RECORD PIT

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 13th Year

Issue

Issue No.

4

Date Released

Dec 1959

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1THE ART OF MINING
2. 2MOUNTED MINORS
3. 3Too Good to Burn or SPEAKING THROUGH COAL
4. 4RECORD PIT

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: British shaft-sinking records are shattered at Lancashire’s Parkside Colliery.
NCB Commentary - Early this year, shaft sinking was completed at Parkside Colliery, the North Western Division’s first new pit for over 30 years. The 2 shafts, each nearly 900 feet deep, had been sunk in record time by using new techniques and equipment never before tried in this country.
The mechanical grab was the largest of its kind to be used on this sort of work. With every day costing about £2,000, the more muck you can move in one go the better. This one shifts a cubic yard at a time.
But even more important was the three stage platform under which the grab worked. Here, in model form, it’s easy to see how men completed the work of finishing the walls and concreting; while, beneath, drilling and mucking out went on. The idea came from South Africa.
Below, with the rubble from the last firing cleared, the drillers lost no time in preparing for the next. Shaft sinkers often have a wet job but at least the water kept the dust out of the men’s lungs as 12 drills bored a 100 shot holes in about 2 hours.
Then came the big band which would drive the shaft another 15 feet into the earth.
Almost as soon as the smoke had cleared, the three story platform was lowered again.
The ready mixed concrete flowed along conveyors at 40 cubic yards a minute to be pumped down pipes to the place where it was needed.
The average rate of sinking had been doubles and even trebled and, at £2,000 a day, that’s quite a saving. By 1965 over 2,000 men will be employed - most of them transferred from older, closing collieries. It is planned to produce 4,000 tons a day by raising the output per man to nearly twice today’s figure. Parkside is indeed to be the "economy pit of the future".

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded 9th November 1959.

Keywords

Mining; Engineering; Energy resources

Locations

England; Lancashire

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
Film User   Vol.14 No.167 September 1960, p520.
The National Archives COAL 32   /12 Scripts for Mining Review, 1956-1960

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Sponsor

National Coal Board