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Post by John on Jan 19, 2009 11:45:46 GMT -5
Here's a picture of Clifton Colliery taken from the power station next door.
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Post by coalfire on Jan 19, 2009 18:45:39 GMT -5
Thats a cool picture. That is a big head frame did it have a skip hoist or was is just for supplies and men? I see something that kinda looks like a slope belt. The power station did it only supply power to the mine or did it supply to the local community?
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Post by John on Jan 19, 2009 18:56:23 GMT -5
Thats a cool picture. That is a big head frame did it have a skip hoist or was is just for supplies and men? I see something that kinda looks like a slope belt. The power station did it only supply power to the mine or did it supply to the local community? As pits go Lannie, the headstocks were pretty small, plans were to drive a drift to intersect a road underground, the drift would have been over a mile long. Plans were for the workings to go down to the Ashgate seam, about six feet thick, in fact the headings were started in a face I worked in some three or four hundred yards outbye in the old goaf. The drift down was due to start when we had word of the pit closing in late 1967. The power station was part of the Trent Valley power stations, biggest being the Ratcliffe on Soar station, when built and operating was the biggest thermo power station in the world with six 600Mw units. Cotgrave colliery supplied all of it's coal. We supplied the power station next door to us. That covered conveyor carried coal from a tippler to the coal washery and prep plant Lannie. The shaft closest is the upcast, men and materials, the other was coal and men. Both at around 300 yards deep. BUT, the seams we were working were a lot deeper on the other side of a major fault that the River Trent sat in.
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Post by John on Jan 20, 2009 21:45:44 GMT -5
Thats a cool picture. That is a big head frame did it have a skip hoist or was is just for supplies and men? I see something that kinda looks like a slope belt. The power station did it only supply power to the mine or did it supply to the local community? I'll tell you what Lannie, the two towers at Boulby potash mine in North Yorkshire are around 100 feet high, reinforced concrete. In the No1 ore shaft is a compressor, just a small one for operating the skip doors. When I was working there, the compressor was at about the 80 foot level in the tower! I could never fathom why they installed it way up there except to try and keep us electricians fit!! Damned thing was prone to tripping out on overload, so it meant grabbing the No2 shaft from whatever it was being used for, riding out and hotfooting it across the yard up the steel stairs two at a time to get the shaft back in action again! Many a time I've ridden the cage with no doors on as it was being used to send materials down the pit. I've also rode out on the lower manriding deck of one of the ore skips with 20 tonnes of ore behind me in No1 shaft too for an early ride out the pit. Shhhhhh, that was illegal.
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 24, 2011 13:03:41 GMT -5
I don't like correcting the administrator, but Ratcliffe on Soar is 4x500Mw. Drax is much bigger 6x660Mw.
I think the coal to Wilford Power station went in wagons not over a belt despite the proximity. I think the colliery loco moved the wagons to the boundary then the power station loco collected them. BR was not involved. Wilford was of course much smaller than Ratcliffe and was closed some years ago. It was originally built by Nottingham Corporation when they supplied electricity.
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 24, 2011 13:14:29 GMT -5
Clifton only had a small coal prep plant a Grieves Box to wash the house coal and a dry cleaner (which created a lot of dust) to produce industrial nuts, I believe both the house coal and the DC Nuts went locally, including one merchant who collected with a horse & cart.
Clifton was on the edge of the Meadows a closely packed Victorian area of Nottingham.
The coal quality was not great the Deep Hard and Piper being worked were quite dirty. The Piper being somewhat high in sulphur by Area 6 standards.
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Post by John on Jun 24, 2011 13:29:50 GMT -5
Clifton only had a small coal prep plant a Grieves Box to wash the house coal and a dry cleaner (which created a lot of dust) to produce industrial nuts, I believe both the house coal and the DC Nuts went locally, including one merchant who collected with a horse & cart. Clifton was on the edge of the Meadows a closely packed Victorian area of Nottingham. The coal quality was not great the Deep Hard and Piper being worked were quite dirty. The Piper being somewhat high in sulphur by Area 6 standards. The Piper was "too hot" for the power stations boilers. so was mixed with Tupton, (Low Main). Then when we lost 43's (in Piper) all coal was Tupton, a very low quality coal, that was what finished the pit off. There was no reserves of Deep Hard left. Plans were to drift down to the next seam, from memory the Ashgate, but may well have been Blackshale, the top of the drifts headings were being developed from 51's M'G in the old goaf area of 51's. A lot of money had been spent on those headings, the underground drillings to explore the seams below Tupton etc.. Yep all coal was shunted via our pit steam loco to the power station where they took over the coal waggons. When I first started at Clifton, the tubs of coal came off the cage at No1 pit top, went down hill under gravity and met a creeper to take them up a gantry to a tippler in the coal prep plant, then down another creeper back to pit bank empty. During that first year, 1965, during pit shut down fortnight, the creeper's were ripped out and a conveyor installed from a tippler near the shafts up to the screens. One bottleneck removed! A couple of years later No1 pit bottom was installed with a vertical surge bin that loaded the tubs instead of being loaded from the Cable Belt. The excavation for the bin broke into the old Deep Soft pit bottom area above us. The last deep hard face was 41's at the south east end of the pit, and was supposed to have joined up with Cotgrave as an emergency egress, but never materialized. 41's was almost six miles from pit bottom via the belt roads.
