Dgwphotos

The railroad was an important part of the mining operations and the town of Newcastle, as it was at other coal mining operations in the state. It provided the important function of transporting the coal to the market, and the connection to the outside world. Orginally built as the Seattle and Walla Walla, it was Seattle's first railroad and eventually connected all of the coal mining communities in King County, including Franklin, Black Diamond, and Renton. It later became the Columbia and Puget Sound, then the Pacific Coast Railroad, reflecting its purchase by the Pacific Coast Company. This is all that remains of the turntable which was used to turn locomotives at the Coal Creek end of the railroad, just a concrete pad with some bolt sticking out of it. There was another larger turntable at the Seattle end of the railroad. These are the footings that supported the bunker which was used to load coal cars to transport the coal to Seattle. This concrete foundation supported a large ...

While surveying for the Roslyn IR project, I stopped at the Roslyn Museum (which was closed, unfortunately) and took a few photos of the mining equipment. I finally found the roll of film that I took with the fisheye and had it processed. This is the mining locomotive that is exhibited outside, leading a trip (the mining equivalent of a train) of mine carts and other cars used for coal mining. The mining locomotive hauled coal carts underground. Originally, they used mules for this duty. This is a man trip cart, which was used between shifts in the coal mine to lower the miners into the mine. The seats are angled so that the miners would be sitting upright while the cart traveled down the main slope of the mine, which was sloped along the angle of the coal seam. This flag is in front of the mining equipment. This memorial honors fallen coal miners and is located in front of the former Northwest Improvment Company store, just down the street from the Museum.

The town of Newcastle was orginally located near the current Newcastle Nursery, east of the present town, where the original mine was located. The town later moved up the Coal Creek canyon to what is now the Red Town Trailhead of Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The area had been previously known as Coal Creek, but became Newcastle when the Post Office moved from the old town site. Red Town was a neighborhood where the houses were all painted red. Other neighborhoods were were known as Rainbow Town and Finn Town. Some of the houses came from Franklin, when that town was abandoned. The town disappeared when the major mining operations shut down in the 1920's and 30's. This dam provided water for the town site from a small creek known as Red Town Creek. Wooden planks that formed part of the dam can still be seen at the base of the water. This foundation supported an electrical dynamo that provided electricity for the town and the mines. It is located in the back yard of a ...

Newcastle, as it's name implies (taken from the City of Newcastle on Tyne, the famed coal mining city in England), was another important coal mining town in the early history of Washington State. The town was second only to Black Diamond in coal production in the state. Coal was mined in the region from the 1880's until 1963, though large scale production ended in the 1930's. Like Black Diamond and Franklin, it was a company town, orignally owned by the Oregon Improvement Company, which also owned Franklin (Black Diamond was founded by the Black Diamond Coal Company, which had previously mined near Nortonville, CA, before moving to the Pacific Northwest), which later sold both towns to the Pacific Coast Company when OIC went bankrupt. PCC also owned Black Diamond. The coal mining area is now largely a part of King County's Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The Ford Slope Mine was the largest producer of the Newcastle area, and operated from 1906 to 1926. The shaft...

I was able to get up to Roslyn the weekend before Memorial day and shoot a roll of HIE . Unfortunatly, I lost half the roll to sandwiching during the processing, so I was only able to print a few shots from the roll. This is some type of coal processing machinery at the site of the #3 mine, near Ronald. I'm hoping that I can head up again on Monday to try to redo some of the lost shots, as well as some areas that I wasn't able to reach. It depends on whether I'm able to finish my final project for my photo class on Saturday (which is looking good on the progress), however.

I'm considering expanding the IR project that started with Franklin to Roslyn, WA, another coal mining town two miles west of Cle Elum. I went up there today to survey the mining sites with my FM and new 24-135 Tamron and a roll of Ilford HP5+. I think I should have some interesting results, mostly of mining equipment at the museum (which was closed, unfortunately). I also used my Lomographic Fisheye, which is a fixed lens circular fisheye camera. It produces interesting results if the conditions are right, but it tends to be a grab bag, as it has almost no control. The conditions were good today, nice and sunny, which is when it tends to work well. I should have photos by the end of the week from both.

Franklin is a ghost town just east of Black Diamond, WA, built to mine coal in the Green River Gorge. The town was abandoned in the 1920's, and only foundations, a disorganized and overgrown cemetery, and a 1300 foot deep shaft (grated) remain. While exploring the area, I came up with the idea to return with Kodak High Speed Infrared Film (now sadly discontinued), and these are the resulting images. I entered them in the 2008 King County Fair, and won two blue ribbons for the Mine Cart and Headstone 2 images and four red ribbons for the others. The mine cart: This was a hoist foundation, which pulled the mine carts from the mine in the hillside across from the foundation: This was the power plant that supplied power to the mines: This structure carried a water pipe for the town: Finally, a couple of images from the cemetary: All photos were taken with a Nikon FM and 19-35mm Tamron lens, on Kodak High Speed Infrared film, and printed in my darkroom on Ilford Multigrade paper.

Hi, I'm David Woodford, and welcome to my photo blog! I'm currently a student at Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, Washington, majoring in Marketing, and graduating this spring. My home is Covington, Washington. I've been a photographer since my junior year of high school. I work with both film and digital, and maintain a home darkroom. My current projects include IR photos of abandoned coal mining areas in Washington, particularly Cougar Mountain, near Newcastle, WA, and Franklin, a ghost town east of Black Diamond, WA. I'm planning on expanding the project to the coal mines at Roslyn, WA, and possibly mining operations near Issaquah, WA. I also photograph sports, particularly HS and College Basketball. My other hobbies include Geocaching (which is how I discovered these sites), politics, and realtime strategy games.