Filbert No. 2 Mine & Coke Works  (ca.1916-1950's),
Located on the Monongahela Valley Railroad, at Fairbanks / Filbert, Redstone Twp., Fayette Co., PA
Owners: (ca.1916-1957), H.C. Frick Coke Company, Scottdale, PA

A spur line of the Monongahela Valley Railroad served the Filbert Mine & Coke Works and the repair shops.  Among the mine buildings still standing, the hoist house is the most impressive.  It is a one-story building with common-bond brick walls, a steel frame, and a gable roof.  Near the hoist house is the one-story lamp house, a small brick building, and the slate house, a tall one-story brick building.

Underground, near the Filbert Mine vertical mine shaft, U.S. Steel installed a rotary mine car dumper in 1927 to serve the conveyor system that transported the coal to the coal loading docks at the Palmer Mine; the dumper was removed in 1957 when U.S. Steel ceased operating the rotary mine car dump and the coal loading dock at Palmer on the Monongahela River.

The Palmer Coal Docks, built in 1927 on the Monongahela River, was linked to the development at the Filbert Mine of a large underground rotary mine car dumper.  Daily coal production capability was 5,000 tons of coal in ca.1928. The rotary mine car dumper had a capacity of thirty-two mine cars and served not only the Filbert Mine, but was also linked underground with the mines at Lambert, Footedale, Buffington, and Ralph.  Coal was transported underground from these mines to the rotary mine car dumper, where it was into hoppers and then deposited on a conveyor, and carried by underground conveyor nearly 2.9 miles to the Palmer Coal Docks.  This system remained in operation until June, 1957, when U.S. Steel closed the mines and Palmer Coal Docks.  Nothing remains of the Palmer Coal Docks, reportedly once the largest river coal docks in the United State.

Also in the late 1950's, when U.S. Steel abandoned the Filbert Mine, U.S. Steel removed the steel headframe tipple serving the Filbert Mine.

The stable, a large one-story brick building located near the entrance to the repair shops is perhaps the oldest building on the site.

The boiler house is a tall one-story brick building with a steel frame and a gable roof.  A trestle extends to a coal hopper, attached to the building, where coal was unloaded for use in the boilers.

One other large building, the electric repair shop, stands on the site.  It is a steel-frame structure with metal siding which was moved to Filbert from the U.S. Steel's Everson Repair Shops in 1987.  The machinery in the machine shops is currently, ca.1990, being sold and includes lathes, boring mills, and grinders, dating from the 1930's through the 1950's.

South of the Filbert Repair Shops are the towns of Filbert No. 1 and Filbert No. 2, which were built by the H.C. Frick Coke Company to house the employees working at the Filbert Mine & Coke Works and Filbert Repair Shops.  Filbert No. 1 is the larger and most eastern of the two towns, the town with which the company store was first associated.  In its opening year, ca.1909, the company built seventy-eight double frame houses and seven single frame houses at Filbert No. 1 and Filbert No. 2.  In both coal patch towns the company built an additional ten double frame houses and eight single frame houses in 1917.

The Union Supply Company Store, built around ca.1909, is a two-story building in good condition, standing in the Valley between Filbert No. 1 and Filbert No. 2, it contains brick walls and a flat roof.  The main facade has three bays, and one-over-one-light, double-hung sash windows.

Located nearby, the vertical shaft for the Filbert Mine eventually reached a depth of 540 feet.  The Filbert Mine encompassed 3,063 acres of assigned coal, the principal vein of Pittsburg Coal was 7.2 inches thick.

In 1912, H.C. Frick Coke Company had 280 employees at the Filbert Mine & Coke Works and Filbert Repair Shops.  The mine produced 252,196 tons of coal in that year.

Initially, coal from the Filbert Mines, as with most of the H.C. Frick Coke Company mines in the county, was coked locally at the Filbert Coke Works, and shipped to the region's steel mills via the Monongahela Valley Railroad and the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad.

But with U.S. Steel's 1920's shift from local coking of coal, the Filbert Coke Works was abandoned and Filbert Mine switched to the conveyance of coal to river docks along the Monongahela River, and then for shipment to Clairton Coke Works, in Clairton, PA.  Filbert Mine coal  was sent via underground tunnels to the Palmer Coal Docks, on the Monongahela River, at Palmer, Fayette Co., PA.  The Palmer Coal Docks, built in 1927, was linked with the development at Filbert Mine of a large underground rotary mine car dumper.  Daily coal production capability was 5,000 tons of coal in ca.1928. The rotary dumper had a capacity of thirty-two mine cars and served not only the Filbert Mine, but was also linked underground with the mines at Lambert, Footedale, Buffington, and Ralph.  Coal was transported underground from these mines to the rotary mine car dumper, where it was dumped into hoppers and then deposited on a conveyor, and carried underground nearly 2.9 miules to the Palmer Coal Docks.  This system remained in operation until June, 1957, when U.S. Steel closed the mines and coal dock.  Nothing remains of the Palmer Coal Docks, reportedly once the largest river coal docks in the United States.

Filbert Repair Shops
Although U.S. Steel abandoned the Filbert Mine in the late 1950's, the Filbert Repair Shops were enlarged when U.S. Steel consolidated its mine car and equipment repairs for its Fayette County Mines at the Filbert Repair Shops.  U.S. Steel closed its repair shop at nearby Ralph and brought some of the machinery and equipment to the Filbert Repair Shops.  The Filbert Shops handled the repair of mine cars, cutter heads, locomotives, conveyors, hydraulic equipment, and electric motors, which were brought to the shops by truck.  When U.S. Steel closed the Filbert Repair Shops in 1989, only eight men were employed at the Filbert Repair Shops.

(History and description of the Filbert Mines & Coke Works and repair shops, adapted from "Fayette County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1990,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

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