The anthracite facility shown is a breaker, not a mine. The mine was probably somewhere over the top of that hill and the raw coal and culm (waste material) was transported to the breaker by a conveyor belt. The large structure on the hill was the main breaker building, where the coal passed through breakers with toothed rolls to reduce the lumps to smaller pieces. The smaller pieces are separated into different sizes by a system of graduated sieves, placed in descending order. Sizing is necessary for different types of stoves and furnaces. The culm was also separated out and dumped. It could either be in a tailings pond if the coal was also being washed or in tailing piles. The
large hill seen to the right of the breaker building is mostly composed of dumped tailings or culm. Anthracite is the hardest of all coals so there's usually a lot of rock mixed in with the coal that has to be separated out before it's ready for shipment. Anthracite coal is prized for producing more BTU's per ton than bituminous coal and having less waste and clinkers when the coal is consumed.
Bituminous coal tended to appear in more pure seams and didn't require as much processing. The model coal mine is much more typical of a bituminous mine, with the shaft head enclosed in the wash building and the coal transferred directly to hoppers after removing waste material. As you can see, it was a lot less expensive to build and operate a bituminous coal operation than an anthracite complex. What's unrealistic about the model is that it's too clean and there is too much live vegetation around it. Collieries used their own coal to operate hoists and breaks and it was generally the least marketable and dirtiest coal. Sulfur fumes poured out of the power house stacks (which are also missing in the model scene) and killed every living plant, sometimes for miles around. You can see the fumes being spewed out of the powerhouse stacks in the left photo. The whole area was covered in coal dust and everything took on a faded black appearance.
As far as motive power at mines, it would be very unusual, although not unheard of, to see an articulated locomotive switch a mine. The Virginian did use 2-8-8-2 locomotives in mine service at the largest mines, where trains were made up at the mine and then shipped to Hampton Roads, mostly for use by the US Navy. The Virginian was an unusual railroad, though, in that it always had the best tracks and best locomotives. Most coal carrying railroads did not have the high standards of the Virginian so coal mine or breaker trackage tended to be as light and poorly laid as the railroad could get away with. "Captive" coal mines, like those owned by large corporations like US Steel, had better track and would usually have their own locomotives for making up trains to be dragged down to an interchange point with a major railroad. They could be anything from an 0-4-0 for a small mine to a 2-8-0 for a large mine. Most coal came from independent operators who had very little money for railroad operations. The Pennsy or N&W would construct a branch up a hollow, or valley, that would usually have smaller branches that served coal mines up the different sides of the hollow. These mines, if they had locomotives, would buy the cheapest junkers they could get from the class 1 railroad that served them, usually an old 0-4-0. Most operations were too small to have their own locomotives and many used mules to pull hopper in place to be loaded and then used gravity and a guy hanging on the brake staff to spot the cars. The class 1 railroad would show up several times a week to pick up loads and drop off empties. The Pennsy used lots of Class F 2-6-0's for this service since they were easy on light rails and had enough power to take empties up the hill and loads down.
Whew, probably more than you wanted to know about coal mining.
I have several relatives that were miners in Pennsylvania and learned a lot of about coal operations while doing our family history.