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Post by John on Jun 24, 2011 13:35:56 GMT -5
I don't like correcting the administrator, but Ratcliffe on Soar is 4x500Mw. Drax is much bigger 6x660Mw. I think the coal to Wilford Power station went in wagons not over a belt despite the proximity. I think the colliery loco moved the wagons to the boundary then the power station loco collected them. BR was not involved. Wilford was of course much smaller than Ratcliffe and was closed some years ago. It was originally built by Nottingham Corporation when they supplied electricity. My figures came from an information film made by the alternator manufacturer, they stated six 660Mw units, largest of their type when built. I can double check as I know someone who's Father assisted in the installation of them with Parsons. The memory can play tricks with me as I get older. Last time I was over, around 20 years ago now, I went passed the Wilford power station site, nothing there! I also saw Pork Farms factory built on the site of the old shafts.....Scary when you think of it with so many shafts collapsing these days due to the poor way they were filled and sealed.
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Post by John on Jun 24, 2011 13:51:31 GMT -5
Don't worry about correcting me, I've found a lot of conflicting things since starting this forum and my website.
Shaft seam depths and thicknesses I received from the coal authority doesn't quite add up for Cotgrave Colliery's Blackshale seam. They list it as 1ft 0ins......They had a large BJD Ace ranging drum shearer in the Blackshale faces. My guess seam section was "10ft 0ins"
That's only one anomaly I have come across in my researches..
As you mention Calverton, that was another colliery I was a little confused over before you posted it started as a ventilation shaft for Bestwood. Some stories I read said it was started in the early 40's and yet I knew it was sunk in the 50's. That cleared that one up for me.
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Post by John on Jun 24, 2011 15:02:04 GMT -5
I don't like correcting the administrator, but Ratcliffe on Soar is 4x500Mw. Drax is much bigger 6x660Mw. I think the coal to Wilford Power station went in wagons not over a belt despite the proximity. I think the colliery loco moved the wagons to the boundary then the power station loco collected them. BR was not involved. Wilford was of course much smaller than Ratcliffe and was closed some years ago. It was originally built by Nottingham Corporation when they supplied electricity. You are quite correct, then the film by Parsons must have been on the Drax set up..Thanks for the correction. Cotgraves total output was sent to Ratcliffe.
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 25, 2011 9:01:48 GMT -5
When Cotgrave was built the coal prep plant was designed to produce house coal & when the Deep Soft started production house coal was produced. It was good, low in ash. When the production was switched to the Deep Hard that scuppered the house coal, the seam was much dirtier. All the coal then went to power Stations. I am not sure that it all went to Ratcliffe, I think some might have gone to West Burton.
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Post by John on Jun 25, 2011 9:16:41 GMT -5
When Cotgrave was built the coal prep plant was designed to produce house coal & when the Deep Soft started production house coal was produced. It was good, low in ash. When the production was switched to the Deep Hard that scuppered the house coal, the seam was much dirtier. All the coal then went to power Stations. I am not sure that it all went to Ratcliffe, I think some might have gone to West Burton. During me research, I found that Cotgrave had several seams the shafts intersected that were workable, ie Top Hard, High Hazels etc, all pretty thick too!! I sent a message to a very old friend of mine who worked at Cotgrave from the early 60's to it's finish and asked him why they never went for them before the end. His reply was they had contracts for only power station coal and those are primarily domestic/industrial coals. What a shame, they could have given the colliery another 50 plus years of life. I worked at Cotgrave briefly to finish my apprenticeship after Clifton closed in 1968. One of my first jobs was to finish drawing the last of the conveyor electrics off the Deep Soft area. The floor lift down there was horrendous! Down the conveyor road, the bottom sections of the full circular rings were "growing" out the floor and touching the crowns of the rings. Oddly though, the main loco road, 20feet diam full rings, wasn't touched by excessive convergence. All the faces cutting coal were in Deep Hard at that time, five of them, one BJD Magnamatic shearer face and four AB16/200 shearers, not counting "sumping" shearers for T/G elimination. M/G transformers and GEB's were monorail mounted due to floor lift problems. Most gate roads had continuous dinting taking place to keep them open!!
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 25, 2011 10:21:56 GMT -5
I think the higher seams at Cotgrave were waterlogged.
