If you are including winding engine and winches on inclines as well as
shafts, there is the passenger carrying winder at Llechwedd Slate Quarry
(part of the Quarry Tours visitor attraction, Blaenau Ffestiniog) and
several disused winders on the surface in the working part of the quarry
(they are visible from public footpaths, but I think only one served an
underground area.
Just around from Llechwedd is the Maenofferen Slate Quarry. When I was last
there on an official tour (1994), two electric winders brought slate blocks
up from the working area, deep inside the mountain, the upper one being
partially in the open air. A third winder was used as a winch for raising
and lowering the submersible pumps, the rails on this incline had been
lifted. The whole arrangement seemed to date from the turn of the 19th /
20th century when electricity was first used there. This mine has been on
'care and maintenance' for about 4 years.
I understand the two hydraulic pumps at Penrhyn Quarry are still in situ.
Although an open quarry, the pumps seem to have been mounted in solid rock,
well clear of the slate vein. I have heard two rumors about these engines,
firstly that the pair were still in place when the pit was allowed to flood
and that they are now under several hundred feet of water; the other is
that the engines are above the natural drainage level and that one was
dismantled and brought to the surface several years ago for possible
display. McAplines (the current owners) had nothing to say on the matter
when I visited with an organised group in February.
Again in the Welsh Slate Industry, but nothing to do with underground,
there is a steam winder in a disused quarry in the Nantlle Valley. It is
the winder for a Blondin (a cross between an Overhead Crane and an Aerial
Ropeway) and overlooks the Cornish Pumping Engine in the Dorothea Quarry.
For the record Dorothea is a wholly open quarry and other than the odd
drainage tunnel there is only the one pumping shaft for the steam engine.
The 1951 electric pumps were in the same shaft.
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