Coal mines

Houthalen is the last mine that opend its doors in the Kempen coal basin. Only the main building and the two steel headframes were preserved.

The Crachet-Picquery coal mine was one of 11 mining settlements operated by the Charbonnage de Frameries in and around the Borinage commune of the same name.

From December 1878 to October 1880, Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh stayed in the Belgian mining region of the Borinage. 

In 1810, industrialist Henri De Gorge bought the Grand-Hornu coal mine in the Borinage, a famous mining region in Belgium.

Since 1876, coal has been transported from the Bernissart mines via Blaton via the 4-kilometre-long railway line 80/78A.

At the end of the eighteenth century, this brick building in Bernissart, Belgium, was built to house a new gadget: Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine.

The "Charbonnages André Dumont-sous Asch" is the full name of the Waterschei mine—a tribute to Professor Dumont, the geologist who discovered the coal layers in As.

A tangle of railways ran through the Limburg coal region, transporting millions of tons of coal to ports and blast furnaces. The coal wagons have disappeared, but old stations and tracks remind us of the busy traffic of yesteryear.