I refer once more to the report I mentioned in a message to the 
List last week.  I wrote the report  in 1950, as part of the undergraduate
mining course for which one had to do, and report on, a total of 
720 hours underground in mines during the summer vacations. 
The report  describes in some detail the operations at two 
South Derbyshire coal mines,  Cadley Hill and Bretby No 3.  
There is quite a lot of technical detail in the report and, before it 
gets binned or sent for waste paper, I wondered if there might be 
some library somewhere which would like to keep a copy for 
possible future reference? The report  forms a sort of snap-shot 
of how some mines were at that date.
My handwriting of that time not being the most legible, I have 
typed out the text, but the drawings remain to be copied -- the 
typescript notes where the original has illustrations.

The report begins with a couple of pages on the local geography, 
including road and rail connections, and the geology of the South 
Derbyshire coalfield.
The two mines were virtually neighbours and, prior to the then 
recent nationalisation, had belonged to the same company. However,
despite this, they differed in many respects: details of how the coal
was worked; different types of rope haulage systems; etc. They even 
had underground rail tracks of different gauges.

The first to be described is Cadley Hill, with its workings in the Little
Coal and Kilburn seams.  There is a general description of the surface
buildings: winding engines, boiler house, workshops and transformer
house (the mine ran at a very poor power factor of 0.6 but, as it only 
paid for kilowatts, not KVA ,I was told this was "of no importance").
The underground workings are described in some detail, including the 
work done at the coal face on each of three shifts. Cadley Hill's longwall
faces were undercut by machine (a different make on every face - a spares
nightmare!) and filled off by hand -- the job title of the faceworkers
being
"Strippers".  Shortage of steel props meant that some faces worked with a
random mixture of steel and wooden props [bad practice!! noted the lecturer
in red ink when he marked the report].  Different patterns of stone packs 
were built behind each seam's faces, the faces in the deeper Kilburn seam
using a caving system.
The methods of driving face gates, waste roads and stone headings are
described, as is the haulage system of conveyors and main and tail rope 
haulages.
Details of hoisting are given, including a description of the old steam
winder
which, in earlier days, had wound four cages in three shafts of different 
depths simultaneously. By 1950, this was only working two cages, one in 
each of two shafts, a second steam winder having been added within the 
same engine house to serve the  main No 1 shaft when it  was deepened 
in 1926.
[The older steam winder, which had a drum of three different diameters,
was salvaged in later years, I believe, and taken to the Chatterley
Whitfield
mining museum shortly before the latter sadly closed. ]
The treatment of coal at surface is described, with the steam-engine driven
screens and picking belts producing four product sizes -- Smalls, Small
Nuts,
Large Nuts and Lump. Waste rock was tipped in a nearby field which had 
become flooded due to subsidence over the Kilburn seam workings.
There is an outline of the system of drainage for underground workings, the
ventilation arrangements, lighting and telephones.  The distribution of
workers
underground is tabulated, as are a typical day's absenteeism figures. Wage
rates for underground workers ranged from £8 to £18 per week, while surface
workers earned from £4 to £10. Fourteen horses were employed, of which
nine were underground at any one time -- they changed around on rotation.
Cadley Hill at that time had just had built some new pit baths. 
Most men walked to work at the pit, or came by bicycle.

Bretby Colliery, like Cadley Hill, was about 150 years old in 1950.  It had
had
three shafts, but the No 2 shaft was by then filled in (the report notes
that
originally the No 2 shaft had been the upcast, with a fire at the bottom to
cause 
the updraft).
Coal production in 1950 was entirely from the Stockings seam. As at Cadley
Hill,
coal was won from hand-worked longwall faces but, as is described,
different 
methods were used at the two pits.  
One of Bretby's faces was worked on a 48-hour cycle, in which the half of
the face 
remote from the Main Gate was worked one day, then the face conveyor
tension 
end was flitted halfway down the face on nightshift, and the other half of
the face 
worked on the second day with a shorter conveyor. The tension end was then
flitted back again the next night, and the conveyor rebuilt at full length.
The methods of developing coal heads, stone heads and breasting out faces
are described, as are the system of conveyors in the mine and the rope
haulages, which differed from those at Cadley Hill, Bretby's being endless
rope.
The system of drainage at Bretby is described, including the use of an old 
return road in the Eureka seam as a drainage sough, water being delivered
to this old tunnel by several pumps.  Following this route, one came to a 
mystery. As the report says: "The water in the sough disappears down the 
fault-plane at the point where the sough meets the main 40-yard throw
fault.  
It reappears in a similar return road some 50 yards from the pit bottom.
Its 
exact course over the intervening 150 yards is not known for certain."
Water from the northern workings was "pure" and used to supply the 
boiler house.  Water from old workings to the south of the main shaft was
"dirty", so kept separate and pumped direct to a convenient stream 200
yards from the shaft at surface.
The ventilation, lighting and hoisting systems are described, including
the system for bell signals.
It was planned to try to dewater parts of the Main Seam to the east of the
mine.
The water in this came from old bell pits near the seam's outcrop to the
north, 
in an area from which a drainage sough had been driven in the seam for 4½ 
miles by the "old man" on an unknown route. (The report notes that one
point 
on the route was discovered in 1950 when a new tennant in a house
north-east 
of the pit decided to move a hen house which was in the middle of his back 
yard.  Under the hen house he found an old rusted iron sheet. On moving the

