Coke
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After the miner filled the mine cars with coal, the cars were brought out of the mine. Then the coal was dumped into a huge bin called a tipple.

A small train car called a lorry traveled on tracks that ran under the bin where a chute opened and dumped just enough coal into each car to fill one coke oven. The lorry then traveled to a set of tracks on the top of the coke ovens. The lorries were first pulled by mules and later by small yard engines called lokies. The lorry stopped over each oven and dropped its coal through a chute into a hole in the top of each oven. The hole was called a tunnel head.

Most of the coke ovens in Connellsville Coke Region were beehive ovens. They were called that because, if you saw them without all the dirt and stone piled up around them, they were dome-shaped, like old fashioned beehives.
After the coal was dumped into the oven, it was leveled to make the coal burn more evenly. Then the oven was closed by stacking bricks in its doorway. Next the bricks were covered with a special mud. Finally the coal burned or cooked for two or three days, depending on the amount of coal put into the oven. The coal was now coke.

Coke is what is left of the coal when a lot of things in the coal, like gases, sulfur, and ash, are burned away. The matter that is left is silvery gray, lightweight, and porous.
It is made mostly of carbon and it is called coke.
It supplies a very constant, hot,long-burning fuel source for blast furnaces to make high grade steel

The Connellsville Coke Region produced the
best coke anywhere. Most of the coke
made here was shipped to Pittsburgh. The coke was shipped by train and by barges on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela rivers. Pittsburgh used the coke from the Connellsville Coke region to make steel, earning that city the nickname
"The Steel City."