Mines rescue

[plantfit]

Ayup all,

I work in what they now call "Surface Mining" Quarrying industry to the not so politically correct, Anyroad, Last year as part of my training I attended a course at the mines rescue center in Mansfield (confined spaces training) Fantastic course, great instructors and great atmosphere, really learned a lot and just a little insight into what some of your chaps went through day in day out. I live in Lincolnshire so it was great to be back among the pit community I grew up in years ago in Nottingham where all my relatives were pit men. If any of you know of anyone at the MRC please pass on my thanks.

Roger

[limey]

I didn't know any of the mines rescue folk in England - but when I did some work at Sunnyside in Utah, there were several "Rescue Team" members in the section we worked in. About a year later there was a fire at the Utah Power and Light Company's Wilberg mine which killed 27 miners. It was very strange to watch TV and see chaps I knew on the rescue team coming out of the mine.

They do amazing work in the very worst of circumstances, and anybody who has ever been underground owes a huge "thank you" to them!

[John]

I never knew anyone in rescue when I was with the NCB, but at Boulby Mine, (Cleveland Potash in North Yorks) we had our own fully trained rescue teams. We we miles from any rescue Station, I think the closest was in County Durham, so the company had a fully kitted out rescue room with breathing apparatus etc on hand. each of the four shifts had several volunteer rescue members, all fully trained and had to undergo monthly training sessions.
These guys trained with all equipment on underground, not easy to say we had ambient rock temps of 108F, and the coolest place underground was No1 pit bottom, after that temps could be as high as 138F in the farthest workings! Thank God the humidity was almost zero!
It was the hottest place I've ever worked in my life! Just changing a cable on a Joy undercutting machine was a chore, we had to put old sacks on the metalwork so as not to burn our legs, we wore shorts all the time.
So the rescue squad really earned their money!

[abdaz]

Working in 138F (58.88889C),
"Shoot,that's pretty cool Bro." as you colonial exports are likely to exclaim, or in Yorkshire it would more likely be something like; "By gum lad that's a bit waarm."
Here's an excerpt from a Googled description on the effects of temperature increase to the human body, the additional bits bracketed in blue are taken from the Barnsley Guide, Teach Yourself to Keep Cool and Avoid Displacement to Van Diemen’s and other Distant Lands.

“Irreversible protein denaturation occurs above 44oC (core temperature) with brain oedema and destroyed thermoneurons in the hypothalamus. Clinically, the brain damage is shown with disorientation, lack of sweat secretion, delirium and universal cramps (or more frequently, bouts of uncontrollable canteen related kleptomania) before death (or transportation.)

I have to say with all due respect that, the key words and phrases that leapt out to me, were “disorientation”, “delirium”, “lack of sweat secretion” and of course “electrician.” ;D
Best regards, Daz.

[John]

We did have a few cases of heat exaustion Daz, while I was there. The critical factor was LOW humidity.
The hottest part I ever recal was the "old" north side when they were driving the two ore bins. The contractors were naked, save for a pair of underpants, plus their boots, hat lamp etc.
I was called to a drill rig that had tripped out on thermals one night. The hydraulic cooling fan wasn't working because of it being tripped, so the oil wasn't being cooled. I was coerced, or at least the official tried! to get me to short the thermals so as the oil could be cooled. I refused as paint was peeling off the tank!

Some of the gold mines in South Africa get hotter Daz, and they even have air conditioning.

Boulby tried water evaporative cooling in one district, but the humidity rose to such high levels it was impossible to do any work.

When I was the East and South East district lecko, the coolest spot in the district was 98F, that was the snap room area! Intake airway!

Surprisingly, temps that high aren't really that bad when you get accustomed to them, remember the wet/dry bulb average is what safety goes by, and the humidity would be around a few percent.

One has to remember though, over exaustion can lead to heat stroke!
I've worked in temps of around the 80's with humidity in the 90% mark and it was murder! I had a mate who was in the military and spent time in Antarctica, summer time, temps were still cold, and yet it was so dry they were playing baseball stripped to the waist because they were so warm! So it works both ways Daz.

I'll have to check and see what conditions prevail these days at Boulby, I doubt things have altered very much due to the great depth at which that mine works. Well over a 1000 metres below the surface.

