Wigan Album

3. The bottom of No.3 shaft, which was one of the downcast shafts at Bickershaw, and empty tubs wait to return to the loading area between the coal face and the shaft bottom. Each tub held around 25 c.w.t.

Now, for the benefit of our younger viewers and listeners, brought up in this modern, inferior, utilitarian age of metrification (- ugh!!) there are 20 c.w.t (or hundredweights) to a ton. One hundredweight being 112 lbs; so 25 c.w.t would be a ton and a quarter of coal. The overall gross weight “wound”, would be somewhat higher of course due to the “tare” weight of the tub itself! Prior to the introduction of skip winding the cage would normally take 4 tubs at a time which would equate to a coal wind of something in the order of 5 tons.
It can be seen then that the introduction of skip winding increased considerably the amount of coal that could be “wound” in a single wind, double the amount in fact. No flies on those boys then, no wonder we still had an empire!

Note:- A metric ton (being by definition inferior) is usually denoted as a “tonne”, or a short ton, and is lighter than an imperial ton (around 2205 lbs as opposed to a full or proper imperial ton which is 2240 lbs.)