 miles are reserved for pedestrian use and bicycles on paved portions; the rail bed spans the length of the island, connected Hamilton to St. George's and several villages, though several bridges are derelict, causing the trail to be fragmented.
The Kettle Valley Rail Trail in British Columbia uses a rail corridor, built for the now-abandoned Kettle Valley Railway. The trail was developed during the 1990s after the Canadian Pacific Railway abandoned train service; the longest rail trail in Canada is the Newfoundland T'Railway that covers a distance of 883 km ). Protected as a linear park under the provincial park system, the T'Railway consists of the railbed of the historic Newfoundland Railway as transferred from its most recent owner, Canadian National Railway, to the provincial government after rail service was abandoned on the island of Newfoundland in 1988; the rail corridor stretches from Channel-Port aux Basques in the west to St. John's in the east with branches to Stephenville, Bonavista and Carbonear. Following the abandonment of the Prince Edward Island Railway in 1989, the government of Prince Edward Island purchased the right-of-way to the entire railway system; the Confederation Trail was developed as a tip-to-tip walking/cycling gravel rail trail which doubles as a monitored and groomed snowmobile trail during the winter months, operated by the PEI Snowmobile Association.
In Quebec, Le P'tit Train du Nord runs 200 km from Saint-Jérôme to Mont-Laurier. In Toronto, there are the Beltline Trail and the West Toronto Railpath. In central Ontario, the former Victoria Railway line, which runs 89 kilometres from the town of Lindsay, north to the village of Haliburton, in Haliburton County, serves as a public recreation trail, it can be used for cross country skiing and snowmobiling in the winter months, walking and horse riding from spring to autumn. The majority of the rail trail passes through sparsely populated areas of the Canadian Shield, with historic trestle bridges crossing several rivers; the old Sarnia Bridge in St. Marys, was re-purposed as part of the Grand Trunk Trail; the former Grand Trunk Railway viaduct was purchased from Canadian National Railway in 1995. The Grand Trunk Trail was opened in 1998 with over 3 km of paved, accessible trail. In 2012, The re-purposing of the Sarnia Bridge was inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame. A railroad between Gateway Road and Raleigh Street in Winnipeg, was turned into a 7 km asphalt trail in 2007.
It is called the Northeast Pioneers Greenway, has plans for expansion into East St. Paul, to Birds Hill Park. A considerable part of the Trans Canada Trail are repurposed defunct rail lines donated to provincial governments by CP and CN rail rebuilt as walking trails; the main section runs along the southern areas of Canada connecting most of Canada's major cities and most populous areas. There is a long northern arm which runs through Alberta to Edmonton and up through northern British Columbia to Yukon; the trail is multi-use and depending on the section may allow hikers, horseback riders, cross country skiers and snowmobilers. In North America, the decades-long consolidation of the rail industry led to the closure of a number of uneconomical branch lines and redundant mainlines; some were maintained as short line railways. The first abandoned rail corridor in the United States converted into a recreational trail was the Elroy-Sparta State Trail in Wisconsin, which opened in 1967; the following year the Illinois Prairie Path opened.
The conversion of rails to trails hastened with the federal government passing legislation promoting the use of railbanking for abandoned railroad corridors in 1983, upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1990; this process preserves rail corridors for possible future rail use with interim use as a trail. By the 1970s main lines were being sold or abandoned; this was true when regional rail lines merged and streamlined their operations. As both the supply of potential trails increased and awareness of the possibilities rose, state governments, conservation authorities, private organizations bought the rail corridors to create, expand or link green spaces; the longest developed rail trail is the 240 miles Katy Trail in Missouri. When complete, the Cowboy Trail in Nebraska will become the longest; the Beltline, in Atlanta, Georgia, is under construction. In 2030, its anticipated year of completion, it will be one of the longest continuous trails; the Atlanta BeltLine is a sustainable redevelopment project that will provide a network of public parks, multi-use trails and transit along a historic 22-mile railroad corridor circling downtown and connecting many neigh
Parking lot
A parking lot or car park known as a car lot, is a cleared area, intended for parking vehicles. The term refers to a dedicated area, provided with a durable or semi-durable surface. In most countries where cars are the dominant mode of transportation, parking lots are a feature of every city and suburban area. Shopping malls, sports stadiums and similar venues feature parking lots of immense area. See multistorey car park. Parking lots tend to be sources of water pollution because of their extensive impervious surfaces. Most existing lots have limited or no facilities to control runoff. Many areas today require minimum landscaping in parking lots to provide shade and help mitigate the extent of which their paved surfaces contribute to heat islands. Many municipalities require a minimum number of parking spaces, depending on the floor area in a store or the number of bedrooms in an apartment complex. In the United States, each state's Department of Transportation sets the proper ratio for disabled spaces for private business and public parking lots.
