Iron ore meets slate
In 2008, by the initiative of Niklas Irlich, the mouth hole of the "United Dachschiefergrube Foundling" tunnel, which was closed off with a brick wall, was opened by the then independent Fördergruppe Bergbau. The primary goal was the redesign of the previously depleted and verwucherten Stollenmundloches for the mining trail Brachbach. During the construction work, Otto Bätzing and Niklas Irlich initiated a tour of the tunnel, which had been closed since the mid-fifties. At the time, Hugo Irlich, Hermann Zöller, Klaus Henke, Ernst Langenbach, Arnold Neuser and Marvin Irlich joined the research team led by Bätzing and Irlich.
The Brachbach teacher Alfons Jasnoch presented in 1996 in his book "From the history of Brachbach" a floor plan of Findlingstollens. This pit pattern showed the tunnel as dead straight, 800 meters long track, from which branched off at the end of two 200-meter-long Flügelörter. The western towards the machine shaft corner and the eastern towards the shaft of the pit Apfelbaumer train. For driving, this crack served as a basis for research.
The first 100 meters of tread turned out to be extremely wet. The water level was in places 30-40 centimeters. After about 70 meters, the clear width of the track increased from 1.80 meters to 2.50 meters and the tunnel was divided. While the main line followed the brushing of the mountains in an easterly direction, a wing towards the south branched off towards "Apfelbaumer Felder".
This wing town was in its clear distance of 80 centimeters and a ridge height of about 1.60 meters a classic profile of the old mining at the beginning of the 19th Century assign. From this it could be concluded that the beginnings of mining activities in this area originated from that era.