Blue Coal 360 · The huber breaker
The last greatanthracite breaker
Ashley, Pennsylvania · Built 1939 · Demolished 2014
The Structure
A cathedral of industry above Ashley, Pennsylvania.
The Huber Coal Breaker was one of the most sophisticated anthracite processing facilities ever constructed. Built by the Glen Alden Coal Company in 1939 and named for Glen Alden chairman Charles F. Huber, it rose eleven stories above the floor of the Wyoming Valley — a steel and timber structure approximately 132 feet tall, visible for miles across the surrounding landscape.
The breaker sat directly above the Huber Mine shaft, receiving raw coal from underground via a headframe and conveyor system. Its footprint extended across the Ashley site, with auxiliary structures including the No. 5 Slope engine house, the foothouse, culm disposal infrastructure, and rail connections to the Central Railroad of New Jersey yard adjacent to the property.
At its peak, the Huber processed 7,000 tons of raw anthracite per day — among the highest capacities in the Glen Alden operation — employing hundreds of workers from the surrounding communities of Ashley, Wilkes-Barre, and the Wyoming Valley. It operated continuously from 1939 to 1976.
Anthracite Domain — Regional Context
HAER PA-204, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service
Huber Colliery Operations — 1939
HAER PA-204, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service
The Path of Coal
From underground to railroad car — the complete journey.
Coal’s journey through the Huber Breaker is a story within a story. The same material that formed over three hundred million years beneath the Wyoming Valley — compressed, hardened, transformed by time and pressure — made one final journey through this building before it became fuel. It entered raw, in pieces no different from what the earliest miners had hauled by hand. It left graded, washed, sized, and dyed blue. What happened in between is the story of the most sophisticated anthracite processing facility ever built.
The five interconnected processes documented by the Historic American Engineering Record — Mine-Run Coal, Coarse Coal, Fine Coal, Menzies Cone, and Prepared-Coal Loading — each tell part of this journey. What follows traces the path as the coal itself would have traveled it: from the earth below Ashley to the railroad cars waiting at the bottom of the building.
Underground · The Huber Mine · No. 5 Slope
Three hundred million years in the making.
The coal beneath Ashley began as ancient forest — compressed and transformed over geological time into the dense, carbon-rich anthracite that would define this region for a century. Miners reached it through the Huber Colliery's network of slopes and shafts, including the No. 5 Slope, whose engine house still stood as a distinct structure on the colliery grounds. Loaded coal cars rode narrow-gauge tracks up the slope's incline to the surface, hauled by the slope's dedicated hoisting engine.
The No. 5 Slope at the Huber Colliery · HAER PA-204, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by George Harvan
Surface · The Foothouse
Coal meets daylight for the first time.
The foothouse was where the mine's underground world connected to the surface operation. Coal arriving from the slope entered the colliery's surface infrastructure here — the transition point between the mine below and the breaker above. The foothouse, documented separately by the HAER recording project, was a distinct structure in its own right, part of the broader Huber Colliery complex that stretched across the Ashley site.
Inside the Foothouse, Huber Colliery, Ashley, Pennsylvania · HAER PA-204-B, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
The Lift · Elevation · The Last Upward Move
Coal enters at the top. Gravity does the rest.
Conveyors carried raw run-of-mine coal from the surface to the apex of the 11-story steel frame — approximately 132 feet above the ground. This single lift was the only time coal moved upward inside the Huber. Everything that followed was driven by gravity alone, each floor performing a different operation as material descended through the building. The multi-story structure wasn't architectural ambition — it was functional necessity.
Main Conveyor, View to Breaker from Foothouse · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
Screening · Initial Separation · Top Floor
The first cut.
At the top of the breaker, raw coal passed over screens — perforated metal plates or woven wire meshes with precisely calibrated opening sizes. Smaller pieces fell through and moved on to washing. Oversized chunks that couldn't pass were diverted to the breaker rolls. The mud screen, a rotating cylindrical drum, removed coal dust and soil from the stream before further processing. The Huber processed three distinct coal streams — mine-run, coarse, and fine — each following its own path through the building.
Chute to Bull Shakers, Huber Breaker · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
Crushing · Breaker Rolls · Size Reduction
Breaking coal down to its market sizes.
Cylinders studded with iron teeth — the breaker rolls — reduced oversized coal into progressively smaller pieces. Multiple crusher stages could produce the full range of anthracite commercial sizes from the largest egg coal down to the finest barley. The speed of the rolls and the gap between them determined the output size. This was the mechanical work that gave breakers their name — and their deafening noise.
Sizing rollers, Huber Breaker, Ashley, Pennsylvania · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
The Menzies Cones · The Huber's Signature Innovation
Six cones. Eight thousand gallons per minute.
The Huber was among the first breakers in the anthracite region to use Menzies Cones for coal separation — an innovation that dramatically reduced the need for hand sorting. Six cones used circulating high-pressure water at 8,000 gallons per minute to create a density-separation environment inside each cone. Lighter coal rose toward the overflow; heavier slate, rock, and bone coal sank and were discharged as refuse. It was the mechanized replacement for the picking table — and the reason the Huber required far fewer breaker boys than its predecessors.
Interior of a Menzies Cone, Huber Breaker · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
Washing · Jigs and Washers · Wet Preparation
Water finishes what gravity begins.
After the Menzies Cones, coal moved through jig washers that used pulsating water to further stratify material by density — heavier impurities sinking, lighter coal rising and moving forward. The Huber's washing system required approximately one gallon of water per minute per ton of daily production capacity. At 7,000 tons per day, that meant 7,000 gallons per minute flowing through the washers alone — on top of the 8,000 gallons per minute running through the Menzies Cones. The Huber was as much a water-processing facility as a coal one.
