Wigan Album

A good thick coal seam. As the photograph emphatically shows, the constant danger of working in such restricted space, operating such giant machinery. Much more powerful, and advanced machinery, than in the forties, and fifties.

What was the purpose of the large link chain.

The chain extended from one end of the coalface to the other and was very securely anchored at each end,because it's purpose was to enable the coal cutting machine which you can see in the photo to haul itself up and down the face.That machine itself weighed quite a lot and packed an enormous amount of power in order to rip the coal down.Consequently the chain was under an immense tension and was designed for such loads.Very rarely it could snap with possible serious consequences for anyone in the way.More commonly it could get caught behind something and suddenly whip across the faceline when freed.Many men have been killed this way,cut in two or lost limbs as a result.No doubt there are one or two facemen or even machine men on here who can elaborate by their own experiences. By the way,the seam would be the Lower Florida,about 6ft 2in thick at Parkside and next door at Golborne.

I can remember one of the facemen being hit in the back with the cutter chain when I was a trainee. We took him out on a stretcher. He never worked on the face again. There were attempts to replace the chain with other methods of hauling the cutter, one was a rack and pinion type system called rack a track, but I don't think they were a success.

Those pit men deserved every penny they made, dirty fithy dangerous job, which we all took for granted. People forget, coal was the back-bone of our country. Remember...steam trains (transport) our homes (electricity) our heating, up to the 1960s we would never have managed without coal, and I'm sure it would still be useful today in our industry and home. Oil and Gas will one day run out!

The problem with coal as a source of energy is its dirtiness and its inefficiency. Even today less than a third of the energy produced in burning coal can be converted into electric power. That's an awful lot of wastage - on top of the pollution burning coal produces. Coal may one day be King again - but it needs to be used more efficiently and cleanly than present technology allows.
Having said that, one of the issues over miners' pay was their wages were kept low so that the price of coal to electricity generation should be kept low. The realisation of that was one of the things which came out of the 1971/2 miners' strike which I took part in.
Miners couldn't be allowed to push the price of electricity up....