Learning on ScreenLIFT ON THE WAY
Series
- Series Name
- Mining Review 7th Year
Issue
Story
- Story No. within this Issue
- 1 / 4
- Summary
- BFI synopsis: Installation of a passenger lift from pithead to baths at Oakdale Colliery
NCB Commentary - For years now "get up them stairs" has been the rule at Oakdale Navigation Colliery in South Wales. It’s been the only way to get to the pithead baths at the end of the shift from the colliery that lies at the bottom of the steep valley.
Hard on the feet, yes - and the climb always comes when you’re tired from a long shift underground. The agent, D. H. Thomas, had done as much climbing as anybody, and liked it just about as little. So, at a meeting of the Pithead Baths Committee, he came out with a suggestion one day to make everyone’s life easier. It was a practical idea, they all agreed, and men and management decided to make their individual contributions to the cost.
The project was put in hand - and here it is under construction. A lift was agent Thomas’s answer; a big lift to hold a lot of men and whisk them up a tower from pit bank to the top of the valley. There’ll be a bridge across to lead into the baths.
So for the men of Oakdale, the days of footslogging up the steep staircases are numbered. When the lift is working, there’ll be a lot saved -- shoeleather, time and temper, and energy which will go into the job underground instead of being wasted on the surface.
Soon the steps will be just a memory. - Researcher Comments
- Commentary recorded 5 August 1953.
- Keywords
- Science and technology; Mining
- Locations
- Wales; Oakdale Colliery; Caerphilly
- Written sources
- British Film Institute Databases Used for Synopsis
Film User Vol.8 No.89 March 1954, p138.
The National Archives COAL 32 /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956
- Credits:
-
- Production Co.
- Documentary Technicians Alliance
- Camera
- Donald Long
- Director
- John Krish
- Sponsor
- National Coal Board
- Camera
- Ronald Bicker
Record Stats
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