Colliery drawings in 4mm scale

[br2975]

A number of pits were either close to, and linked to the Glamorganshire & Aberdare canals in South Wales, as in the following pair of books:-

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The Glamorganshire & Aberdare Canals Parts 1 & 2

Stephen Rowson & Ian Wright

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I have them, and they are excellent

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Brian R

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[steaming_chris]

Some pictures of Wayne Hopkins 7mm scale colliery which has appeared at the last two Cardiff Shows, due to its' popularity.

. . . a few lines deleted . . .

 

I have more shots if you want.

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Brian R

Hi Brian

 

If you could spend the time posting more pictures of Wayne's colliery, I would be very interested and greatful

 

Regards, Chris

[hmrspaul]

I have some colliery photographs

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/cynheidre

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/hawthorncolliery

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/littletoncollieryplace

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/leahallcollierygeneral

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/southwalescollieries

 

There are also a lot of wagons in collections beginning with NCB within http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/industrialinternalwagons

 

Regards

 

Paul

[steaming_chris]

I have some colliery photographs

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/cynheidre

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/hawthorncolliery

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/littletoncollieryplace

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/leahallcollierygeneral

 

http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/southwalescollieries

 

There are also a lot of wagons in collections beginning with NCB within http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/industrialinternalwagons

 

Regards

 

Paul

Hi Paul

 

it has been a while, but thank you for posting these links, very helpful . . . . . and your great archive of pictures too

 

Regards, Chris

[br2975]

A few more shots - as requested.

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Sorry about the quality

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Brian R 

[steaming_chris]

A few more shots - as requested.

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Sorry about the quality

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Brian R 

Thank you Brian for posting these pictures, a great help.

 

Regards

[queensquare]

HI, firstly congratulations on starting this developing and interesting topic.  I am so glad to have found the names of those German photographers again, my apologies for the wrong name- age is catching up.  I do not wish to use this site commercially it is my  relaxation, but yes these kits are still made  in 4mm and 2mm scale too.  If you wish details I can be contacted through our website www.wrightscale.co.uk. there is a blog on the site that is quite interesting too.

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Only just discovered this interesting thread but thought it worth pointing out that the much admired pit head wheels on my Highbury colliery ( see links in signature below and my avatar) were made using the excellent Wrightscale etches. I wanted a wooden frame and Wrightscale kindly supplied just the sheaves. A complete Wrightscale kit in 2mm can be seen on Bob Jones's stunning Fencehouses layout.

 

Jerry

[Dazzler Fan]

+

 

With the introduction of FXD by Shapeways I am finally able

to make available the Sheave Wheels for N gauge based on

a 15' wheel.

 

Noel

[Graham Hughes]

Here's another very well modelled colliery layout. 

[Paul H Vigor]

On 15/11/2014 at 07:54, Peter Beckett said:

Fantastic pictures!

Can I ask another favour please?

Were any collieries in UK connected to the canal system?

 

Peter

Recommend Googling: 'bridgewater canal worsley delph'

[The Johnster]

Considering a colliery extension for Cwmdimbath, and have already bought the head frame, photos when I've painted it, from DAPR on the 'Bay, 3D printed parts.  I should know more about collieries than I actually do, having spend a good bit of the late 60s and early 70s in their environs chasing steam engines, and having grand and great grand parents involved in the game. 

 

Rough plan, Headframe, and then on one side of it the winding engine, boiler house, lamproom, battery room, locker room, baths and canteen.  On the other side, the screens, and then the washery (these two can perhaps be combined into a single messy building), the central point of the railway operation but I want to include a weighbridge as well.  If I can squeeze them in, there should be various bits of ventilation plant, drainage pumps, workshops, stores and so on. 

[br2975]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Rough plan, Headframe, and then on one side of it the winding engine, boiler house, lamproom, battery room, locker room, baths and canteen.  On the other side, the screens, and then the washery (these two can perhaps be combined into a single messy building), the central point of the railway operation but I want to include a weighbridge as well.  If I can squeeze them in, there should be various bits of ventilation plant, drainage pumps, workshops, stores and so on. 

John, you can cut down a lot on modelling Welsh pits, if space is tight.

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It was common practice at many pits, for the railway to be laid as close as possible to the floor of the valley, with the pithead buildings  i.e. the headframes, pithead bank, winding engine house(s)and most engineering facilities built on a revettment,  that is, built above the railway atop a large stone wall, from where the trams/drams were run from the top of the shaft into the screens / washery, and from where the coal dropped into the railway wagons below.

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Caerau, on the Maesteg system went one better, with the railway in a cutting, and the upcast shaft atop one embankment, the screens over the sidings then the downcast on the other embankment.

[The Johnster]

Yes, something like this would work well for Cwmdimbath, which is already a narrow restricted location hemmed in on both sides by the mountains.  The washery fed from screens a level above, and behind them from the viewing perpective, and the upcast headgear (downcast is ‘offstage’) alongside the screens.  
 

