I heard the last boss I had at the quarry had guys stop by and be looking for, well I say a paycheck as they sure didn't want a job! He would take them on a "tour" of the quarry pointing things out they would say "No thanks!" and leave. And this was a fairly "new" plant as 99.9% of it was built since 1968. I would have loved to see their faces if they could have see the old plant in the next town over where dad started and I spent a year working in 1969! That place I think was in operation at least as early as the 1920's. Often wish I could have had a video camera to document that place.
Anyone familiar with bucket lines? Try shoveling spillage into a bucket line(elevator) with 30 inch wide buckets shooting past one every second or less, Oh and there was a short wall about 3 feet away from those buckets whizzing by you. And that was just the largest of the three at the bottom of that mill you had to keep clean! One good thing about that job was almost never had anyone come and bother you and there was an old shed under there where they stored spare V-belts you could hide in as long as the spillage piles weren't too big. Actually kept busy sorting out and winding up the belts for something to do at times!
Had to do some digging but found a picture in an old book of mine of a small bucket elevator:
Just picture that with 30 inch wide buckets zipping past you as you shoveled spillage in to those buckets, that looks like the small one just to the left of the 30 inch one so that added a bit more fun to the job! Worst time was when the 30 inch line stalled and the back-stop on it also failed so three stories of buckets can back down and left the stone for us to shovel by hand once it was running again. Skid-steers this was before anyone really knew what those were. Smallest thing they had was a 966B and that would hardly reach any of that stone.
