The coke ovens had to be started by making a fire inside each oven. Once the fire had reached a certain temperature the coal was deposited into each separate oven from the top and the oven was sealed. It took about three days for the coal to smolder allowing most of the oxygen to be removed from the coal thereby turning into coke which was then extracted at the time manually and dumped into open rail cars to be sent to a blast furnace that had contracted with the mining company for the coke.