Centralia to Raven Run: LVRR   The Turncock controlled a valve either filling the watertank or drawing water off to fill the locomotive boiler.  The tank itself dates to 1874 when the LVRR built a new “high grade” from Raven Run to Centralia on its Mahanoy Division, replacing the old “low grade” along Big Mine Run.  The original was described as ‘swampy’ and it passed directly through the coal breakers at the Centralia and Continental Collieries.  When Freck’s Centralia Colliery breaker burned in 1872, it effectively stopped all traffic along the LVRR from Mount Carmel.  The railroad engineers designed a work around  while their subsidiary coal company began a major re-development of the abandoned colliery – a project that would take almost 4 years.  The new rail line construction proceeded much faster.   It took advantage of an existing branch line that climbed the ridge to the “Reno Colliery” near Aristes which became the new main line to the ridge crest, and from there a steep descent was graded back down into Centralia.

This sharpening wheel came from the head of the Glendon Colliery Seven Foot Slope. It is possible that the cracked stone was simply dumped here; but it is more probable that it was part of the company blacksmith shop situated at the entrance of the mine for the maintenance and repair of  mining tools.  While a whetstone is wetted by passing through a water trough mounted at its base, the word ‘whet’  come from the Old English word to sharpen, and indeed, this stone -now oblong from long use- would have been used to dress the edges of tools for their daily shift in the mines.