Manriding shafts.

[colly0410]

When I was at Moorgreen pit they used the upcast shaft for Manrinding to Waterloo, Piper & Low Main seam. Low Main coal came up the downcast shaft & Waterloo coal up the downcast (or is it intake) surface drift,(Piper was a training seam so didn't produce any coal.) When I moved to Hucknall it was the other way round: downcasts (there were two of them) for Manriding & upcast for coal. Were there any advantages or disadvantages to each system & which was the most used?

[John]

Jul 16, 2013 10:01:26 GMT -5 colly0410 said:

When I was at Moorgreen pit they used the upcast shaft for Manrinding to Waterloo, Piper & Low Main seam. Low Main coal came up the downcast shaft & Waterloo coal up the downcast (or is it intake) surface drift,(Piper was a training seam so didn't produce any coal.) When I moved to Hucknall it was the other way round: downcasts (there were two of them) for Manriding & upcast for coal. Were there any advantages or disadvantages to each system & which was the most used?

Biggest problem is getting good seals around the air lock, plus with all coal being tipped into skips, most of the dust is eliminated in the intakes, so half a dozen of one and six of the other.
At Clifton, coal was sent in tubs, two decks of two tubs in the upcast and manriding on days and afters was via the upcast shaft.
Cotgrave had two winders in the upcast shaft hauling skips, manriding was via the down cast shaft via two deck cages.



Boulby potash mine when I left had two fans underground, reason was environmental, noise associated with them disturbing the people of Staithes, just down the road. So both shafts were open and had no airlocks on the surface.
Over the last few years main fan has been sighted on the surface, with a forced ventilation scheme to eliminate upcast shaft airlock problems.
Manriding was done via the downcast shaft, occasionally was done in a manriding deck on top of the skips in the upcast shaft.

[John]

Shafts, upcast and downcast, Roads ---Intake and returns. Drifts Intake and returns..

[colly0410]

Jul 16, 2013 11:09:30 GMT -5 John said:

Shafts, upcast and downcast, Roads ---Intake and returns. Drifts Intake and returns..

I stand corrected..

[John]

Jul 16, 2013 11:33:01 GMT -5 colly0410 said:

Jul 16, 2013 11:09:30 GMT -5 John said:

Shafts, upcast and downcast, Roads ---Intake and returns. Drifts Intake and returns..

I stand corrected..

You were right the first time.

[smshogun]

Moorgreen had an adit and cable belt, it also had three shafts, upcast, downcast, and No3 shaft. They used a cable belt which ran up a series of drifts which were driven over the years to access new seams

Moorgreen was an old pit which worked lots of seams and it was like a rabbit warren, there were even recorded incidents of men disappearing, never to be seen again, this took lots of air to ventilate and lots of the old workings were never stopped off which made it a very gassy pit through seepage from old workings.

Despite its modest size Moorgreen was a large producer, they ended up nearer Hucknall Market than Hucknall pit did, and that was just down the road, they were that far out that it became uneconomical to operate.

Pye hill saw the virtue if an adit and they drove one and used a cable belt also.

[colly0410]

Heard about the blokes who were never seen again when I was at the training centre, they said to us "don't wonder off!"

The instructors used to take us round old roads in the piper seam that was used as a training gallery, nature walks we used to call them. There seemed to be lots of fenced off roadways, I used to think "I wonder if that's where the missing blokes are?"

Went on a face visit to 66's face in the waterloo seam. We went on a manriding belt up a drift from piper inset pit bottom to bottom of the surface drift at waterloo level , then a rope hauled manrider, then quite a long walk, seemed to take ages to get there. I remember seeing a sign on the return pointing up a road that said 'Watnall upcast shaft' so I presume we were fairly close to Watnall...

[smshogun]

Moorgreen was connected to Pye Hill at Blacksale level and Watnall shafts at Waterloo and Piper level, prior to the closing and filling the Watnall shafts they were used as emergency egress shafts and ventilation shafts, they are located at the far end of the current Watnall Brickyard near the bridge now installed for farm vehicles to cross the M1. Moorgreen went right through the Watnall workings in multiple seams and right out under the Ruffs estate in Hucknall and finished under Hucknall market place.

[colly0410]

So now I know what some of the seams were that caused our subsidence, I live near Ruffs estate just off Christchurch Road. The house has raft foundations so is not affected but the garden's all over the place, my shed's at a bit of an angle. The surveyors report said we have 7 seams worked under us. I put a post on here a while ago speculating what seams they could be, I'd forgotten about Moorgreens workings coming out this way. Hucknall black shale worked out towards Papplewick/Bestwood Village way from what I remember..

A mate of mine (Mo Needham) worked at Moorgreen & moved to Hucknall when Moorgreen closed, he lives a few streets away from me now..

[smshogun]

Most likely old Watnall workings causing the problems, they were troublesome to Moorgreen workings and we went and injected some of the old Watnall workings to stabilise the lower Moorgreen seams.

[colly0410]

Feb 10, 2014 21:05:56 GMT -5 smshogun said:

Most likely old Watnall workings causing the problems, they were troublesome to Moorgreen workings and we went and injected some of the old Watnall workings to stabilise the lower Moorgreen seams.

Be interesting to hear how you injected the old Walnall workings. Did the injecting work?

[smshogun]

Very simply, at the time special projects were working on a high pressure concrete pumping system compact enough to work underground and with enough power to use hydraulic pressures and we tested it extensively, this was the first real trial and it used compacted mine dirt which was the rock crushed to 3mm and passed through the machine, as it did it was injected with a dry resin cement to coat it and then it was mixed with a tiny amount of water at the injection head, this passed up a hollow drill rod and into the workings and the water activated the resin cement coating on the crushed rock to form a slow drying cement which could run into the roadways or have its pressure increased to form a spray.

We tried both and it led directly to the shotcrete cement spraying machines which sprayed liquid cement directly onto tunnels to reinforce them.

This required lots of drill holes and as these were drilled the drilling machine was removed from the drill rods which were left in position to inject the concrete in at high pressures.

[colly0410]

Thanks for your interesting reply smshogun..