[abdaz]

I read an article a few weeks ago that declared the human body was capable of withstanding external temperatures of 120C for a maximum period of 10 minutes, providing that there was zero moisture, it stated that a raw steak under the same conditions would be cooked in the same 10 mins.
Refrigerated air conditioning was used in UK coalmines as well, one I think was Manton (memory failing), but I do remember working on a face there when the 'fridge' packed up and the face temperature just shot up.
India was a pretty good training ground for working in heat and humidity and Mongolia for the reverse, I used to have the Tee shirts but I gave them away

[John]

The old memories not completely gone then, I recall the ventilation guys telling us it was 48C in the north area, so 138F wasn't too far off!

When we were transferring longwalls at Angus Place the new faceline was always hot and bloody humid! But nowhere as hot as Boulby. With that kind of humidity, we'd have been kealing over all over the place.

My leather boots at Boulby, used to dry out on my days off. When I got them out my locker after a few days, they were rock solid!
We used to suffer with chaffing between the legs from salt rash/heat and sweating Daz, very uncomfortable to say the least!
Shorts and tee shirt were the order of the day in the faces at that mine!

[abdaz]

You are certainly right about Mines Rescue deserving all our thanks, not just the regular full timers but all the hundreds of 'part timers' over the years, the lads at every pit that were members of local rescue teams. It was easy to say that they all got paid for the time that the spent training but I recall that it wasn't always the case that they did get paid for all the time that they put into it, I'm sure that every man that volunteered to serve did it out of a sense of duty and with pride. My dad was a member of the Rotherham MR Station for a good number of years and I know that some of his training was physically a lot harder than his work as a collier on the hand filled faces. I recognise the likelihood is, that there are or have been similar occupations where volunteers have knowingly put themselves into dangerous situations in order to save the lives of others, but I personally can't envisage a situation where the unknown potential of dangers are greater than entering a coalmine in the aftermath of an explosion and or fire.
This thread seems to have drifted away from its topic title somewhat, but in order not to be one to stop the flow of input (whilst ever it is flowing), I would like to add to the 'Working Temperature' theme, the fact that coal mines on Spitzbergan are working faces in permafrost, in situations where I understand that underground heaters had to be used and water as a shearer dust suppressant has to be replaced by foam, although even those facts didn't prevent a massive underground fire in recent years wherebye, if I remember correctly the mine had to be flooded to stop the fire. ??
In an attempt to add further complications to the thread, what type of quarrying are you involved in and by chance that I can add even more confusion, did you know that there has been (and maybe still is) underground mining in Lincolnshire, that many people may not be aware of? It certainly came as a surprise to me.

[plantfit]

Hi Abdaz,

I'm in the sand and gravel extraction game , I didn't know of any deep mines in this area and would be more than interested to find out more if you have some info.

Cheers
Rog

[abdaz]

Hya Roger,
I worked for a company that supplied heading machines that were used in underground ironstone mines somewhere close to Sthingyhorpe and although I never worked there I do remember seeing underground photographs taken around 1976 of at least one of these machines working there.

www.photrek.co.uk/greetwell.htm

www.northlincs.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A7238841-2FA3-4982-A835-1B234C3F3027/19905/NorthLincolnshireContaminatedLandInspectionStrateg.pdf

At the above, read sections 2:11:2 starting at page 7. Of special note is the fact that underground mining continued until 1989 and that the iron stone deposits are being safeguarded just in case mining them becomes viable again in the future.

regards Daz.

[abdaz]

SthingyHORPE that is, of course, God only knows how that happened, Sthingyhorpe has enough problems without me adding a 'thingy' on it.

[abdaz]

The penny has just dropped, the 'thingy' replacement has been done automatically by the 'mecanikeral' censor, it has to based on the old school toilet door graffiti, 'If Typhoo put the T in Britain, who put the 'thingy' in S-thingy-horpe?'
S-c-u-n-t-h-o-r-p-e, Gordon Bennett whatever next, will it mean that any mention of bearings on here will have to differentiated by roller and full round sphere type as opposed to a simple b-a-l-l bearing, will Yorkshire colliers have to resort to 'Heyup mi duck' as opposed to 'Narr then owd c-o-c-k'? Will all engineering files have to become legitimised?............. I can't imagine how words like t-a-i-l-gate, alb-u-m, hema-t-i-t-e could possibly get through.

[John]

I'm going to have to go into the censor and do some altering...
I haven't altered anything in there, it's as was when i set the site up.


Anyroads, didn't Lincolnshire have iron ore mines at one time?
I'd also hazard a guess, there are coal seams, very deep though under that county.

[abdaz]

....... not to mention two local coal mining areas here in Barnsley, W-o-m-b-well and P-e-n-i-s-tone!!