Various forms of technology are used to charge motorists for the use of a parking lot. Modern parking lots use a variety of technologies to help motorists find unoccupied parking spaces, retrieve their vehicles, improve their experience. In North America, parking minimums are requirements, as dictated by a municipality's zoning ordinance, for all new developments to provide a set number off-street parking spots; these minimums look to cover the demand for parking generated by said development at the peak times. Thus different land uses, whether they be commercial, residential or industrial, have different requirements to meet when deriving the number of parking spots needed. U. S. urban planners use Parking Generation Rates, a guidebook of statistical data from the Institution of Transportation Engineers, to source parking minimums. In these reports, the ITE define a type of land use's Parking Generation through an observational study. Parking Generation is statistically found by land use's, average generation rate, the range of generation rates, the subsequent standard deviation, the total number of studies.
To determine the parking generation rate of a building the ITE divides the peak parking observed by the floor area per 1000 square feet. This process is done by various studies to find the range. In the case of ITE studies, the observation of a single site multiple times is considered a stand-alone study; the average of the range is used to determine the average parking generation rate of a land use. This handbook is updated every 5 years to determine the demand for parking for specific land uses. Parking Generation Rates provided by the ITE doesn’t explicitly state what parking minimums should be, but rather is just a collection of statistical data for urban planners to interpret and use for at their own volition. Regardless, ITE's Parking Generation has been an influential factor In most North American cities in the adoption parking ratios, according to land use, to determine the minimum spots required by new developments. Parking Generation, regardless of its widespread use in North American cities, is disputed as a tool to determine parking minimums due to its questionable statistical validity.
Statistical significance is a major qualm with Parking Generations due to the oversimplification of how the parking generation rate is derived. Peak parking observed by ITE doesn’t take into account the price of parking in relation to the number of parked cars, thus the demand at any given time for parking is always high because it is oversupplied and underpriced. Thus the calculation for the parking generation rate of a land use. Adoption of parking minimums by municipalities, base on ratios from Parking Generation had a substantial effect on urban form; this can be seen in the lack of density characterized by the suburbanization of North America post-World War II. The growth of the car industry and car culture, in general, has much to do with the mass movement of the middle-class away from urban centers and exterior of the city in single family detached homes; as populations grew and density dissipated automobiles became the main mode of transportation. Thus insuring that new developments insured off-street park became a necessity.
Parking minimums are set for parallel, pull-in, or diagonal parking, depending on what types of vehicles are allowed to park in the lot or a particular section of it. Parking minimums took hold in the middle of the last century, as a way to ensure that traffic to new developments wouldn't use up existing spaces. Big cars may not fit properly in assigned parking spaces, creating issues with entering or leaving the car or blocking adjacent parking spaces. In Europe, parking maximums are more common; as a condition of planning permission for a new development, the development must be designed so that a minimum percentage of visitors arrive by public transport. The number of parking places in the development is limited to a number less than the expected number of visitors; the effect of large scale parking in-city has long been contentious. Elimination of historic structures in favor of garages or lots led to historical preservation movements in many cities; the acreage devoted to parking is seen as disrupting a walkable urban fabric, maximizing convenience to each individual building, but eliminating foot traffic among them.
Large paved areas have been called "parking craters", "parking deserts", similar terms, emphasizing their "depopulated" nature and the barriers they can create to walking movement. Due to a recent trend towards more livable and walkable communities, parking minimums (policies requiring each building to have at least a minimum numbe
1940 United States Census
The Sixteenth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 132,164,569, an increase of 7.3 percent over the 1930 population of 123,202,624 people. The census date of record was April 1, 1940. A number of new questions were asked including where people were 5 years before, highest educational grade achieved, information about wages; this census introduced sampling techniques. Other innovations included a field test of the census in 1939; this was the first census in which every state had a population greater than 100,000. The 1940 census collected the following information: In addition, a sample of individuals were asked additional questions covering age at first marriage and other topics. Full documentation on the 1940 census, including census forms and a procedural history, is available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Following completion of the census, the original enumeration sheets were microfilmed; as required by Title 13 of the U.
S. Code, access to identifiable information from census records was restricted for 72 years. Non-personally identifiable information Microdata from the 1940 census is available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Aggregate data for small areas, together with electronic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. On April 2, 2012—72 years after the census was taken—microfilmed images of the 1940 census enumeration sheets were released to the public by the National Archives and Records Administration; the records are indexed only by enumeration district upon initial release. Official 1940 census website 1940 Census Records from the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration 1940 Federal Population Census Videos, training videos for enumerators at the U. S. National Archives Selected Historical Decennial Census Population and Housing Counts from the U. S. Census Bureau Snow, Michael S. "Why the huge interest in the 1940 Census?"
