Shaft Sinking at Parkside Colliery..

[John]

..Newton Le Willows. 1959
pt1
pt2
pt2
pt4














Parkside Demolition!

link to demolition.

[rhonddalad]

Details taken from a brochure issued with the compliments of the National Coal Board, descriptive of Parkside Colliery.

'The National Coal Board had for some time been desirous of improving the speed of shaft sinking in Great Britain and after obtaining competitive tenders it was decided to introduce the South African sinking methods at Parkside.

Accordingly, the sinking contract was given to a British Civil Engineering Company-Messrs Kinnear-Moodie - working in conjunction with a South African sinking contractor, who provided a sinking Manager and a nucleus of skilled men.

Sinking started on the 24th November 1957 in No. 1 shaft and on 1st December 1957 in No.2 shaft. For the first six months the contractors' rate of progress was below that anticipated, due partly to settling in difficulties with the South Africans, water bearing strata, imperfection in unloading arrangements and also some time was lost in obtaining approval for the use of parallel means of shotfiring.

After these difficulties had been overcome the speed of sinking increased rapidly and overall the shafts were sunk at an average rate of 186 ft. per month which was considerably faster than had been hitherto achieved in the United Kingdom.The target advance of 250 ft. per month was achieved and maintained and at times the sinking exceeded this rate. A United Kingdom sinking speed of 309 ft. of completed shaft was obtained in the month of September 1958. The final depth of the two shafts was approximately 890 yards.

Inset Construction - Insets were constructed in ascending order between March and December 1959 and to facilitate this work 3 ft. deep prefabricated steel sections were placed in an annular recess in the shaft lining, which was formed during the sinking. These were covered with timber baulks and the whole covered with 3 in. thickness of concrete to form a seal in the shaft. On completion of each inset it was necessary to remove the platform and great care was necessary as a high coNcentration of gas built up in the shaft below the baulks.

Three insets were constructed in each shaft:
No.1 Horizon - 449 Yards deep
No.2 Horizon - 566 yards deep
No. 3 Horizon - 719 yards deep

At No.4 Horizon, 836 yards deep, the full inset was not constructed but entry was made to facilitate further development.

Shaft Equipping - When the shafts and insets had been completed, the sinking services and pipes no longer required were removed and a single deck scaffold of N.C.B. design was installed. Special light type cages were designed to facilitate equipping the shafts'

[dazbt]

Very interesting, I've always had a fascination for shaft sinking but have no idea about the technicalities.
Does anyone here have any experience of shaft sinking from the bottom up, I've never seen it but I believe that the method is fairly widely used now, presumeably the shafts are machine bored somehow?

[John]

I've seen 100 foot in seam ore bins worked, they used a bore raising machine to punch a hole from the bottom to the top, 100 feet. Then opened up the bin from top to bottom using the 24 inch hole to drop the spoil through.
Thats the closest I've been to any form of shaft sinking.
I know they froze Boulby's shafts through the Sherwood bunter sandstones layers.


OK I see the original youtube videos have done their usual disappearing acts, so have placed the links to the shaft sinking and the demolition of Parkside.

[dazbt]

that was the keyword I was looking for, 'Raiseboring', found this explanation;

RAISEBORING;

www.miningweekly.com/article.php?a_id=19989

[John]

Those machines have come a long way over the years Daz, they were limited to how far they could drill at one time. Our 1000 tonne ore bins were 100 feet deep, the contractors drilled one hole dead centre of the two bins and one two foot egress at the back of the road where the bin bottom was.
Like I stated earlier, the bins were drilled and fired from the top, and the muck was dropped through the two foot hole the raise borer had drilled.
As the bins got deeper, the men were winched into and out of them until they finally broke through.

[garryo]

A little bit more on shaft sinking and raise boring

I was fortunate to have worked with a shaft sinking team in Africa on the Copperbelt. At that time there were two main companies Cementation and Shaft Sinkers Pty. Cementation was originally from Doncaster in the UK while Shaft Sinkers were a South African.
I was involved with Cementation, as the ground was very hard and pretty dry we did not have to freeze or grout as they did at CPL and in the Potash mines in Canada.

The system was fairly straight forward and involved two winders one called the Kibble Hoist the other the Stage Hoist .
Normally the stage where the sinking crew worked off was lowered to just above the sink and the shaft jumbo would drill a series off blast holes.
These were then charged and the stage was lifted clear of the blast.
The blast was fired, stage lowered and the shaft mucker either cactus grab or Cryderman would be used to fill kibbles which were wound by the kibble hoist. At the shaft top were doors which covered the shaft when the kibbles were tipping.
From the top deck of the sinking stage was the place the crew worked setting the shaft lining and ventilation tubing.
When an inset or level was reached a tracked Eimco air loader was used to excavate the landing.
The sinking stage had three or four decks and the winder was sometimes a four drum unit or a two drum unit with the ropes being in double purchase.
The kibble hoist was a double drum sometimes double clutched and was 500/1000HP depending on the depth of the sink and the kibble size.
The electrics on the sink could be quite complicated with ll the safety interlocks etc.


Raise drills or Raise borers, the Robbins company in the USA were one of the early pioneers and they usually called the machines owing to the hole size they could ream. For instance a 32R could ream a 3ft diameter hole, a 61R could ream a 6ft diameter hole.
Robbins made a whole series of machines which the main rotating drive motor being AC, DC or hydraulic. One of the largest machines was the 121R . One of these machines was owned by Western Mining Corporation in Australia, this machine traveled between mine sites in WA and was used to sink mostly ventilation shafts.
The procedure was that the machine would drill a pilot hole into the workings below. When the pilot hole was complete the pilot bit was removed and the reamer fitted (up to 10-12ft). The hole was back reamed with the cuttings being removed by a "bogger' LHD underground.
Before the machine came to the vent shaft site a concrete footing would be put in to secure the machine and later the ventilation fan. An 11kv power line would also be run initially to power the raise drill and later the fan motor. The 121R normally needed a 750kva transformer to supply it and its auxiliary equipment.

Before raise drilling another method was called cage raising. Here a drill hole was drilled into the U/G workings and a rope lowered down the drill hole from a winch on the surface. A cage was fitted to the end of the rope and the shaft would be excavated from the bottom up with miners drilling up from inside the cage. As you can imagine it was a risky task

Later Robbins in conjunction with Redpath in Canada developed a Blind shaft drilling machine.
One of these types of machines (not a Robbins) was used by Australian Shaft Drilling to bore a 2000ft vent shaft at WMCs Leinster Nickel Project, however the whole project was beset with problems and and the job was abandoned owing to cost and time overruns. The machine stood idle for 5 years before being scrapped.

One a Zeni was also used at Betws mine in Wales for a vent shaft job.
I have a low quality photo of the Leinster rig if anyones interested