Wigan Album

facinating photo·s graham every one of them, I really look forward to viewing them each day, now some questions for you to answer, 1 do you have any photo·s of the inside of the towers, 2 why do the towers have to be so high. 3 what is behind all the tower windows,3 how is the coal transported from the shafts to the railway waggons,4 does your camera have to be intrinsically safe, did you have to have special permission to allow you to take these wonderfull photo·s. Thanks again for all of them & please keep them coming

Hi,in answer to your questions,firstly yes i will put a pic of the winding engine on today,the towers have to be so high to facilitate the loading and unloading of supplies at 2 levels,the upper level is called the heapstead,this is also where men enter the cage,i will put a pic of that on also.There is also a deflector pulley at 1 level and above that the winding engine itself,the windows are basically just to allow light into these areas just as you would have in a house.The No2 skip winder is almost identical to the No1 tower but is taller at 204ft9" high against 191ft6" high
for the No1 tower,the extra height being required to facilitate the skip discharge pockets.All my cameras where mechanical and the flash units where intrinsically safe FLP chambers,the only M&Q dispensation was for the aluminium tripod's.

in answer to your question about coal transport.The skips discharged at the surface on to a conveyor belt and this ran to the coal prep plant, It ran under an electro magnet which extracted any ferrous metal.From here, it went into the washery, was crushed and washed and then fed by conveyor to the rapid loader bunker to be tranported by rail to Fiddler's Ferry power station.Graham has put a pic of the rapid loader on the site.

Bet Roy Gees cars on there somewhere.