Post by smshogun on Nov 9, 2017 22:06:56 GMT -5
How many had the mad winter dash?
At my first colliery we always had the mad winter dash and it always followed the same routine, we would receive a telephone call on Sunday evening and asked to come on days at 5am for the dash when the thermometer dropped below certain levels so we could thaw things out that were frozen and heat things up which weren't frozen to stop them freezing, and it always followed the same routine.
Pumps were started manually and the recirculation valves were opened so the pumps for fire fighting, prep plant water feeds, and mine water could be guaranteed, by starting the pumps and recirculating the water through the system and back to the ponds which also helped prevent them from freezing.
Two buckets were moved from the RAP site and we went to the joiners stash and get all their offcuts of untreated wood which was kept in a locked box with a steam pipe running through it to keep the offcuts dry and a bucket was filled on one side with the filled wood offcuts, while the other side was filled by scooping coal from the boiler store which was heated and kept the coal dry, the other bucket picked up another scoop of dry coal and a number of tubs and fires were thrown on top of the coal, and around the site we went. Our first port of call was to set several fire buckets under all the external pipes around the surface and light some of the wood offcuts until they were well alight and throw a shovel of coal onto them and allow them to start burning, next it was to the prep plant and set several fires under the CPP by placing the buckets under the plant in specific locations and lighting them and checking their hoods were under the chimney pipes which ran vertically through the CPP to heat all the floors, and then under the washery plant to set several more fires.
Like many pits we also had a lot of site lorries which were older and well battered and abused lorries which were not road legal, but were confined solely to site and we had a number of shallow trays which were thrown under their sumps and filled with embers to heat the engines and cabs as they were needed at 6.00 am to move coal around the site, and many were so old even then that they didn't have glow plugs or even cold start systems which were effective and nothing more than a shovel full of embers under them for 30 minutes would be the difference between them starting and not starting, and often we started them and let them idle if they were warm enough.
Most of the surface shops had coal fires of some type and these were lit by the afternoon shift and continually loaded with coal throughout the night by the night shift, and many of the surface machines were moved into the shops to keep them warm and dry, and where they had their dedicated garages, their coal fires were lit to keep machines warm enough to start them in the morning.
Once all the fires were lit it was onto the outlying fires which were under external conveyors and these were lit to warm the belts and to defrost them and many of the AFC's we had as feeders for the CPP were cleared and a couple of drums were stood directly onto them and lit, these were small fires which quickly burned to embers and the day shift men would tip them over onto the AFC's and the heat quickly transferred through the steel pans and defrosted them.
From there it was a simple job as all you had to do was take a bucket back and collect more coal and keep the fires topped up all day, and we always got shaft time for this job.
What did you do in the depths of winter,