Handy retirees bring a decrepit mine car back from the dead
When West Overton Village & Museums reopens for the season in May, it will unveil to the public a piece of long dormant local history, recently restored.
Museum conservator and docent Doug Plance and Scott Rubright, both retirees and Murrysville residents, devoted more than 100 hours of labor to a 2-ton mine car.
The car, which sat outside the East Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, museum for approximately 40 years, will be a highlight of the upcoming “Forging Ahead and Falling Behind” exhibit,set to open on June 9.
Mr. Rubright previously created a replica mine car for display in Export.
The two men, neighbors and friends, are acquainted with numerous tradespeople, Mr. Plance said.
“We picked their brains,” he said.
They disassembled the car and Mr. Rubright made drawings.
“We ended up with a pile of iron and wood and a drawing,” Mr. Plance said.
The two salvaged all they could; museum CEO Jessica Kadie-Barclay’s 10-year-old son, John, found a chain from the car buried on the property by using a metal detector.
Last November, Mr. Rubright, his son and grandson hauled the badly damaged car to his garage.
On Feb. 28, the car was reconstructed inside the museum, where it is ready for visitors to examine.
History unclear
Although there is speculation the car could have come from the former Shafton Mine, near Irwin, its original location cannot be documented, museum officials said.
“People with good intentions donate things to museums,” Mr. Plance said.
“We are lucky it was not vandalized,” he added.
Aaron Hollis, the museum’s education director, said his organization has no record of the artifact.
“As far as we can tell it was sitting outside for over 40 years. Our site never did any interpretation of it,” he said.
He estimates the car’s era to be early 20th century.
Such cars had “hard lives,” Mr. Plance said. They might have been pulled by dogs, horses, mules, eventually electric motor power, and their broken or worn pieces would have been replaced froma “boneyard” pile.
Even as technology improved, it would not necessarily have been immediately utilized by smaller Appalachian industries, Mr. Hollis said.
“I knew this was sitting there and we had this exhibit coming up,” he said.
He told Mr. Plance he would like to have the car restored.
“And I said, ‘ As a matter of fact, I know a guy,’” Mr. Plance added.
Crafting a car
While about 90 to 95% of the wheels and iron parts remained, they were rusted and had to be sandblasted and painted.
Most of the car’s wood had to be fabricated.
The car was taken apart, with Mr. Rubright documenting the process with photos.
“At the end of the day we had a pile of parts,” he said.
Mr. Rubright ordered hemlock from an Amish lumberyard, and seasoned it in his garage, to replace the car’s sides and bottom.
He also fabricated a display stand for the museum.
Each piece was cut, stained and tagged for future re-assembly if necessary, Mr. Rubright said.
“We put the puzzle back together,” he said.
“Scott was very generous in his costs, and we are grateful,” Mr. Hollis said.
Hiring an architectural firm to renovate the car would have been adversely expensive, he said.
“I build furniture. I enjoy working with my hands. We have plenty of time to do it and get it right,” Mr. Rubright said.
“You really can’t charge what it’s worth. But we had fun,didn’t we, Doug?” he said.
“We certainly did,” Mr. Plance said, grinning.
Highlight of region’s past
“Forging Ahead and Falling Behind” will focus on 19th-century industrialization, Mr. Hollis said.
When the Henry Overholt family moved to the site in 1803, it was a farm. By 1840, Mr. Hollis said, it was becoming a town, with a grist mill, distilleryand coke ovens.
“This exhibit is about those industries, and more specifically about the nonOverholts,” he said.
“We’ve never talked about those people before. In the 1880s, as many as 500 people were living here,” Mr. Hollis added.
The property held about 50 buildings, including homes, a post office, school and church, he said.
Just as now, with advances from self-checkout markets to self-serve gasoline pumps eliminating some jobs, increased automation of industries, including farming and coal mining, also impacted laborers’ lives more than a century ago, he noted.
“We are inviting visitors
to understand the
experiences of people in the 1800s,” Mr. Hollis said.
The exhibit includes a restored 5½-story grain bin and a general store. A ledger from the original store shows more than 100 items, from building supplies to tea and whiskey to clothing.
The coal car, Mr. Hollis said,is one of the few items the historical site has that show something the village’s workersactually would have used.
“I think we were quickly running out of time. I’m glad we could preserve and save it. It’s an attention-grabbing, exciting piece for the exhibit I think people can really appreciate,” he said.
Visit westovertonvillage.org.
Mary Pickels is a freelance writer: marypickels@gmail.com and on Twitter @mary_pickels.
Right: The condition the more than 100-year-old mine car was in last year.