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You are here: Home / Glossary

Glossary

Gin gang; Gin-gang; Gingang

A farm building built around central machinery, which allows the walking of a horse or pony around the machinery to turn wheels by being attached through a harness. The machinery is called a gin. Such buildings are usually circular or angled. They possess sharply pitched roofs to allow the horse and it's guider to stay dry. The gin being turned is underneath the point of the roof - the rotating of the horse being turned into a horizontally turning shaft that could be used elsewhere on the farm.
Open-air gins, sometimes called whims were used to raise coal from shallow bell pits before the use of winding engines.

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