Roof supports and Props.

[John]

Gullick. Powered roof supports. (seaman four and five legs.)

Dowty Powered roof supports. (Roofmasters chocks) and props.

Desford-Wild Powered roof supports.. (goalpost chocks.)

[plantfit]

Ayup All,
I worked for Longwall international for a time in the mid 90s, welding roof supports, some smaller ones for a pit in Yorkshire but mainly for an Aussie company at a pit called Goonyella.

Roger

[John]

If they had five legs, they'd have been Gullicks Roger.
Four in the back and one at the front for the cantilever section.

[limey]

We had the 5-leg Gullicks at Donisthorpe. If I remember correctly, four levers and a rotary selector valve. They were NOT adjacent control, and you had to be careful about getting your fingers trapped in the ram when you were pushing the conveyor over! The levers controlled the back legs, middle legs, front leg and ram. I bet I could still operate one!

[John]

I think they were the best engineered chock in use !!
We had the big chock shields at Angus Place in NSW, nothing like the little 5 leg units though! Then we went with Dowty chockshields, 650 tonne units weighing in at 30 tonnes a piece and costing $A135,000 each!
We tendered for the face equipment and Dowty UK won over their Australian company Dowty Wolleng! Seemed UK steel was far cheaper than Australian steel, even with shipping costs added on!

From what I've been told, they now have a total Joy face package in operation now.

[limey]

admin said:

From what I've been told, they now have a total Joy face package in operation now.

Wouldn't surprise me! When I was doing the dust research stuff we had a lot of contact with Joy - they had just started building their large DERD shearer and one of the first was at Sunnyside in Utah. Amazing machine - no hydraulics! Even the drive was all electric.

[John]

Sounds like an electricians nightmare Limey! I liked their SC10 shuttlecars, but not the electrics, the British Joy SC 10 cars had Belmos electrics on them, they were complicated but at least well made and easy to work on. Wasn't impressed with the US made electrics though on the ones I worked on in Oz. Same with their continuous miners, sooner have a Lee Norse or a Jeffrey Heliminer, far superior in quality, especially the hydraulics and electrics.

[limey]

LOL - I thought you guys called it "job security"!

We always referred to Lee Norse as "Leaky Norse"! Do you remember the old cable-hauled "Heliminers"? Over here they were called "Widowmakers" - I only saw one operating once - scared the cr*p out of me!

[John]

Heliminers were used extensively in Oz coal mines Limey, I may have preferred them because they gave us little problems compared to the Joy's. Ours were supplied with 1.1kv trailing cable.
When they had their first heliminer at Boulby, it was 3.3kv! My engineer tried to persuade the inspector to allow him to upgrade the machines to 6.6kv, but was refused on the grounds that the operators pulled too many cables out the plugs!

[John]

Never saw those Limey, only the tracked driven units, hard rock and coal, hard rock weighed in at around 90 tonnes!

[abdaz]

'Seemed UK steel was far cheaper'
It'll be cheaper still shortly, especially if you have the Rupees to pay for it;
As we wave tata to CORUS
With a welcoming chorus to TATA.

[limey]

It's true - my sister works for Corus in Sheffield!

I asked her if this meant curry for lunch everyday - but she says, so far, no changes!

[John]

I saw something to the effect Indian companies are buying up steel plants around Europe.
At the time we purchased the Dowty chockshields though, it was still British Steel Corporation.

[plantfit]

Ayup all,

The only thing I know about this is the rear shield, and that's because I used to weld them together when I worked for Longwall International in Nottingham

Cheers

Rog

[John]

Were Longwall International what I knew as Gullick Dobson Roger??
My old man used to deliver Dobson double twos from the Colwick Works of Dobson's.

I don't recognise the chock in the picture, but the last ones I worked under were Gullick Dobson and then Dowty's shipped from the UK works to the pit I worked at in NSW. Some pictures are on this site of them set up for training outside the lamp room.

[John]

Apr 18, 2009 15:01:24 GMT -5 plantfit said:

Ayup all,

The only thing I know about this is the rear shield, and that's because I used to weld them together when I worked for Longwall International in Nottingham

Cheers

Rog

I wonder if that FSW stands for Fletcher......Sutcliffe....Wild?

