Boulby's Winders.

[John]

Although I never worked on them, I did on occasions after a tipping breakdown go to the frivers cabin at CPL's Boulby Mine.
They were impressive winders, the rock, (No1 shaft) winder was around 7500hp, DC thyrister controlled. When I first started there I'd been shown the floor beneath the engine room and there were miles of copper busbars linking the cubicles above to the integrated winding engine/motor.
The rock shaft rope arrangement was unique and had to have a mines inspectors exemption, as there was no detaching hook. It consisted of two winding ropes capped at the skip ends, then a "balance rope" over a balance wheel on top of the skip. There was a diagonal groove over the wheel and up in the tower above overwind point was a huge steel knife. On all four corners of the guide steelwork were jackcatches. Should a serious overwind occur, the balance rope would be sheared by the knife, leaving the skip suspended in the tower.

The No2 shaft, which was men and materials, had a 3500HP winder similar to the rock winder. The cages on that side used the standard single rope with a detaching hook installed.

[Clive]

I visited Boulby a few years ago. Couldnt get over the pit bottom how different the atmosphere was. At the bottom of the man shaft . There was a barrier, or gate to make you walk in the right direction and what resembled a street lamp, no hustle and bustle.

The bottom of the rock shaft reminded me of an old abandoned weaving shed. With the exception of the skips movements all was dead quiat with cobwebs hanging and again dismal lighting. Just seemed so different ....Oh and the tranny pickups flying around. We had a look around some of the old Iron mines around as well.

Clive

[John]

ayle said:

I visited Boulby a few years ago. Couldnt get over the pit bottom how different the atmosphere was. At the bottom of the man shaft . There was a barrier, or gate to make you walk in the right direction and what resembled a street lamp, no hustle and bustle.

The bottom of the rock shaft reminded me of an old abandoned weaving shed. With the exception of the skips movements all was dead quiat with cobwebs hanging and again dismal lighting. Just seemed so different ....Oh and the tranny pickups flying around. We had a look around some of the old Iron mines around as well.

Clive

Sorry Clive, missed your post!

Sounds like things have changed a lot since I was there mate!

Manshaft or as we called it No2 shaft, pit bottom was pretty much open when I was there mate, you just formed a queue near the onsetters cabin at manriding time.
Rockshaft, No1 pit bottom was cavernous to allow heavy machinery to be hauled out the shaft and assembled on site.
I was there almost at it's begining, only the No2 shaft was in operation as man/materials/rock winding and ventilation!! There were four four foot vent tubes forcing air down them and the shaft was in essence the upcast shaft too!
No1 was emergency egress only with three winding engines still installed and the main 7500hp unit being installed.
I was working all over the place at the start, then we went into full production with one district, called the East Development and South East development districts. I covered both as an electrician.
When Fred Fletcher migrated to South Africa, he was the Central/Ore Handling electrician, I was moved into that job. Essentially an unpaid chargehand. I enjoyed that job, plenty of overtime and loads of responsibility with all the main trunk conveyors, two main vent fans, both shafts surface and pit bottoms, main switchgear and control room in my care.
I was also authorised to sign requistions from the underground and surface main stores, so drew out gear for the lads in the districts.
At that time, we were working the east and south areas, plus some work in the west area's and a development for a main truck conveyor in the salt bed below us, heading west. It was called the West Links.
I now gather they are working the North area only.

[John]

Just as an extra.

The No1 shaft was put into operation sometime in mid to late 1975, with one of the main fans, 1350hp brought and installed U/G on the south side of the shaft.
Shortly after it was commisioned the other fan was installed and commissioned on the north side, not too far from the main underground workshops, creating a balanced ventilation system.
The old Stamler chain bunker was removed and all rock went through one of the two 1000 tonne vertical inseam ore bins.
We went through several stages during commissioning of the mine, mostly finantial, the company was struggling to make a break even point, and from what I can gather, was closed down for a short time not long after I left with many men taking a payoff to leave.

[garryo]

Further info

Boulby has two winders (three if you count the tails shaft), both using thyristor supplield DC motors. The No1 or rock shaft is an in line Blair winder while No2 or man winder is a conventional double drum unit.
The type of connection for the armature is a single ended converter with a reversing field. GEC the makers called this system "Variflux" in which the field flux varied during the windwith up to 7 times field forcing on revering or regen.
I worked on these winders in 1975 also on a similar winders in Australia, one a four rope tower mount friction winder the other a very large double drum of 6900kW (twin motors).
For interest the largest single winder installed in the UK was originally at Moseley Common pit in Lancashire, later it was moved to Coventry colliery,
This winder was a ward-leonard drive with 4 off 2250HP motors giving a total of 9000hp or approx 6750kW.

