Christmas / New Year Steam Up!

[Pedlers mate]

Regarding the use of engines at coal mines, every shaft had to have a jockey wheel at the top of the shaft for emergency winding in event of the main winding engines being out of commission but I would suspect that if ploughing engines were used then an extra long rope would be needed. The back up engines for the ventilation fans were often steam, I remember a Bellis & Morcom engine at Ellistown Colliery up until such time as the colliery closed in the early 1980's. Incidentally the same pit had a single cylinder horizontal engine which worked a triple-throw crankshaft with rods that went down the shaft to a pump for pumping water into a surface reservoir. Steam winding engines were common in a lot of collieries until the late 1970's.