Washing buckwheat coal, Huber Breaker · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
Sizing · Final Grading · Commercial Sizes
Egg. Stove. Chestnut. Pea. Buckwheat. Rice. Barley.
After washing, coal passed through successive screens that separated it into the commercial sizes anthracite buyers expected. Each size — defined by the opening of the screen it passed through — accumulated in a separate bin below. The finest material, culm or slack, was too small to sell and was either stored in silos for use in the Huber's own power plant or disposed of via the aerial tramway system. The Huber was among the first facilities in the anthracite region to use aerial disposal plants — eliminating the need to dump refuse directly beside the building.
Egg, Stove and Nut Shakers, Huber Breaker · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
Inspection · The Picking Floor · Final Hand Check
The last human hands on the coal.
Despite the Menzies Cones and jig washers, some impurities persisted. At earlier breakers, picking tables were where breaker boys — some as young as eight — sat astride coal chutes removing slate by hand, often losing fingers to the machinery. At the Huber, this work was largely mechanized. But supervisory hand-checking continued at certain stages, a residual acknowledgment that no machine was yet perfect. The Huber's photographs from 1955 show men still at the picking floor, still watching the coal move past.
View into Picking Floor, Huber Breaker · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
Blue Coal · Glen Alden's Signature
Raw earth becomes a branded product.
Before leaving the Huber, finished anthracite was sprayed with Glen Alden's iridescent blue chemical — the last step in the Huber's processing sequence and the one that gave the project its name. The dye served no functional purpose. It did nothing to improve the coal's performance. It was pure identity: a mark that told every customer, from Philadelphia to Boston, exactly where this coal had come from and who had made it. Three hundred million years underground, and it left this building wearing a brand.
Blue Coal entrance sign, Huber Colliery main office · HAER PA-204, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by George Harvan
Departure · Railroad Loading · Central Railroad of New Jersey
Into the cars. East toward the coast.
Finished coal fell from the sizing bins directly into railroad cars waiting beneath the breaker, delivered by boom — an innovation that eliminated the need for storage bins entirely and kept the coal moving without additional handling. The Central Railroad of New Jersey operated a major yard adjacent to the colliery; most of what the Huber produced left on those rails, bound for markets across the eastern United States. The path that had begun millions of years underground, and continued through eleven stories of machinery, ended here — loaded, blue, and bound for someone's furnace.
Railroad loading area, Huber Breaker, Ashley, Pennsylvania · HAER PA-204-A, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service · Photograph by Joseph E.B. Elliott
The Railroad Network
Seven lines. One valley. A web that no longer exists.
The coal that left Stage 11 by boom and loaded into railroad cars below didn't simply roll away into the unknown. It entered one of the most densely railed corridors in American history. Seven major railroad companies drove spurs into the Wyoming Valley competing for anthracite traffic — the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Lehigh Valley, the Delaware Lackawanna & Western, the Erie, and others — each fighting for position along the valley floor, racing to connect collieries to eastern markets before a rival could.
The CNJ operated Ashley Yard directly adjacent to the Huber site, running scheduled symbol freights through the corridor. The AY-91 — northbound, heavy with coal — was a regular presence on the valley's rails throughout the Huber's operational years. Erie freights ran the Canal Branch route through Ashley too, using CNJ trackage rights to reach the yard. What looked like a single railroad from street level was in fact a tangle of shared rights-of-way, interlocking agreements, and competing priorities.
Below the mainlines, narrow-gauge internal locomotives — called lokies — connected individual mine slopes to breakers and railheads. The Wanamie colliery, whose run-of-mine coal was processed at the Huber after its own breaker was torn down, ran a network of these lokies from its No. 18 and No. 19 slopes directly to the rail connection point. The Wanamie No. 9 locomotive — one of those lokies — was returned to Ashley in 2022 through a collaboration between Underground Miners, HBPS, and Ashley Borough. It stands today at the
Miners’ Memorial Park, less than a quarter mile from where the Huber stood. It is a physical artifact of the exact network that made Stage 11 possible.
That entire web is gone. The seven mainline carriers have been abandoned, merged, or rerouted. Ashley Yard is silent. The seven-railroad corridor that once defined the Wyoming Valley's economic geography survives only in archival maps, oral histories, and the occasional bridge abutment. Of all the breakers and collieries those lines once served, only the Huber still stood when Trains magazine published its 1939 Wyoming Valley rail map. Everything else was already gone.
After 1976 · What the Breaker Left Behind
The Huber Breaker closed in 1976. Glen Alden had already been absorbed. The Blue Coal trademark was gone. The building stood empty on the Ashley hillside for nearly four more decades before it came down in 2014 — the last great anthracite breaker, demolished in a series of controlled pulls over several days. John Welsh photographed all of it, archiving 21 scenes in 360° before the structure disappeared.
But the mine below didn't close the way the breaker did. When the pumps that had kept the Huber Colliery's underground workings dry were switched off for good — a process accelerated by the operator bankruptcies that followed Hurricane Agnes in 1972 — the Wyoming Valley's flooded mine pools began their permanent rise. The same underground geography that had yielded 37 years of Blue Coal became part of a 216-billion-gallon reservoir of iron-loaded water, slowly discharging into the streams above it.
The orange staining visible in waterways across the Wyoming Valley today is iron hydroxide — ferrous iron from flooded mine pools oxidizing on contact with air, precipitating as ochre and coating stream beds. It eliminates aquatic life. It has impaired 7,356 miles of Pennsylvania waterways. It is a direct consequence of extraction at sites like this one.
The breaker is gone. What it left behind is not. The Path of Coal documents what the community is doing about it.