Shaft guides

[Wheldale]

Some shaft guides were rigid, some were wire rope. Is there a reason why some were rigid or some were rope. Is it an age thing? I remember my dad saying the ones at Wheldale (sunk 1868)where wooden guides, Canadian Redwood - very hard wood. Or was wire rope guides cheaper andmore easier to repair?

[John]

Jan 4, 2013 18:47:00 GMT -5 Wheldale said:

Some shaft guides were rigid, some were wire rope. Is there a reason why some were rigid or some were rope. Is it an age thing? I remember my dad saying the ones at Wheldale (sunk 1868)where wooden guides, Canadian Redwood - very hard wood. Or was wire rope guides cheaper andmore easier to repair?

Years ago when we were doing mining technology in my first year, it was explained that rope guides were used mostly because there were no high speed guide blocks available for steel guides... That all seems to have changed shortly after my training, as skipping shafts were being installed with steel guide systems.

Of course, wire guide ropes would be far cheaper, after seeing the steelwork in Boulby's No1 shaft, must have cost a fortune.

[shropshirebloke]

Granville (Shropshire) had two downcast shafts. The Number 2 was enlarged and religned with concrete (1950s I think) - it had wire rope guides. The Number 1 was an original brick-lined 1860s job with cages running on iron shoes and wooden guides - the only way of coping with the S bend caused by earlier subsidence. A few hundred feet down the cage would start to tilt and move sideways - a bit unnerving the first time you rode it

[Wheldale]

The Wheldale shafts had woodern guides. My dad was a manager there and he decided to build a pergola in our garden. One day an NCB van turned up with some Canadian redwood timber in it. My dad told me it was the same timber used in the shafts at Wheldale. He said it was really hard to saw and he couldnt knock nails into it as they kept bending! Mind you 30 years later the pergola is still standing!!

[colly0410]

Always seemed counter intuitive to me that ropes could hold a cage steady, it obviously works because both the pits I worked down had them..

[John]

Jan 6, 2013 12:05:50 GMT -5 colly0410 said:

Always seemed counter intuitive to me that ropes could hold a cage steady, it obviously works because both the pits I worked down had them..

Cost effective, they stop the cage spinning, keep it from hitting the shaft sides and stop the two cages colliding mid shaft..Low maintenance costs compared to steel guides.

[ken]

An interesting thing I was told about the guide ropes was that the weights which kept the ropes taught were of different sizes. This was so the ropes had different natural harmonics and they would not combine to throw the cage around while traveling. Each cage had a rope in each corner plus two separating ropes between the cages. I had heard of a rope guide on a cage having been knocked off so they must have touched while passing in the shaft.

[John]

I was informed a few months back that one of the skips broke loose at Boulby, they have, from memory, two sets of high speed pulley's each side of the skips which lack the skip to the guide rails.
I know we have an ex Boulby fitter as a member, so he may be able to find out what happened and how much damage was caused to the shaft steelwork.
I'll bet it scared the living "bejezus" out of the Onsetter.