Having had the interesting experience of working for the NCB in 1980
(undergraduate spring and summer job), and having been on numerous UK coal
mining visits in the 1980's and 1990's, I can offer some experience about
modern UK mining tokens.
Everyone going undergound was issued with two brass tokens at the start of
the shift. These were usually of different shapes, but always carried the
same number. One was handed to the banksman as you entered the cage, the
other to the banksman as you left the cage at the end of the shift, or
visit. Essentially, the system recorded who was underground at any one time.
A subsidiary use was to record underground how many people were in a "blind"
heading which was by law restricted to nine people without an exemption from
the Inspectors.
Another, though unstated, use was to identify bodies in mining accidents as
those who died usually still carried the tokens and, being brass, the tokens
tended to survive fires.
More recently, in the UK they have been mostly replaced by bar-coded swipe
cards, though I think I had to use brass tokens at Kellingley Colliery last
year when I went underground with a certain R Budge. Or maybe it was at
Hatfield. Fascinating pits both.
Those I used in 1980 were stamped Shireoaks Colliery 340, so if anyone has
one of these, I'm in the market!
Martin Potts
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