While it could be argued that when you are out on a field project like this you are, in fact, on one big field trip (like the ones you used to take while in kindergarten while being forced to hold hands with that girl classmate that you did not much care for), we actually went on a short side trip to a marble quarry before we left Sant'Andrea Di Conza.
All of the flooring in the building where the station was installed in Sant'Andrea was marble. The structure of it was quite interesting. It turned out that the marble came from a nearby quarry.
The quarry was on the south side of the ridge that Sant'Andrea was on, and was about 2 kilometers from town.
This particular quarry produced marble that was a conglomerate of stones of varying size.
Large sections of the ridge of rock in the area were removed by first drilling a hole through the ridge at about ground level in the picture above.
A platform capable of moving on tracks with a motor operating a spinning wheel was then placed near the hole. One end of a steel cable with diamonds imbedded in it was run from the wheel, through the hole, up over the top of the ridge, back down to the wheel and joined with the other end of the cable. The cable was placed in the groove on the wheel, the platform was moved back until the cable was tight, the motor was turned on, and the cutting was started. The whole apparatus was moved backwards to keep the cable tight as cutting progressed. I didn't find out how long it actually took to make a complete cut, but I would guess it took days.
The large sections of rock are taken to a rock saw where they are then cut into the required slabs and rough shapes.
As if our Lancia was not already stuffed with enough equipment, and us, we couldn't help leaving without making off with a few chunks of marble.
Aldo Iannece was the owner of the quarry and was kind enough to give us quite a tour.
2018-03-05