If you require more info I can assist

[John]

Mar 12, 2009 8:58:10 GMT -5 garryo said:

Further info

Boulby has two winders (three if you count the tails shaft), both using thyristor supplield DC motors. The No1 or rock shaft is an in line Blair winder while No2 or man winder is a conventional double drum unit.
The type of connection for the armature is a single ended converter with a reversing field. GEC the makers called this system "Variflux" in which the field flux varied during the windwith up to 7 times field forcing on revering or regen.
I worked on these winders in 1975 also on a similar winders in Australia, one a four rope tower mount friction winder the other a very large double drum of 6900kW (twin motors).
For interest the largest single winder installed in the UK was originally at Moseley Common pit in Lancashire, later it was moved to Coventry colliery,
This winder was a ward-leonard drive with 4 off 2250HP motors giving a total of 9000hp or approx 6750kW.

If you require more info I can assist

1975 was the year I started work at Boulby as an underground electrician. I remember very well when the No1/rock shaft winder was being commisioned, without the ropes I may add. It produced so many harmonics on braking that it was a nightmare underground, running around resetting phantom E/L trips on all the gate end boxes.
Because of the problems associated with the harmonics, a static compensator was installed in the surface substation to filter out those harmonics.
Even at that, there were times when the compensator tripped out leaving us "dead in the water" underground with hundreds of E/L trips. We soon recognised the problem and phoned across to the surface process plant electricians to rest it for us.

Yep, the No1 winding gear was unique to the UK with it's twin balanced rope system and "knife" across the head tower to cut the balance rope in the event of a dangerous overwind in place of a "King" detaching hook.

Ward-Leonard??? Jeeze that takes me back a few years!! Haven't heard of that system in years, though pretty common in the 60's with a lot of NCB pits.

Some time around 1976 we had a problem with the No2 winder at Boulby, we were on a 25 man limit due to having only the one means of egress. After about 4 hours John Littleton, (ore handling/shafts and winder elec foreman) was coming to the conclusion he had a winding short/shorts on the motor! Eventually he and Norman tracked it down to a faulty SCR firing card. Hmmm, they didn't have a spare! The company who made them went flat out to assemble a replacement and get it to us pronto. I believe we lost 24 or more hours downtime over that problem.
I spent my last two to three years on the ore handling/shafts as central electrician under John Littleton. Left for greener fields in Australia in August of 1979.

[John]

Here's a snippet of info that came back to me this morning.
The first rope change they did at Boulby on the No2 shaft, we are talking here of the permanent winder, someone slipped up big time.
The old ropes were removed and hauled down the side of the road from the entrance to the mine services, and a feller was sent with oxy burner to burn it into manageable lengths for scrap.
I have no idea how it was discovered, whether off the drum markings or after it was installed, but the new ropes were short!!!! Not a lot, but still short.
Too late, feller had already cut a few lengths off no...
Meant we couldn't deck both cages together for manriding, I'd presume thinking back, it was just one rope that was short by a few feet or we'd have been up the creek without a paddle.

I don't recall how long we were in that mess, but as we had one large double deck cage and one small double deck cage, it didn't affect us a great deal, just meant we couldn't double cage during manriding periods.

[John]

Not had a deal of experience from the NCB on winders or shafts, in fact zero really.
So my only experience was at Boulby and restricted to the shaft skipping gear.
Once installed and commissioned it ran almost flawlessly, we did get the occasional proximity switch fail, or need adjustment, plus the odd time I had to flip a relay that had failed to make in the skipping control cabinet.
At the start of mucking, the winding engineman would wind the first skip manually, once the skip had discharged at bank and had not presented any problems, he'd switch to auto and sit back and catch up with his reading.
A long way from my NCB days of steam winders..

The times I was called to bank to sort a skipping problem out, I'd spend a few minutes with the winder in his cabin watching everything was operating OK before going back underground.

Towards the end of my time there, some cracks caused by ground movement had appeared in the concrete that the engine was mounted on. I don't think they caused any worries, but were monitored.

The winding engines were mounted between the two towers at Boulby.