Bankhead: The building at the entrance to a mine, into which the coal boxes are drawn and dumped into the mine screens, and from thence to railway cars; the term is loosely used to describe all surface buildings of a mine.
Checkweighman: The miners' representative, chosen by ballot, who checks the weight of coal recorded in the miners' favour, when the coal boxes filled by the miners underground are weighed at the bankhead.
Coal Field: The coal deposit, or bed, in total, in a given geographic locality, e.g., the Pictou coal field, meaning the entire deposit of coal in Pictou County.
Colliery: A coal mine inclusive of surface plant and underground workings.
Datal: Day wage work; minimum wage.
Draegerman: A mine workman, or official, engaged in mine rescue while wearing a self- contained breathing apparatus.
Face: The end wall at the working extremity of any excavation in a mine; the place where a miner works in extracting coal and rock.
Fault: A displacement of strata in which the coal on one side of a fissure is pushed above, or below, or aside, from the corresponding coal on the other side.
Long Wall: A mining operation at a long coal face (wall), between parallel passages (levels), the face being in length from fifty to more than one hundred feet, from which the coal is blasted, then loaded by hand onto mechanically shaken pans which move the coal to pit boxes.
Manager: The official in charge of a mine, surface and underground.
Outcrop: That portion of geological stratum which appears at the surface.
Pillar: A column or body of coal left unmined to support the roof.
Pillar and Bord: The name used to describe a mining method, i.e., coal is extracted from bords and left in pillars. The latter's extraction is the final mining process.
Rake: A number of boxes drawn by any motive power; in the Pictou Pits rake generally means "riding rake", which carries the men into and out of the slope mines.
Seam: A stratum of coal, also called a vein.
Shaft: A vertical excavation connecting surface and mine workings.
Shaftman: A workman who patrols in a slowly moving cage a mine shaft, and maintains the shaft by working through the cage side, or on its top, or suspended from the cage bottom.
Slope: An entrance to a mine driven down through an inclined coal seam; an inside slope is a passage in the mine driven from one system of workings down through a seam, to bring up coal from a lower system of workings.
Workings: An excavation of a mine, as a whole, or that part of a mine in which mining operations are being done.
