Pithead wheel

I'm sure MREx Mag reviewed an entire pithead kit some time ago? It used to come up by accident when I was searching the history of various brand names on Google.

(kim)

"kim" wrote in news:dqak3f$o25$ snipped-for-privacy@domitilla.aioe.org:

I ca't remember who makes it but many years ago when I was nought but a child I made a card model from a kit of pit head. What's more I'm sure I've seen the same model available nowadays, not to sure that the wheel's detail would satisfy an adult modeler though ... now if I can only remember who made it.

There was a fair bit of info on pit heads in Railway Modeller April 1994 & follow ups in June & November the same year. Also Feb 1995.

Modelling 4mm coal mines Railway Modeller 1993 May, August & September.

Kevin Martin

Damn - Missed those - Ah well another hour at the old mags stand at the Manchester show

Mike

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:57:42 +1100, Kevin Martin wrote:

The actual design varied a lot, timber was still in use until recently (possibly the 1960s), H and I section steel was used quite a lot and for really big mines they had lattice stuctures. Essentially its a rectangular tower with a post at each corner, on one side is the axle for the wheel, so the rim is over the centre of the frame (sometimes two wheels serving two cages down a single shaft) On the side with the wheel there are two angled supports at around 60 degrees. This could be a free standing structure, in which case you would see the narrow tracks for the coal trucks emerging and heading off to the picking shed (where the rocks were removed). Alternatively it might have the picking shed built round it (the arrangement at Beamish), which makes life a lot easier. Beyond the angled supports would be a winding house containing the engine (often steam even in the quite recent past) with a hole in the wall through which the cable passed en route to the pit head wheel. At the railway loading end of the system you have screens for separating the coal into grades by size, typically a large building built over the tracks, often with a roofline sloping down toward the outer end. There should be at least two tracks under this (other than for very small mines, where the coal might be tipped directly into the wagons from a raised bank (Forest of Dean, Wales etc had a number of these small maines). Between the pit head and the loading bay there were a number of possible processes, these vary by time and also by size of mine. You might see a large conical water tank type structure, in which the coal was tipped to separate the coal (which floats) from the other stuff (which does not). Some mines had a tower with a giant silk bag, air was blown up into this over the coal to recover the coal dust. Some mines had a pulveriser to make coal dust. The dust was worth less than lump coal but was used for cement making (blown into the kiln), power stations (latterly with fluidised bed furnaces) and compressing into briquettes (mixed with coal tar, as used by Antactic expiditions, they used them to make huts and burnt them as required). A large mine complex might include a coke plant (which has some splending possibilities as an exhibition layout feature with a substantial smoke generator for the periodic emptying of the retorts). Some mines had extensive railway networks and on some of these coal in tubs was transported on railway wagons from the pit head to a remote grading and/or wagon loading plant.

All of this creates more questions than answers, and information was surprisingly hard to find when I last looked at this (around the time of privatisation). What I have on this (and other industries) will appear on the website when I get the time to do or re-do the drawings.

If you can get to Beamish take some photos of the mine there, it is a neat and very self contained structure.

HTH

Mike

In message , snipped-for-privacy@notigg.not.no writes

Isn't that several months away?

Sadly yes, but the last local shop that carried old mags closed a year or so back (very few do much second hand stuff these days). Given the amount of work yet required on lineside industries I think I will still be working on this by then.

Unless someone wants to sell their copies of course?

Regards

Mike

Just got back onto this as I was the originator of the original querry. I was under the impression that the wheels had interlaced spokes as per bicycle, but was interested to see the excellent photo of the one at the salt mine, where they just appear to come from either side of the hub.. I wonder if they are the same in Siberia? I have now purchased a kit for the Dennis Fire Engine, and await to see what the wheels for the escape ladder are like, and if they are useable.

"Keith J Patrick" wrote in news:dqda8l$ahn$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:

....

You are correct, however I'm pretty darned sure that there were exemptions for small mines (those with less than 60 workers or thereabouts). And again I'm pretty sure of seeing pictures of mines with wooden head gear in the

60s. This is all from memory but FWIW when I started planning my new layout one of the options I considered was building a mine and I did a fair bit of research on the subject. It worked out that whilst I could model the mine the rest of the layout couldn't handle the traffic ... I've gone for a quarry instead with a narrow guage railway leading to an exchange instead.

Very very rough but some notes on mines and mining (without the illustrations) can be found (temporarily) at . . .

HTH

Mike

Fred Dibnah Inventing Britain on UK TC History Sunday Night visited the Black Country Living Museum where there is a timber frame pit head, looked in pretty good condition. Worth a trip if you are out that way.

IIRC they used pitch pine for this, the wood needed to be free from splits and knots and the way to check was to place your pocket watch on one end then put your ear to the other, if you could hear the ticking all was well.

Regards

Mike

snipped-for-privacy@notigg.not.no wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

That's the one, UK History Channel has been showing all of Fred's programs one after the other for the past few weeks. In fact I thin k that they may still be doing so, Ch 100 on NTL (sorry don't know what it is on SKY etc).

12 on Freeview

This photo might help someone. It's half a coal mine pithead wheel, at Bowes Railway. I reckoned about 6ft radius, maybe a little more.

HTH

Duncan

(BTW, the rope hauled method of shifting wagons as seen at Bowes would make a very unusual subject for a layout - no locos to worry about, no live rails, small radius points and there were prototype inclines up to about 1 in 14)