US Mine Safety and Health Administration spokesperson Amy Louviere told ILN that the worker, whose name has not been released, was working at the Shoemaker mine in Marshall County at about 8pm local time Monday.

“The victim was bridging at a nip connection for his loading machine, which was used as a trench digger,” she said.

“The victim had exited his machine to hook up the nip, and it appears the machine struck him when re-energized,” adding that the miner’s leg was amputated in the process.

The accident occurred at the jump, where Shoemaker has a 50-foot break in the trolley wire for regular vehicles to cross the mine track.

MSHA issued a 103k order to suspend work only from the jump area to the dump switch in the surface supply area, though Consol spokesperson Lynn Seay told local newspaper the Wheeling News-Register that the entire mine had stopped production Tuesday.

State and federal investigators arrived at Shoemaker Monday evening and are conducting an investigation.

The fatality is the second at a Consol mine in 2011. The first was in February when the driver of a dozer at the nearby McElroy mine in West Virginia was trapped between his vehicle and a water truck.

The Shoemaker worker’s death is the seventh in West Virginia this year.

Shoemaker, a longwall mine which extracts from the prolific Pittsburgh coal seam, produced 3.9 million tons last year. A $US205 million upgrade to its facilities, which included a new overland and underground conveyor system, was completed in 2010.