TEN YEARS ON: Reconstruction
Series
- Series Name
- Mining Review 10th Year
Issue
Story
- Story No. within this Issue
- 3 / 3
- Section Title
- TEN YEARS ON
- Summary
- BFI synopsis: Rebuilding of old pits and sinking of new ones.
NCB Commentary - In Mining it is not only the coal you get now that matters, but how you are going to get coal for years to come.
As soon as the coal has been taken out, that is the end of that workplace. New workplaces must be opened up, with new roads and transport services into them - to take men and materials in, and fetch the coal out.
The job of the planners in our British Coal Industry is not only to keep production at its present level, but to open up more and more new faces, so that output can actually be increased. This has meant sinking new pits, and deciding to reorganise and recontruct hundreds of others.
Over the past 10 years reconstruction in the British coal-fields has first of all had to make good the legacy of the quarter century before nationalisation when very little was done.
Today in Britain a major reconstruction scheme is one costing over a quarter of a million pounds.
It may mean the driving of new roadways into virgin coal, the replanning of haulage, the sinking of new shafts, the replanning of surface layout, the remodelling of coal-handling. Over 180 such projects are in hand.
In 1956, 97 million pounds was spent on this work. Over the next 10 years another 150 major schemes will be started and a 100 million pounds a year is a fair estimate of the cost.
During last year a Reconstruction Department was set up inside the Coal Board at National level to handle separately the problem which had, till then, been lumped in with Production.
Reconstruction schemes are not completed overnight. A scheme may take from 3 to 10 years before it comes to fruition. And what are the fruits of all this endeavour?
More output, of course, and generally a higher output to be won by fewer men.
The economic adviser to the National Coal Board says: "Output at these pits has risen 10 per cent compared with only 1 per cent at collieries now due for reconstruction".
In Mining Review we have seen typical instances of what this reconstruction can mean. Mardy in South Wales, closed in 1940, looked like this when the Nation took over. Today its old capacity has been increased eight-fold and the face of two valleys has been changed.
Ledston Luck, in Yorkshire, is another pit which was reopened after reorganisation, reorganisation which involved the building of a new haulage system to expand output at a pit which had been written off.
At Bowhill, in Scotland, 35 men used to handle a moderate output under conditions like this. Today, after rebuilding and mechanisation, only 11 men can handle a growing output of coal.
New pits, reconstructed pits, expanded pits, the list goes down a long way.
We are beginning to see the rewards coming back to the Nation as these big schemes start to pay off. Last year output per man shift rose again and total output just get its nose in front of 1955.
The miners are playing their part.
The Coal Board’s Director-General of Production says: "It is certain that the work of reconstruction and new sinkings must go on still further. Nothing less than the rebuilding of all the collieries of Britain on 20th Century lines will do."
As the battle continues to get production ahead of demand, and as every form of technical and physical ingenuity is exploited in the Nation’s pits, we shall see in the next ten years even more examples of how the modern approach can lick the age-old problem of mining.
As old pits die, new ones will be born so that our needs will continue to be met. - Researcher Comments
- Commentary recorded 4th February 1957.
- Keywords
- Science and technology; Mining; Energy resources
- Written sources
- British Film Institute Databases Used for synopsis
Film User Vol.12 No.137 March 1958, p118.
The National Archives COAL 32 /12 Scripts for Mining Review, 1956-1960
- Credits:
-
- Production Co.
- Documentary Technicians Alliance
- Sponsor
- National Coal Board
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