CNN. Monday April 9, 2012. 1941 U. S Census Report Contains 1940 Census results 1940 Census Questions Hosted at CensusFinder.com
Playground
A playground, playpark, or play area is a place designed to enable children to play there. It is outdoors. While a playground is designed for children, some target other age groups. Berlin's Preußenpark for example is designed for people aged 70 or higher. A playground might exclude children below a certain age. Modern playgrounds have recreational equipment such as the seesaw, merry-go-round, slide, jungle gym, chin-up bars, spring rider, trapeze rings and mazes, many of which help children develop physical coordination and flexibility, as well as providing recreation and enjoyment and supporting social and emotional development. Common in modern playgrounds are play structures. Playgrounds also have facilities for playing informal games of adult sports, such as a baseball diamond, a skating arena, a basketball court, or a tether ball. Public playground equipment refers to equipment intended for use in the play areas of parks, childcare facilities, multiple family dwellings, restaurants and recreational developments, other areas of public use.
In some parts of the United States, the term tot lot may be used. A type of playground called a playscape is designed to provide a safe environment for play in a natural setting. Through history, children played in their villages and neighbourhoods in the streets and lanes near their homes. In the 19th century, developmental psychologists such as Friedrich Fröbel proposed playgrounds as a developmental aid, or to imbue children with a sense of fair play and good manners. In Germany, a few playgrounds were erected in connection to schools, the first purpose-built public-access playground was opened in a park in Manchester, England in 1859. However, it was only in the early 20th century, as the street lost its role as the default public space and became reserved for use by motor cars, that momentum built to remove children from the new dangers and confine them to segregated areas to play. In the United States, organisations such as the National Highway Protective Society highlighted the numbers killed by automobiles, urged the creation of playgrounds, aiming to free streets for vehicles rather than children's play.
The Outdoor Recreation League provided funds to erect playgrounds on parkland following the 1901 publication of a report on numbers of children being run down by cars in New York City. In tandem with the new concern about the danger of roads, educational theories of play, including by Herbert Spencer and John Dewey inspired the emergence of the reformist playground movement, which argued that playgrounds had educational value, improved attention in class, enhanced physical health, reduced truancy. Interventionist programs such as by the child savers sought to move children into controlled areas to limit'delinquency'. Meanwhile, at schools and settlement houses for poorer children with limited access to education, health services and daycare, playgrounds were included to support these institutions' goal of keeping children safe and out of trouble. One of the first playgrounds in the United States was built in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1887. In 1906 the Playground Association of America was founded and a year Luther Gulick became president.
It became the National Recreation Association and the National Recreation and Park Association. Urging the need for playgrounds, former President Theodore Roosevelt stated in 1907: City streets are unsatisfactory playgrounds for children because of the danger, because most good games are against the law, because they are too hot in summer, because in crowded sections of the city they are apt to be schools of crime. Neither do small back yards nor ornamental grass plots meet the needs of any but the small children. Older children who would play vigorous games must have places set aside for them; this means that they must be distributed over the cities in such a way as to be within walking distance of every boy and girl, as most children can not afford to pay carfare. In post war London the landscape architect and children's rights campaigner Lady Allen of Hurtwood introduced and popularised the concept of the ’junk playground’ - where the equipment was constructed from the recycled junk and rubble left over from the Blitz.
She campaigned for facilities for children growing up in the new high-rise developments in Britain's cities and wrote a series of illustrated books on the subject of playgrounds, at least one book on adventure playgrounds, spaces for free creativity by children, which helped the idea spread worldwide. Playgrounds were an integral part of urban culture in the USSR. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were playgrounds in every park in many Soviet cities. Playground apparatus was reasonably standard all over the country; some of the most common constructions were the carousel, seesaw, bridge, etc. Playground design is influenced by audience. Separate play areas might be offered to accommodate young children. Single, open parks tend to not to be used by older schoolgirls or less aggressive children, because there is little opportunity for them to escape more aggressive children. By contrast, a park that offers multiple play areas is used by boys and girls. Professionals recognize that the social skills that children develop on the playground become lifelong skill sets that are carried forward into their adulthood.
Independent research concludes that p
Illinois
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product, the sixth largest population, the 25th largest land area of all U. S. states. Illinois is noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, natural resources such as coal and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population; the Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports.
Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, located in the central part of the state. Although today's Illinois' largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled the vast Mississippi of the Illinois Country of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan. John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal made transportation between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley faster and cheaper, new railroads carried immigrants to new homes in the country's west and shipped commodity crops to the nation's east. The state became a transportation hub for the nation. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars; the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in the state, including Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago, the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is now recognized as a global alpha-level city. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was born and raised in the state.
Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln, displayed on its license plates since 1954. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois Native Americans, a name, spelled in many different ways in the early records. American scholars thought the name "Illinois" meant "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois; this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for "man" is ireniwa, plural of "man" is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has been said to mean "tribe of superior men", a false etymology; the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa - "he speaks the regular way". This was taken into the Ojibwe language in the Ottawa dialect, modified into ilinwe·.
The French borrowed these forms, changing the /we/ ending to spell it as -ois, a transliteration for its pronunciation in French of that time. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area; the Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans; the Koster Site demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, they built an urban complex of more than 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre plaza larger than 35 football fields, a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound, the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide, covers 13.8 acres. It contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth, it was topped by a structure thought to have measured about 105 feet in length and 48 feet in width, covered an area 5,000 square feet, been as much as 50 feet high, making its peak 150 feet above the level of the pl
World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Coal mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, since the 1880s, has been used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine a pit, the above-ground structures the pit head. In Australia, "colliery" refers to an underground coal mine. In the United States, "colliery" has been used to describe a coal mine operation but nowadays the word is not used. Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunnelling and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, conveyors, hydraulic jacks and shearers. Small-scale mining of surface deposits dates back thousands of years. For example, in Roman Britain, the Romans were exploiting most of the major coalfields by the late 2nd century AD.
The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the 18th century and spread to continental Europe and North America, was based on the availability of coal to power steam engines. International trade expanded when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and steamships; until the late nineteenth century coal was mined underground using a pick and shovel, children were employed underground in dangerous conditions. Coal-cutting machines were introduced in the 1880s. By 1912, surface mining was conducted with steam shovels designed for coal mining; the most economical method of coal extraction from coal seams depends on the depth and quality of the seams, the geology and environmental factors. Coal mining processes are differentiated by whether they operate on the underground. Many coals extracted from both surface and underground mines require washing in a coal preparation plant. Technical and economic feasibility are evaluated based on the following: regional geological conditions.
Surface mining and deep underground mining are the two basic methods of mining. The choice of mining method depends on depth, density and thickness of the coal seam. Coal that occurs at depths of 180 to 300 ft are deep mined, but in some cases surface mining techniques can be used. For example, some western U. S. coal that occur at depths in excess of 200 ft are mined by the open pit methods, due to thickness of the seam 60–90 feet. Coals occurring below 300 ft are deep mined. However, there are open pit mining operations working on coal seams up to 1,000–1,500 feet below ground level, for instance Tagebau Hambach in Germany; when coal seams are near the surface, it may be economical to extract the coal using open cut mining methods. Open cast coal mining recovers a greater proportion of the coal deposit than underground methods, as more of the coal seams in the strata may be exploited; this equipment can include the following: Draglines which operate by removing the overburden, power shovels, large trucks in which transport overburden and coal, bucket wheel excavators, conveyors.
In this mining method, explosives are first used in order to break through the surface or overburden, of the mining area. The overburden is removed by draglines or by shovel and truck. Once the coal seam is exposed, it is drilled and mined in strips; the coal is loaded onto large trucks or conveyors for transport to either the coal preparation plant or directly to where it will be used. Most open cast mines in the United States extract bituminous coal. In Canada and South Africa, open cast mining is used for both thermal and metallurgical coals. In New South Wales open casting for steam coal and anthracite is practiced. Surface mining accounts for around 80 percent of production in Australia, while in the US it is used for about 67 percent of production. Globally, about 40 percent of coal production involves surface mining. Strip mining exposes coal by removing earth above each coal seam; this earth is removed in long strips. The overburden from the first strip is deposited in an area outside the planned mining area and referred to as out-of-pit dumping.
Overburden from subsequent strips are deposited in the void left from mining the coal and overburden from the previous strip. This is referred to as in-pit dumping, it is necessary to fragment the overburden by use of explosives. This is accomplished by drilling holes into the overburden, filling the holes with explosives, detonating the explosive; the overburden is removed, using large earth-moving equipment, such as draglines and trucks, excavator and trucks, or bucket-wheels and conveyors. This overburden is put into the mined strip; when all the overburden is removed, the underlying coal seam will be exposed. This block of coal may be drilled and blasted or otherwise loaded onto trucks or conveyors for transport to th
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