[John]

I've removed some of the censored words, be a shame to be talking about geology and typed dyke and some odd word popped up!

[abdaz]

Good for you J, the Scunny bit frightened me to death when I first saw it, I thought that I had typed it that way and that was before I'd even screwed the top off the bottle.
Iron stone yes definitely worked, coal I am sure wasn't worked, but I did read that the Barnsley Bed seam had been proved all the way West from Yorks and Notts to the East coast across Lincolnshire, so the possibilities are always open.

[John]

As I understood it Daz, all coal seams continue east into Europe where they are twice the depth of the UK seams.
Cotgrave was farther east and several miles south of Clifton, and the same seams were many yards deeper.
You probably experienced the same between the west yorks pits and the east Yorks pits.

[abdaz]

Not being an expert at anything other than causing unintentional confusion whilst still being a practicing trainee in the art of 'intentionally applied confusion', I think that I can say that the only general rule that applies to coal seams in the UK is that, taking the Pennines as a centre line, coal seams dip from that central point both to the East and to the West. Regarding increase in thickness as the Yorkshire seams dip to the East is true in some seams but in others the opposite is also true, the Parkgate Seam at Grimethorpe was approximately 6' whilst a short distance towards the Southeast at Hickleton the same seam was little higher than 3'.
The subject of coal seam continuation is something that has always interested me, as a lad first starting in the pits I had a job that took me to pits far and wide, initially from the Western extents of the NCB Barnsley Area, Caphouse and Hartley Bank to the same area's Eastern extent at South Kirkby and Hemsworth, later years saw my involvement with the Doncaster and North Yorkshire pits and I remember being totally confused by the various names of seams, some that had the same names as the more Westerly seams that I knew but appeared to have totally different characteristics and others that appeared to be the same seams that I knew in the West but were named completely differently in the East ................ so, I have just invested a few bob in the Ebay purchase of a book; 'The Nature and Origin of Coal and Coal Seams' by Raistrick and Marshall, which I hope will explain it all.
One that confused me for a while was the fact that the Barnsley Bed at Rossington (far to the East of Barnsley and obviously therefore at a greater depth) was 14' high with the three standard muck bands as opposed to 6 or 8' in Barnsley, it was eventually revealed to me that Rossington's Barnsley Bed included the Dunsil Seam which in many Barnsley Area pits had been worked totally separately at a fair distance below the Barnsley seam and had been extracted as a 3' seam in its own right.

[limey]

Naming of coal seams has always been a puzzle to me - and it is apparant that the same seam may have many different names. Also seams can combine - or even split.

When I worked at BPB Instruments, we did a fair bit of work on the exploration for the Selby coalfield. Certainly the seams dip to the east, and probably extend far out under the North Sea. I think the deepest hole we worked to the east of Selby was about 5,000ft - and the coal was certainly there.

The deepest hole I ever worked in the U.K. was for Cleveland Potash when they were exploring for the Boulby mine. It was just off the A171 about three miles west of Whitby. I think it was 7,000ft deep! We also did a couple of holes just south of Scarborough for the Geological Survey - they were exploring the oil shales that outcrop there!

[John]

As you say seam thickness varies. At Clifton, the deep hard seam on one side of the pit, south west, was over five foot thick, yet on the south east side was only around four foot thick. That in a distance of less than a mile. It was also close to the Bunter sandstone where it was thickest too! What is now called the Sherwood Sandstone.

[plantfit]

Ayup all,

As I understand it there was an ironstone mine at Greetwell, top side of Lincoln, we had a quarry there for sand and gravel and I've been told the deeper we dug it exposed some of the old workings, tunnels etc. After Iv'e finished my weeks R&R I'll ask some of the older guy's at work to shed more light on it for me.

Rog

[John]

If you do a google on Lincolnshire mining Roger, you will find a treasure of info on Ironstone mining in Lincs.

[Clive]

i bought that book as well daz. If I remember rightly the silkston is the Arley mine of Burnley...about the best house coal you can get but a lousy roof in Burnley. I never worked it, the last closed down just before I got there, but I belive it was a s hard as iron to work with the pick. Worked a split seam just above it, it was lousy coal. If I brought you a bag you would be mad..and smokey, blocked my chimney (or is that chimley) in no time, I got it for nowt and it was well overpriced

[Clive]

bit of a side point, visited scunny thingy this year...what a good place for a holiday resort..We wone 1-0 and got you relegated...sorry. But following Carlisle UTD is about as stressfull as wondering when your pits going to close...but without the redundancy