The demolition walls of the Ettringer Lay basalt quarry are 25 meters high and 100 meters wide.
From 1858 to 1970, basalt columns were broken out on different plateaus by layers (basalt crushers) with crowbars or torn out with cranes.
The layer knocked out a V-groove with his bicorne. He placed iron wedges (wecken) between two small iron plates (lämele) in the wedge groove and drove a crack into the rock by hitting the hammer, so that the column was detached from the rock.
In 1905 jackhammers were added, which made the work of breaking out the basalt blocks easier.
Mine cranes hoisted the curd for further processing and this was loaded onto narrow gauge wagons to take it to crushing stations.
Impact workers broke up the basalt blocks with Schlad, Wetzkopf and Durchhau. Stonemasons then produced e.g. paving stones. Crushers crushed lumps of basalt into gravel. Loaded lorries pulled empty lorries for loading with a traction rope to the crusher. The Kottenheim crushing plant was shut down in 1982 and demolished in 1994.
The carts were pulled by workers or horses.
So-called Göppelwerke served as the first lifting cranes. Quarry workers or horses cranked chains over a vertical axle to lift the almost 2-ton basalt stones.
In 1905, electric lifting cranes with electric motors replaced the Göppel works.
Ettringer Lay's pit cranes consist of a brick base, the king (iron pivot) and an iron superstructure. In the younger type 1920/30, the electric drive is located inside the guide house.
The crane was rotated manually.
The lifting capacity of the cranes was 5 to 7.5 tons.
The Winfeld quarries had a narrow-gauge railway with a steam locomotive until 1945 and then with a diesel locomotive. It drove from the crushing works in Winfeld to Hartborn.
The cranes, railways and lorries lost their importance in 1960 when the trucks got access to the quarries.