Ths Disappearing Dinting Machine

[smshogun]

It was a normal day shift and the manrider was intercepted by the two men dinting a back return who said there dinting machine had disappeared, it was a particularly crap machine called an Eikhoff and the two guys dinting were both over 60 and the sort who would help anybody so after a discussion between all the fitters it was decided it was either me or Lennie who would go and investigate as this return airway as it was 20' high and had 16' of floor lift which was severely interfering with airflow and they were removing this 16' of floor lift as quickly as they could.

Lennie volunteered me to go and said he would cover my three headings and we went outbye and through the air doors and onto the back return, this machine was troublesome and if it wasn't its spring tensioned tracks jumping off, or its drive sprockets shearing their teeth, or just about every part of its hydraulics failing at regular intervals, it still wasn't suitable for its application and I did make the suggestion of loading it onto a Hercules transport plane and flying to the Eikhoff factory in Germany and drop it on their factory, 10,000 feet should be a suitable altitude. Give them the same sort of trouble they had given us as underground fitters.

I had the new cap lamps with the halogen bulb and long range reflector and as I shone my super new cap lamp down the roadway I could clearly see the wall of the material being dinted, but no dinting machine, and the piss taking started, I simple asked it they had explosives and blown it up, or if it has self destructed, or if they had some German fairies who has spirited it away in the night and we all had a good laugh, I even asked Harvey if had nicked it and took it to his allotment for his winter digging. Everything else was intact, the AFC we has installed was there, the spare pans, pan sides, and chain was still there as was everything else that should have been there.

Having a Eureka moment I suggested we follow the cable from the panel to the other end to see if there was still a dinting machine still attached, and as we followed the cable we found our answer, it transpired that they had dug a huge sump to put a Flygt pump into as there was a leaking pipe and the pipe fitters were aware from my previous attempt to cure it that it was still leaking and that when I put the rubber around the pipe and fitted a pipe clamp it was crushing the pipe as the pipe range was so badly corroded, and they were running a new pipe range and coming every weekend to extend it as they moved forwards with their dinting. This sump was a near exact fit for the dinting machine and they had covered the sump with old rails and parked the machine on it to stop the back shift deputies falling into it, rails are case hardened and once the case hardening cracks they snap like carrots, the rails had snapped and the machine dropped perfectly into the hole. Being very experienced they had the foresight to dig a little side hole into the main hole which was stepped so the main hole acted as a silt trap, when we recovered the machine it was in perfect working order and hadn't even hit the pump.

They got stick over it until the day they both retired, and for some time after.

[colly0410]

Thanks for that, I love to hear these funny stories of what went on down the pit..

[John]

I lost an Eimco once, that's the LHD type..(Load Haul Dump) big V8 Cat Diesel powered front end loader.

I was working as an electrician at Wongawilli Colliery on the south coast coalfield of NSW, a few miles south of the city of Wollongong. It was owned by AI&S and we supplied coal to our steelworks at Port Kembla. Steel had taken a downturn, so all the coal we cut wasn't needed for a while, so every steel works colliery had to shut it's high production face down. In the case of my pit, my district which was a pillar extraction face.
The shift engineer told me to ride in with him and he'd sort me some work out for the shift, it was a monthly pm on the Eimco's electrics, take your time he said, I'll meet you back here at so and so time.
Take my time!! nuts, four FLP lights, one FLP generator, light switch and a few cables and glands, taking an hour would be over play.

It's just through the airdoors under so and so belt, so I had a hot cup of tea and a bite before I set off, arrived at the air doors, went through...NOTHING!! Duncan said it was just on the other side of the air doors, and yet nothing there.. Was it a stealth Eimco??

I'd never been around this area of the pit, but set off to look for the machine, I'd gone about ten minutes, and still no Eimco, not even fresh tyre marks in the dirt, I kept walking, then it dawned on me, nuts I'm LOST!!

Bord and Pillar mines are nothing like NCB style mines, I was in the returns, but with the amount of roads I couldn't feel any airflow.
Panic sets in, Coal Board training resists panic. STOP, and look around, no foot prints to back track with, everything was returns black!

OK, common sense, I knew I couldn't have walked more than two hundred yards, so put a mark on the floor, and a mark on a pillar, and set off in the opposire direction, looking for signs of any turn I'd made. Nothing, put a mark on the floor and on a pillar.
I kept this up for about an hour and eventually found the air doors, more by sound of air leaking than visual.

Still never found the Eimco.