In the Scottish stair pits, women carried the coal up the laddered shafts in
'baskets' and were sometimes rerfered to as 'basket pits'.
Where corves were wound up shafts in collieries, these were attached straight
to the winding rope from either the sledge or the rolly waggons, they were
not transfered into another vessal. Don't forget the hewers were paid by
weight and each corve was weighed.
Like most things in the pit even though the meathod was changed the name may
stay the same. The main haulage road at the Brig was often termed the 'chain
road' by some of the older men but chain haulage had never been used in our
pit.
Three whistles. Three in the shaft can also inform whoever that men are
riding and the 3 prefixes the next signal be it to raise or lower
clive
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