iron sheet, he found an old shaft).
Attempts had been made in 1925 to dewater the Main Coal by Nadins, the 
company which at that time owned the "take" between Bretby No 3 and Cadley
Hill. Nadins sank a 1 in 4 drift down to the coal but, when they fired the
last blast,
water came in so fast it drowned their small pumps. Shortly afterwards, the
chief
shareholder in Nadins died and the company was wound up, its inclined drift
being sealed in 1926.  In 1950 it was decided to reopen this drift, and an
account
of the initial work there, including the clearance of blackdamp, is given
in the 
report.
The Bretby treatment plant, where the coal was screened and hand-picked, 
is described, the products in this case being known as Beads, Nuts, Cobbles

and Lumps. An alternative name for Beads was Double Screened Nuts.  A 
creeper lifting tubs in part of this plant was "driven by a 10 hp single
cylinder 
steam engine.  This was put in during the war to replace an electric motor
and 
has never yet itself been replaced"
Surface buildings, including the boiler house, are described. The report
notes 
that steam pressure at the boilers is 65 pounds per sqaure inch, but
because of
leaky pipework, the steam engine driving the screens is running on only 45 
pounds pressure.
Workshops and explosives magazines are described, and details given of the 
weekly consumption of explosives and detonators. An outline is given of
electrical 
supplies. 
Rail access was via a semicircular loop off a mineral line, rising at 1 in
50 with
a radius of 170 yards. The engine driver sometimes needed a second go to
manage to get up this. [ Three old men were employed to inspect the track
every morning and scatter sand on the worst chared sleepers, so the engine
driver would not realise what a bad state the track was in.] The siding was
being charred because the shallow Main Seam was on fire near there. 
As part of the process for dampening down the fire, attempts were made to
seal off the oxygen supply by having the breweries in nearby Burton on
Trent
dump all their waste bran mash over the old spoil heaps which covered small
shafts to the Main Seam where coal had been "won" during the 1926 strike.
Some 430 men were employed at Bretby.  Output was about 37 hundredweight
(cwt) per manshift. At Cadley Hill it was 38 cwt/manshift.  This compared
to an 
average of 45 cwt for the NCB's East Midland division, and nearly 50 cwt at
nearby Swadlincote.  

The report tends to stick to facts, with some comment on technicalities,
such
as the strange arrangement of the drive to the main endless rope haulage at
Bretby, where the main 2-ton counter-balance was on the tension, not the 
slack, side of the rope.  
In typing up the report and so reading it again in detail for the first
time in 
50 years, I was reminded of some of the people I met while at these mines. 

I have thus also written a further three pages of anecdote, incorporating 
such things as the following --

Mr Wallace, the manager of both Bretby and Cadley Hill, was not a happy 
man. He had been manager of Swadlincote, and had built up its output until 
it was producing all that could be hoisted through its shafts.  He thought
he 
could look forward to an easy few years to retirement -- but the NCB had 
transferred him to Cadley Hill and Bretby, to sort out their low
productivity!

Other recollections are of  the Cadley Hill blacksmith who liked toasted 
sandwiches, and made them on his anvil at lunch break time;  the 
blacksmith at Bretby, who never removed his cloth cap -- when he had to 
descend the shaft riding on top of the cage for a shaft inspection, he put
his hard hat on top of his cloth cap;  the overman at Bretby who, as a
young
man, had had to build a brick stopping to prevent the mine flooding,
knowing
as he did so that three of his mates were behind the brick wall; etc.

One of these tales relates how I learned a lesson in mining practicality:

The distorted steel joist
On my first day underground, I was going round the Little Coal district of
Cadley Hill with the Undermanager and Overman.  We came to a junction of 
roadways, the roof over the branch tunnel being supported at its entrance
by 
a heavy steel joist. Spanning a gap of about nine feet, this had a web
about 
eight or ten inches deep. The pressure of the ground was so much that this 
joist, without twisting, had deflected at mid-span by an amount equal to
its 
own depth. It snaked down and up again with this huge double bend.

The three of us stood for some moments looking at it, the Undermanger 
and Overman leaning on their sticks.  My mind was racing-- remember, this 
was my first day underground.  What unimaginable forces of nature were 
destroying that joist? What huge pressure could be weighing down the 
tough steel so hard that it bent almost like plasticine? The mind boggled. 

I shivered at the thought.

Then the Undermanager spoke. "I think we'll have some men in at
t'weekend, George, and turn that joist t'other way up".  
"Ay", agreed George, and that was that.

I have wandered a bit in these last few paragraphs but, returning to the 
report proper, does anyone think such a document is worth keeping?  
If so, where?

Tony Brewis