[mineruk]

I am sure we had FSW at Calverton on C1s in the brinsley seam and all the faces in the brinsley.

[erichall]

Hi, John, you could very well be correct (as usual As I drag through the dire recesses of my now ailing mind, I seem to remember That we once used, somewhere, 'Fletcher' chocks, Sutcliffe were a well known name in conveyor design, Wild used to make a hydraulic support, but I well remember a firm of FletcherSutcliffeWild, usually referred to as FSW (often as Freeman Hardy & Willis, in jest).
Thinking trhrough this brings back memories. The first hydraulic support I used was the 'mushroom' gob-line chock used simply as a back support when hydraulic props and steel bars were used We were operating in a seam with a 10in approx dirt band in the centre of the seam (I believe the Low Fenton) which was cut out using a pre-cutter machine with a shortened jib and deflector to act as a gobflinger. This preceded the shearer and had to be hand filled (supposedly into the goaf - ha-ha)before the rigid steel bars and Dobson props could be moved behind the shearer. The Desford mushroom chocks were to protect the gob line and advance the AFC .
I next improved to using Dobson Double 2 Hydraulic chocks, then onto the Dowty Roofmaster chock, followed by the Gullick chocks on which I spent much of my working life.
Early in my 'managerial' career, I remember as a backshift Undermanager installing a face line of 'BONSER' chocks. I don't remember much about these except that each had a label, and some bright spark of a haulage lad had used these as an anagram, so they went into the mine labelled 'ROBENS'. I never did find out if the noble Sir Alf had anything to do with these.
A later move took me to Langwith, and a face with WILD 'Y' chocks, which were never very effective and didn't last long. It was whilst using these that I came across one of those peculiarities one finds in Mining. On arriving in the Tail Gate I heard a call on the tannoy - 'Lost Pressure, Get Paddling!' - at which point one of the Tail gate workmen rushed to the hydraulic fluid tank, where he stuck in a short piece of board and literally rowed for his life. 'O.K.We've got pressure back' at which he returned to his work. Despite the fitting of a form of activator into the tank, and various other devices, we kept losing pressure periodically, and the only solution was to 'Get paddling'. We never did find the problem or the solution. Happy days!

[dazbt]

I have a suspicion that if 'old' Frank Bonser reads this forum he will be spinning in his grave

[rac]

Feb 27, 2007 14:02:42 GMT -5 John said:

Sounds like an electricians nightmare Limey! I liked their SC10 shuttlecars, but not the electrics, the British Joy SC 10 cars had Belmos electrics on them, they were complicated but at least well made and easy to work on. Wasn't impressed with the US made electrics though on the ones I worked on in Oz. Same with their continuous miners, sooner have a Lee Norse or a Jeffrey Heliminer, far superior in quality, especially the hydraulics and electrics.

agree with you there john the belmos electrics were'nt too bad worked on them in the 70's.one recollection is a problem we had with dirty contacts on some aux switches in the pilot circuit which unless made would cause the machine to fail to start.did'nt take the operator long to discover if they bashed the front cover it would jarr them and get going again-fine while they use a chock nog but some resorted to a 7lb hammer.the engineer was'nt impressed with all the hammer marks on the front cover!!!.anyway had a weekend with another electrician stripping the controller down and fitting silver contacts which cured it.took a while though for the operators to believe us though and they still kept a hammer to hand "just in case" aftermath of this was that every time there was a probem the first resort was to knock ten bells out of it before sending for anyone. happy days!!

[rac]

Feb 27, 2007 13:27:01 GMT -5 limey said:

admin said:

From what I've been told, they now have a total Joy face package in operation now.

Wouldn't surprise me! When I was doing the dust research stuff we had a lot of contact with Joy - they had just started building their large DERD shearer and one of the first was at Sunnyside in Utah. Amazing machine - no hydraulics! Even the drive was all electric.

yeh know them well limey did a 6yr stint at joy's service centre overhauling them and being involved in building new machines-fine while they were working as they should but bad news if you had to dive into the bowels of the controller very congested and complicated bad enough in the confines of a workshop with no pressure nightmare i should imagine on a face with the manager screaming "how long you gonna be?"definately not user friendly machines!! but generally quite reliable as the service engineers used to tell us.