I am not a miner just a lab lad and a number cruncher in the Marketing Dept so the intricacies of mining are not in my experience just the results of them when the coal surfaced and had to be sold. I believe the floor of the Deep Hard was very soft and the machine dived down thus making the ROM very dirty, the pit built up a massive stock of small coal that was to poor for sale, it took years before it was all disposed of, some was taken to a site in Hucknall where a privately operated washery treated it, I think the firm was called Blacks ant the site Wigwam Lane.
I remember talk of the Ashgate seam at Clifton, it was supposed to be reasonably clean and of suitable thickness, but the pit closed.
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 25, 2011 10:31:12 GMT -5
Another thought on Cotgrave, the idea that seams like the Top Hard could only go for domestic or industrial, is nonsense, almost any coal can go to the big power stations provided its ash content is not too high, all the pit needed to do was to crack it to below 2" in size. The power station pulverises it to powder and then burns it somewhat similarly to burning oil, the burners are different though.
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Post by John on Jun 25, 2011 10:43:07 GMT -5
They were well below the Permian, so would have been dry. Top Hard at Clifton was too close to the Permian and would have been in danger of flooding, so were left alone.
One of the last Deep Hard faces, 12's at the south west end of the workings was very close the the Permian/Trias in fact almost under Ruddington!! It was lost through water induced convergence. It was like working outside in the rain all shift. Started off as drippers then "runners". That was a face that got the senior surveyor sacked too!! It was ten degrees off line and the face was heading too close to the limit line of safety. The face was turned back ten degrees and lasted a few more months before the water and weight started causing problems.
I never heard much about the Ashgate quality, just that it was the next workable seam below Tupton and would give us an extra 50 years of life. Plans were on the drawing board for a drift, starting just to the south of the washery and coming out somewhere near the inbye bunker site on 2's main road. That together with a new washery/screens would have put Clifton in the 1 million tons a year club. No idea where our market for Ashgate would have been. I think most of us were excited that an almost 100 year old pit would still have life in her. Of course, had that happened, chances are we would have also gone for the Blackshale too further extending the pits life until Thatcher came along..............End of story... ;D
I think most of Cotgraves "dirt" problems was from dints and backrips, plus ripping's and developments, they would have to have been sending several thousand tons of shales out a week with the coal.
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 25, 2011 10:53:00 GMT -5
Re Clifton,
There was always the problem of money. The NCB was always short, we couldn't sell the coal for enough to cover day to day costs and provide for all the major developments that were possible, some body (not me) had to decide the winners & losers. It was quite a detailed system with the Area having to make a detailed submission to HQ, it was the examined to consider the mining side, the finance side and the marketing side, could we mine it cheaply, could we find the money, could we sell the coal if we went ahead.
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Post by dazbt on Jun 25, 2011 12:45:35 GMT -5
Another thought on Cotgrave, the idea that seams like the Top Hard could only go for domestic or industrial, is nonsense, almost any coal can go to the big power stations provided its ash content is not too high, all the pit needed to do was to crack it to below 2" in size. The power station pulverises it to powder and then burns it somewhat similarly to burning oil, the burners are different though. What percentage of ash would have been unacceptable to power station usage?
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Post by bulwellbrian on Jun 25, 2011 13:00:21 GMT -5
I am not sure at this distance in time but I would have thought that over 20% would be disliked. That is in the coal dispatched not in the seam in situ.
It proberbly didn't cause any trouble in small quantities but large amounts created a lot of ash to remove and presumably could result in pressure drops in the boilers and then less electricity at the generators.
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Post by dazbt on Jun 25, 2011 13:44:43 GMT -5
That's about the sort of figure that I thought, I seem to remember being told that 22% was the upper limit and that the minimum preference would be around 16-17% otherwise it burnt fire bars. Many power stations in India are designed to cope with 40% ash content and apparently are run happily at that. I think the fluidised bed projects relied on low quality/high ash content coal as well.
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Post by Wheldale on Jun 25, 2011 14:43:11 GMT -5
I remember being told that once Selby had to add ash to their coal. Apparently they were supplying coal with less than 5% ash and the coal was burning too hot for eggborough power station.
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Post by John on Jun 25, 2011 15:38:55 GMT -5
I remember being told that once Selby had to add ash to their coal. Apparently they were supplying coal with less than 5% ash and the coal was burning too hot for eggborough power station. That happened once with Clifton and Wilford power station. We were cutting 24 hours a day in a face in the Piper seam, due to we had finished one in Deep Hard and a third face wasn't available. So Piper was being blended with Tupton. The power station was complaining it was burning too hot and damaging their boilers. So the only other face in Tupton was worked 24 hours a day and the Piper dropped back to two shift coaling. Then the reverse happened when we lost the Piper face, all we had was poor quality Tupton coal.
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