Finally Seth arrived at the mine site. He stopped his truck and surveyed his new home. Most of the buildings had fallen down or the roof had collapsed. The shelter over the mine shaft was still standing. The machine shop and mine office appeared to be standing still and to his surprise their roofs appeared to be in place. He wouldn’t assume they were watertight however. A couple of the other smaller buildings seemed to be more or less in one piece also.
Seth pulled his truck up as close to the covered mine shaft as he could and stopped. He was about 25 feet from the mine office. It was almost noon so he quickly fixed himself a sandwich. Seth began walking around the area while he ate his sandwich and drank a bottle of water. No, he didn’t waste money on store bought water. He had several old milk jugs he filled with water to bring with him. He had no idea if the water coming from the stream beside the mine was safe to drink. One of the things he had to do was get it tested or buy filters to filter his drinking water. Until he did that he would have to boil it for safety.
Seth walked up the stream to where the penstock came out heading toward the mine. He saw it was blocked off and moved the mechanism to see if he could still open it. He finally managed to break the gears loose and watched as water flowed into the diversion. This had been the water used to clean the ore years ago and also to run a small generator for what electricity the mine used. To his surprise there were minimal leaks in the pipe. He closed the gate once again and followed the pipe toward the mine.
When he came to the small generator he tried to turn the water wheel to turn it. It appeared to be frozen. Seth didn’t know if the metal was just rusted together or if the generator itself was seized up. Either way he had some work to do before he had power. If the generator itself was bad he probably didn’t have enough money to repair it.
Seth moved on down the hill to the outlaying buildings. As he suspected most of them were beyond repair. One building, the old general store and bar was still in marginal shape. To his surprise he could even see some shelves and other items inside it. He didn’t try to open the door when he found it to be locked. That could come later. Seth moved on to the machine shop next. It was located beside the flume and generator building.
When Seth came to the machine shop he did force it open. It was a large building, perhaps the size of a basketball court. To Seth’s surprise it was filled with machines. There were lathes, welders, torches and other metal working tools. In the rear of the building was something almost priceless to Seth. There was a D3 Cat dozer sitting just inside a garage bay. There were some other pieces equipment but he didn’t know what they might be. Oh, some of them were obviously mining gear. There were winches, buckets, ore carts and so forth. There was a huge amount of steel beams, pipes and girders as well as some steel plate stacked inside too.
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