National coal mining museum

[Tractor manParticipant @tractorman]

I paid a visit to the national coal mining museum at caphouse colliery today.
It was a very interesting and informative visit for someone who’s family going back several generations were all miners. I was barred from working darn’t pit by my dad, who said “no son of mine is going underground.”
I completely understand his reasoning, it must have been a hellish place to work and such hard physical labour.
But the visit let me see all the engineering my dad had described to me when I was young and Put it all together as accurately as he had described.
The guides were all ex miners and so good at what they do, it’s well worth a visit.
Free to get in but £4.00 for the underground tour which was well worth it and so enjoyable.
There’s a steam winding engine preserved but not running, plus lots of other machinery and artefacts.
I saw my childhood again, complete with outside toilets, Peggy tubs, coal men and tin baths in front of the fire.
So proud to come from hardy mining stock.

[Tractor manParticipant @tractorman]

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

This is next on my bucket list. We did the colliery at the Black Country Museum a few years ago but it's not really the same.

'Me Dad' was the area explosives man for several local pits & I need to experience the environment of so many of his stories, both the very funny ones & the very horriffic.

It wasn't untill after he passed that I learned the true extent of his sacrifices to get me through Uni' & one of the strongest memories I have is bringing home the first wage packet that was bigger than his !

I was once caught out bragging how 'Maggie' had "put money in my pocket" a few years after she closed 'em down. Me Dad, always the sly one replied "I'd like to hold her hand & walk her 'round this village one summers evening".

[Brian Sweeting 2Participant @briansweeting2]

Remember Mick that Wilson closed more mines that Maggie.

However much I would like to see our coal being used I wouldn't like to be the man saying to others that they must go underground to get it for me.

I am however always glad that these museums are kept alive in memory of those who went before us.

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

Posted by Brian Sweeting on 30/03/2018 15:44:34:

Remember Mick that Wilson closed more mines that Maggie.

There are lies, there are damned lies, & then there are statistics. Statistics can be heavily manipulated & made to enforce any particular view that is wished.

Maggie destroyed the whole of the mining industry in order to destroy the few militants.

[colin branniganParticipant @colinbrannigan54160]

Maggie is not well liked in South Wales

[Tractor manParticipant @tractorman]

I dont want to get political, being the son of a striking miner and later to join the enemy and work for south yorkshire police. BUT
The actions of Mrs Thatcher not only closed viable pits, but wiped their very existence from the face of the earth. As a small child I could count the headgear visible from my bedroom window, more than ten pits. Now I couldn’t take you to a single sign that coal was once mined here other than the occasional half head gear wheel set in concrete. It wasn’t the end of the mines, it was the wholesale destruction of an industry and it’s workforce.

[Brian Sweeting 2Participant @briansweeting2]

Sorry, shouldn't have started this but the facts only support one conclusion, **LINK**, none of us like the end result but that does not change the numbers.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Now we know all the dangers of deep mined coal and the risks to health would it be possible to open a mine today?

The tradegy to me seems to be the destruction of the communities surrounding the industry but does anyone really want to send people deep underground just to get something we are going to burn and add more problems for our planet to deal with. Mining is not the only industry that has had its day as a mass employer, when I started work at the Cowley car factory it employed 28,000 people and no robots now there are about 4500 people and 1,300 robots. Luckily the transformation of the car industry has been fairly gentle and the people have gone to other jobs. The mining closures were fairly sudden and very little in the way of other jobs materialised in the short term so the impact on the communities was massive. Coal being a fossil fuel must be facing a worldwide decline in demand as we face up to problems for our planet related to fossil fuel.

Mike

[Brian RutherfordParticipant @brianrutherford79058]

Ì went to the mining museum a couple of years ago. Parking and entrance were free. The underground tour cost £3 for a check disc which was refundable or you could keep as a souvenir. Extremely good day out for free although we donated to the museum.

I never new i came from a mining background until i was researching the family history and found my great great great grandfather on the in memoriam list of miners that had been killed in pit accidents on the Durham mining museum website. . My father never mentioned it or any of his family for that matter.

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

It's not only mining but the cotton and wool industries that have gone. Since last year there isn't even a museum to them either at least not in Lancashire

Roy

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

Re the above I believe there is the Barncroft mill up in Barnoldswick that still runs as a small museum to the cotton industry.

