Going down the Mine

We went to a mine Museum, in Springhill NS.  Nova Scotia has a deep history of coal mining.  At this mine, in 1956 and 1958, they had 2 disasters and lost 124 men.  Our guide, Russell was a young man then and one of the people who had to go down and try and locate survivors, or retrieve the bodies.  They had packs that weighed about 60 pounds and had to walk down the 2 miles to the cave in area.  Once there, they only had about 15-20 minutes to actually do work, due to the limited air supply that they could carry.  The mine was closed and the miners dug up every railroad track in the county, sold the metal and gave the proceeds to the families of the deceased.