Paul Weir was a pioneer in mechanizing underground coal mine production, first as an engineer in the southern Illinois coal fields and then at the head of his own consulting company. Early in his career, Paul Weir gained recognition as one of the foremost operating men in the bituminous coal industry. Later, Paul Weir’s company, Weirco, earned a world-wide reputation as consulting mining engineers and geologists specializing in coal and minerals of similar occurrence.
In the early 1920s, most coal was hand-loaded into mine cars pulled by mules. Underground mechanization was in its infancy. Paul Weir, a recent graduate in mining engineering from Penn State, recognized that mechanization would reduce costs, maintain production, and still allow payment of union wages. Paul introduced some of the first coal-loading machines in the United States into the Bell and Zoller Co.’s coal mines in southern Illinois, and he completely mechanized the company’s Zeigler No. 1, Zeigler No. 2, and Centralia mines.
Successively, Paul Weir served as Chief Engineer, General Superintendent, and Vice President/Production for Bell and Zoller. By 1926, he was responsible for 2,500 miners producing 17,500 tons of coal per day, and he had gained wide recognition as a developer of better and safer mining methods.
At the Zeigler operations, Paul Weir built the first coal preparation plant specifically designed to clean mechanically loaded coal. When completed in 1935, it was the largest and most modern coal preparation plant in the world.
Paul Weir was a staunch advocate of miners’ safety and was widely recognized for reducing injuries in mines he managed. Paul was instrumental in developing the Cardox system of dislodging coal from working coal faces—a method that uses compressed carbon dioxide gas to avoid the risk of ignition of mine gases or dust by explosives.
In 1936, still in his early 40s, Paul Weir “retired” to found Paul Weir Company, later called Weirco, with headquarters in Chicago. Capitalizing on his reputation for mechanization, modernization, and mine safety, Paul attracted a broad range of clients, including coal operators, public utilities, railroads, financial institutions and foreign countries. His company built a world-wide reputation for its expertise in coal occurrence and coal mining methods.
In 1944, Paul served as a member of the U.S. Coal Mission to the United Kingdom, seeking to increase wartime production in British coal mines. Later, Paul and his two sons helped adapt longwall mining methods to FMC’s trona mine at Green River, Wyoming.
In 1949, AIME awarded Paul Weir its Erskine Ramsay Gold Medal Award for outstanding service to the coal industry, citing him “For his skill and success in the application of engineering principles to the mechanical mining and preparation of bituminous coal” and “For his achievements in the dissemination of this experience to others, both at home and abroad.”