The trouble with closing the mines was, that that was usually the only industry in the community

Roy

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article and it brought back a few memories. I worked for the NCB at Compower, its computing arm. We process all the payroll, personell records etc. I worked in the Mining and Technical department and worked on programs which reported on Face Delays., i.e. what time had been lost due to breakdown etc. In order to have an appreciation of what went on underground we had to attend a 3 week underground mining course. This entailed a number of lectures and a lot of time spent touring round various collieries spending a lot of time underground.

I can remember vividly crawling along a line of powered supports only a few feet away from the coal cutter machine. This was in a 2ft 6" high seam so not a lot of space between the base and the upper support. Another time heard a huge bang as they blasted a heading and felt the shockwave and face-full of coal dust. One of the things they did whilst underground was to take us into an unlit area and then get us to switch off our headlamps. This is real darkness, you cannot see a hand in front of your face. The man-riding conveyors were also interesting. Lying face down on a heavy rubber belt and travelling quite a way reasonably quickly and with very weird feeling as passed over the conveyor rollers. The speed of descent in the cages certainly left your stomach behind as your rapidly dropped to bottom of the mine. I must admit I never really felt worried whilst down below but it certainly was a hostile environment.

Colin

[Ian ChildsParticipant @ianchilds37813]

I thought it was Arthur Scargill calling an illegal strike at a time when stock piles of coal at power stations were high and many mines starting to become uneconomical to work due to thin seams and falling reserves and high costs that killed the mining industry. Whilst i know the use of coal has fallen recently there were years after the closure of all the mines when the amount of coal being mined in the UK was higher before the strike. Sheer economics mean there is no way anyone is going to mine 450mm seams of coal, hand picked by a man on his side in South Wales (although the bloke who I knew who worked this way apparentely enjoyed it) when there are 3m Seams stretching for miles in Queensland that can be mined by machine.

There are still many small OCCS in South Wales, on the north crop. I myself used to work on one 15 years ago (and you didn't mention Mrs Thatcher there!).

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

An Uncle would lay on His stomach laying on a cart , and pull a small railway cart along about 1/4 mile deep in a mine tunnel that was 18 inches high. He would then pick and shovel about 500 lbs. into the cart and push it back out for collection. Another Uncle said He would not go any smaller than 24" high. This was day off work from another job for .50 cents a cart load. Another story from another Guy was His Dad loading railroad cars with another Man with shovels. The coal was dumped onto a platform where they shoveled, threw and pushed the coal into the car. If the coal did not scrape a timber along the whole length of the car it was considered not full and They were not paid for it. They parked their shovels in a barrel of water to cool off as evidently it heated up in use. Life in the Colonies.

[Ian ChildsParticipant @ianchilds37813]

There was an error in my original post, corrected in capitals

I thought it was Arthur Scargill calling an illegal strike at a time when stock piles of coal at power stations were high and many mines starting to become uneconomical to work due to thin seams and falling reserves and high costs that killed the mining industry. Whilst i know the use of coal has fallen recently there were years after the closure of all the mines when the amount of coal being mined in the UK was higher THAN BEFORE the strike. Sheer economics mean there is no way anyone is going to mine 450mm seams of coal, hand picked by a man on his side in South Wales (although the bloke who I knew who worked this way apparentely enjoyed it) when there are 3m Seams stretching for miles in Queensland that can be mined by machine.

There are still many small OCCS in South Wales, on the north crop. I myself used to work on one 15 years ago (and you didn't mention Mrs Thatcher there!)

[Clive IndiaParticipant @cliveindia]

Posted by Ian Childs on 30/03/2018 22:42:4

There are still many small OCCS in South Wales, on the north crop. I myself used to work on one 15 years ago (and you didn't mention Mrs Thatcher there!)

No sympathy here – I can remember 3 day working weeks and many power cuts caused by striking miners. While they were being simply greedy, I was losing money, not being able to work through lack of power – a 40% drop in earnings at a time in my life when I definitely could not afford it.
When they won, I don't remember them apologising to me or sympathising for my loss in earnings – all that happened was the price of fuel and power went upwards. This side is never aired in historical accounts – all I hear is "the poor miners!"

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