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Dad and Uncle Robert started discussing business and I wandered away, trying to get a better angle on watching the continuous miner and the shuttle go through their choreographed dance of mining coal.

Dad positioned me out of the way when a shuttle car darted in, its crablike arms sweeping up the coal thrown out behind the continuous miner.

He was repositioning a continuous miner, a machine with a rotating steel drum used to extract coal.

He was operating a continuous miner, a machine with a rotating steel drum and conveyor system, to extract coal.

A centipede-like piece of equipment called the continuous miner sits silent and still beside them, ready to chew through the coal seam that runs from the mouth of the mine and underground for nearly eight miles.