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Apart from trying to settle the way in which Koepe's name should be spelt, I was spurred to try and find out more about his system because I've always associated it with the large winding towers where the winder was sat on top -- still to be seen at Kellingley, Maltby and Harworth collieries. Yesterday, however, I was reading the Listed Building notice for Clipstone Colliery which referred to it having Koepe winders. A quick look on Google maps shows it to have a similar arrangement to No.1 Shaft at Frickley Colliery (in the 1970s), which I was familiar with. Rossington, also near Doncaster, had them until their recent demolition. They used a continuous rope running from the top of one cage (or skip), over a shaft head pulley, round a cylindrical, wood-lagged drum (with one or two laps), then back over a second shaft head pulley and down the shaft to the top of the other cage. Another continuous rope linked the cage bottoms and ran round a pulley in the sump. The winding engine was at ground level and set close in to a very tall headgear, giving the rope a very steep angle.This, apparently, was the layout given in Koepe's first patent, but I cannot remember ever hearing it called a Koepe winder.As a dialler, more than the basic technological detail was not my field, but I was impressed by the shear power and acceleration of the skip winder on No.1 Shaft.By the time the 15 ton skip got from the sump to the man winding inset (50 feet or so) it was no more than a passing blur.The system could also be left to run itself automatically, with the whole loading, winding and emptying process being done (I assume) by an early form of computer (nothing now, but it was clever stuff in 1971). Interestingly, the first Koepe tower system in the UK was fitted over a 792 foot deep shaft at Plenmeller Colliery (now Northumbria Stone Products), near Haltwhistle in Northumberland, in 1914.This worked the Little Limestone Coal and so was not even on a Westphalian coalfield. Mike