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Post by John on Nov 30, 2004 9:21:34 GMT -5
I wonder why we dreaded that sentance, "inspectors coming tomorrow, make sure everythings OK for his visit"  ? Lets be right, he was coming to try and catch the Manager out, not us lowly workers. But we seemed to get the sharp side of his tongue! "You the electrician here? " " Why isn't the pull wire for the stage loader right up to the ripping lip" he said to me once! Anybody with a reasonable amount of intelligence could have worked that out, knowing the ripping lip was about to be fired and the result would have been a pullwire severed and no way to stop the stage loader except by a shaking of a caplamp side to side vigorously! Or "are you aware No3 lockouts not working?" Course I was, bloody well waiting for Bestwood Central stores to send our pit some spares, nobody ever tell him it's the end of the financial year and spares like overtime are in short supply? Mind you, even if everything was done by the book, Inspectors are like trained sniffer dogs, if they can't find owt wrong, piss on the nearest thing, and that would be Deputy, Electrician and fitters.... |
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Post by Ragger on Jan 11, 2005 14:51:48 GMT -5
The Inspector.(God bless them John).  The day the inspector came to pit everyone was in a state, Word filtered through the grapevine to up the work rate, It wasn’t more coal they wanted; safety, was top of the list, This inspector was a demon; there was little that he missed, Stone-dust was spread throughout the inspector's route, Roadways were cleared of debris and made safe underfoot. Gas checks were carried out; all timber set to rule, The HMI was thorough, he was no-ones fool. His eyes moved in all directions taking in the scene, He knew every trick; he knew the clean-up team had been. But he’s not a bad bloke he just makes sure we do things right, He’s well aware the men cut corners, when he’s out of sight. Sometimes he finds bad practices on his long inspection, That’s part of his training, faultfinding and detection. If all the men have done their bit and tidied up the place, The HMI wont say too much; there will be no disgrace. It’s a relief all has gone well and there’s little to report, The manager is very pleased so glad with his support, The men were all praised for way they rallied round, Raising the standards with their efforts underground. Now lads back to work and get those shearers rolling, We’ve lost enough production; its time we started coaling. |
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Post by John on Jan 12, 2005 9:54:59 GMT -5
I was a young apprentice when this happened. HMI mining was due anytime, we'd had a telephone call saying he was on his way up the main gate, so he was within minutes of us. The stable hole "dint" had been fired and cleaned out and the stablehole men were getting ready to advance the Crawley stage loader. It was equiped with two hydraulic rams, but took forever to advance the several feet into the M/G stable hole. So as always the men stopped the stage loader and put a couple of "sprags" from the chain to the rings and reversed the stage loader, inching it foot by foot until it was advanced the correct distance... We kept warning the bloke at the switch the Inspector was almost here, "we'll be ok, nearly done now, be out the way afore 'e gets 'ere" was his reply.
"What the "F" is going on here", Inspector had crept up and seen what was going on, caught them with their pants down!
"Who are you", he pointed to an old bloke sitting down, "I'm the switch man mate" "who are you"? he asked the bloke on the switch, "I'm a stable hole man", he said, wait here he told him. Off down to the ripping lip he went with notebook and pen in hand, "You, name and lamp number, fined 100 pounds, you, name and lamp number, fined 100 pounds...He fined all four stable hole men a hundred quid each! He ripped seven shades of crap out of the switch man for allowing them to do it, and had the Deputy and Overman over the carpet too. Face was held up around an hour to make his point, he was spitting blood was Mr HMI!!
Funny thing, next day, same shift, same team, reversing the stage loader to advance it, "we 'as to make up the 'undred quid 'e fined us yesterday" ;D
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Post by aardvark on Feb 7, 2008 17:41:54 GMT -5
We had an inspectors visit at our pit he was going to visit an heading the regular fitter was on the union and just happened to sleep in so a market fitter had to go in instead.
"Who's the fitter ? " said the inspector .
"I am" said the fitter
" How often do you check the filter in the microdyne fan "
" every day" says the fitter
"did you do it today?"
"yes " says the fitter naively
" can I have a look"
well obviously the fitter couldn't budge the handwheel
" I'll get my stilsons " says the fitter
" no need" says the inspector i've seen enough
The fitter whose district it was used to do the 123 inspections and used to pull other peoples districts to bits his own district meanwhile was a s***hole of the highest order
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Post by John on Feb 7, 2008 18:32:08 GMT -5
In the early days of Boulby Mine in North Yorks, we were completely understaffed on the electrical side. The majority of us were ex NCB trained electricians with a couple from British Steel, who adapted to mining real good.
We had a PPM system very similar to the Coal Boards, our engineer in charge was ex NCB with a degree in electrical engineering and as far as I know was responsible for introducing the PM scheme as was used.
Even though we were pushed to get everything done within a shift, there was always jobs we just couldn't find time for. In an 8 hour shift, we'd be working through snap breaks daily on breakdowns, mostly teething problems with brand new mining equipment working in extremely hot conditions.
It was a "feather in our helmets" when our boss told us that the elec Inspector said we were doing a first class job under very arduous conditions!
First time I've ever heard an Inspector compliment a whole staff!
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