Equipment salvage

[Wheldale]

When a pit closed, who decided what would be salvaged from the mine, also how was ?it decided what would be salvaged

[quimbyj1745]

    

A lot depended on the time scale we were given. Cadley Hill closed on the same day as Arkwright . Arkwright were given 6 weeks, Cadley were given 12 months. As manager I had a large part in the decisions of what was salvaged. We split the 40 men into 4 men teams plus electricians and fitters and then assigned them to specific areas of the pit .Contracts were agreed and some of the teams even went to the extent of salvaging pipes and rails. The union officials got involved in the salvage of 2000 yds of cable belt for an adjacent pit. Towards the end of the underground salvage I asked purchasing and stores about salvaging the 2 x 3.3kv feeders from the 2 surface drifts and was told there is no market for them so I enquired around and 2,400 yards of cable were salvaged by the electrical dept on a Sat & Sun and sent to Daw Mill & Lea Hall.

    The electrical engineer had an inquiry from a firm that had secured the contract to supply electrical equipment to a new small mine in South Wales 2weeks before the closure of the surface drifts. They wanted to buy 3 x 1100 /550v transformers 6 Weecol panels + 1 drill panel. Their offer of £10,000 was rejected and a final £29,000 agreed. Since all of these items  were classed as no demand and scheduled to be left they were salvaged and sold.

    Once the drifts were sealed, my instructions were to sell anything for the best price I could get. Railway rail crossings were sold to preserved railways on condition that they provided the working gangs and transport and they even purchased a loco shed. We even sold pit lockers to Amey Roadstone. I bought the ride on mower for my retirement.

                                         

[smshogun]

It also depended on what equipment they had on stock and what they could dispose of, and what senior management wanted to cover up, and be under no illusions, senior management were on some very beneficial and lucrative scams.

I was asked to attend a mining exhibition (against my will) and attended for one day, I went to the allocated entrance and was treated like a rock start and told I was allocated to a private dining room; at lunch time I attended for a very expensive dinner and witnessed an area mechanical engineer sign a contract with a respected mining supplier for 10 machines at a cost of £3.2M EACH, the signed contract was passed back to the company sales manager and he passed a folder back to the area engineer and a bunch of keys, he opened the folder in front of everyone and it contained the deeds to a property in his name, and I noted the address.

Why where there issues?

Only 2 collieries in the area were large enough to use these machines so why did he order 10 of them.

Why did he openly accept a house in return for spending so much money for machines which couldn't be used.

These machines were stored complete in area stores and none were ever used, issued to a colliery, or allocated to another colliery area.

When Moorgren Colliery closed, seven of these machines were transported to the colliery and broken down into components, the cages removed, and transported underground and built up, they were actually driven along the pit bottom roadway to a pre determined point and left fully powered up along the roadway at a point beyond where the stopping wall was to be erected prior to the pit bottom being filled with concrete so they would never be found. As for the other three machines? I don't know as I lost touch with many of my contacts.

In 2014 /2015 the house which was given to the area engineer was marketed as part of a deceased estate and was on the market for £3.75M and sold in early 2015 for £3.6M.

There were also many other scams going on which were "off the book" scams, at one colliery all the electrical cables were removed as the power was turned off in that section of the colliery and gangers rolled them up and bought them to the surface, they were cut into lengths and the copper and aluminium cores were removed and melted down into ingots in the blacksmiths shop, in addition the gunmetal ends has their compound removed and were stripped back to their casings, they were flattened under the blacksmiths hammer and also melted down into ingots, anything of a high value was also melted down so it couldn't be identified and the proceeds were equally distributed amongst the men who remained at the colliery.   

[colly0410]

Sounds like corporate fraud, a white collar crime that the cops seem very dis-interested in prosecuting. Now if they caught some working class person with a sidelight out that'd be a different matter. Apologies for cynical observations..

[smshogun]

Hardly cynical, but very true; every colliery closing had some sort of scam, but this was while collieries were running and not under threat of closure so how was it justified and how deep did it run.

[Clive]

Talking to a former hewer from alston at weekend. He was telling me that he worked at the foundry for a bit in the 80s
At intervals all sorts of mining gear would turn up...band new drills and bits even band new winding rope. All cut up and melted down, except the bits which found their way into the lochal pits.

It was all new gear..belt rollers Everything. Brand new all still painted.

Not a coal board pit for miles.

[smshogun]

Nothing new here, at one colliery I saw the old dirt wagons being stripped and their axle blocks were removed as they were plain bored phosphor bronze and all four of the dirt wagon weighed around 1 imperial ton and as scrap it fetched around £2600 per ton then.

Conflow valves were made from gunmetal and everyone was removed from anything they could find and two spanners stripped them down, their stainless steel ball was removed and put into a scrap bin and all the nylon seals were removed, the bodies were flattened under a power hammer so they couldn't be identified and they were weighed in.

New machines were stripped down and taken underground and dumped, they weren't even scratched and hadn;t even been run and this was to cover up the mass overspending by the industry in support of spending more money in the British economy.

Cables were salvaged and their copper or aluminium cores were melted down at huge numbers of foundries, electrical switchgear was stripped of any easy to get copper and brass and this was melted down, copper coils from transformers were a prime example where they were removed and fired to remove the shellac coating, and the coil wire was also melted down.

New belt structure, drive units, and rollers were often given away for a token gesture price of £10 to produce legitimate looking paperwork for their disposal, and anyone involved got huge cash backhanders in the brown envelopes.

This was just the tip of the iceberg.