![]() Today, after a long silence, Armstrong owns three draglines: one that’s now operating at their Midway Surface mine, one that’s about to go into operation at their under-development Equality Surface mine, and a mate that’s being rebuilt to join it. The newly created entity, named after Hord Armstrong, infused with capital from east coast financiers and piloted in many respects by long time Peabody Energy veteran Kenny Allen and independent mine engineer David Cobb, early on assessed their reserves and collectively determined that the time had returned to fire up a few more of those draglines and put them into action once again. As the coal markets have returned, so have many of the former economic rules and calculations. It doesn’t hurt too that western Kentucky has a large indigenous coal burn as well. Constrained demand in Central Appalachia and even Northern Appalachia has a few utilities buying along the river. Today, with utilities increasingly installing advanced pollution controls on power plants up and down the Ohio River Valley, demand for Illinois Basin coal has started to rebound. ![]() They also divested themselves of much of their interest in the reserves and operations that would become Armstrong Coal Co. Formerly one of the largest producers and reserve holders in the region, Peabody spun off much of their holdings into what has now become Patriot Coal. ![]() The rest sat, rusting, giant steel sculpts to a by-gone era.Īs markets transitioned in the 1990s, most of the major players in the western Kentucky coalfields such as Andalex, Zeigler, P&M, and Peabody disappeared along with the draglines. Though of differing parentage, all of them by default fell under the ownership of the growing Alliance Resources LP, but only one had turned a wheel in ages. Eventually just five draglines were left in the area. Over time many were scrapped, sent in pieces to other mines, shipped overseas or wherever a home could be found. Over the decades most of the large surface mineable tracts were exploited, and with coal prices and demand for Illinois Basin coal falling throughout the 1990s, one after another, the draglines became extinct. Peabody Energy, Pittsburg & Midway (P&M), the Badget Brothers, and others employed a variety of shovels and walking draglines to remove the overburden from relatively shallow coal seams. From the mid-1960s through the late 1980s, surface mining boomed throughout the region. Similar to mechanical dinosaurs, these towering machines, some among the largest ever constructed, were emblematic of the scale and import of the area’s healthy coal industry. A generation ago, now maybe two, the rolling hills of western Kentucky reverberated with the rumbles of many great mining machines.
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