The process is; coal lifted in drams to surface, hand pushed to screens and tipped in, screens separate the spoil out, spoil to overhead buckets up the mountain to tip, coal graded for size and take to washery, dust removed by washing and loaded by hopper chute into wagons.  Transfer of coal between screens and washery is by dram, internal user wagon (needs tippler to unload into washery) or conveyor belt, which has the advantage of being able to lift the coal to topfeed the washery.  A common setup for smaller sites seems to have been a covered conveyor feeding to the ‘side’ (from the railway perspective) of the washery, the two buildings sort of merging into each other. 
 

My washery will probably be a 2-roader, and ‘non working’, and I will continue with my current approach of having two mineral rakes, one loaded and one empty.  The colliery loco will propel mts from the exchange siding into one road, from where they can be fed out the back into the fy to form the next train of empties from Ogmore Jc, while the lds are backfed from the fy on to the other road for the colliery loco to pick up and haul to the exchange siding, from whence a main line loco returns them to the fy.  This minimises handling of the mineral rakes.  The fun is in the weighbridge, as the mts have to be weighed before being loaded at the washery, and the lds before being taken to the exchange.  I can also shuffle mts and lds about between the washery roads. 
 

This is the current state of thinking on this matter, and will be subject to evolutionary change as the project progresses…
 

 

[The Johnster]

I've been looking at the 3.5mm scale Walther's 'South River' colliery for inspiration, a clever configuration of facilities that looks bigger than it's 14"x 10" roughly footprint.  It migh even be a contender for Cwmdimbath as is; I reckon 4mm scale wagons will fit under the screens.  It looks a bit modern and 'planned' for a 1950s South Wales pit, most of which were investment starved and a bit of an unplanned piecemeal mess, but South River could no doubt be 'distressed' a bit.  There were certainly pits in the area (North Rhondda, Nantgarw, Hafodyrynys) that attracted investment after the formation of the NCB, recent history in my period; I've already referenced traffic for the construction of pithead baths and the canteen, which the nationalised industry promised for all pits.  I like the Walther's Cornerstone industrial buildings, skillfull use of footprint space and good quality, and they can often be 'got away with' in 4mm, though sometimes doorways and low headroom entrances give the game away.  Industrial buildings and plant to scale is often overwhelming on smaller layouts, and careful siting and use of 'perspective modelling' is useful in this scenario.  Not cheap, but probably a better basis than I could provide myself.

[The Johnster]

Updates can be found on the layout thread, under 'South Wales in the 1950s', including photos. 

 

It hasn't quite worked out the way I described it earlier.  The Walther's 'South River' kit, with a 3-road loader, was discarded as being a bit overwhelming for the relatively small space available, because I wanted a running line in front of the colliery which was separated from it by a few yards.  I looked at the slightly smaller 'Diamond Coal Co.' 2-roader, but nobody seemed to have one in stock in the UK and postage from the US ramps the price up a bit.  So I looked around for alternatives, and came up with the Faller 'Old Coal MIne', a single road loader with a high level gallery at right angles above it that one can assume contains the screens and spoil separation.  The end of this upper gallery opens out to a loading chute, and the result is a 3 road yard, a road under the loader, another to the side of it, and a third from which coal can be loaded via the chute,  You could put a fourth road in behind the loader, but I am using this space for a river on my layout. 

 

On the other side of the river, the mountain looms a thousantjd feet or so above the valley floor, and some old (but clean) bedding and clothes form the lower slopes in an inglenook bay space between the chimney breast and bay window of the room, and this is covered with grass mat.  The headframe stands on a walled plaform here, about 40 feet up from the valley floor (baseboard), Brian 2975's 'revetment.  Behind it, a Dapol loco shed serves as a boiler house, feeding into a Faller factory chimney,  To it's left will be facade of the winding house up against the wall, and the upper gallery of the Faller 'Old Coal MIne' comes in at an angle of about 45 degrees at a lower level, so I will have to cobble up some sort of triangular building to connect the Faller mine kit to the headgear, in which the coal is tipped from the drams and dropped down a chute into the screens.  A lot of South Wales valley collieries were, as Brian says, a bit like this, with the headframe a little way up the mountain so that the coal could make it's way into the railway wagons through it's various processes by gravity.

 

The Faller mine is a little bit Disney, Snow White and the Seven little fellas, as it comes, but a bit of weathering and further distressing has it looking the part.  My main grouse with it at the moment is the roofing, rough beaten lead sheets which I've never seen in the UK, (though it may be common in Germany, and the Squeeze, who is Polish and whose father is a coal miner, now retired, says she remembers roofing like this on industrial buildings in Silesia).  I intend to overlay this roof with corrugated sheeting, but it's expensive to source for such a large job and my attempts at making it out of aly foil have not been promising.  Aushager do kits for dramroad 'Jubilee' (actually Feldbahn) track and tipper drams, on order thank you Amazon. 

 

The pithead baths, canteen, locker room and lamproom should be close to the headframe, but there is no room up there so they will have either be lower down or assumed to be hidden behind the boiler or winding houses.  There needs to be a pitprop storage area as well, but this will have to be down in the yard as there is nowhere for the incoming pitprop wagons to unload anywhere else.  We really need another shaft and it's headgear, because it is a legal requirement that collieries, and I believe other types of deep mines as well, have an 'upcast' and a 'downcast' shaft for ventilation purposes.  Speaking of which I will need a ventilation fan housing and a pump to prevent the pit from flooding; I can probably shoehorn those in on the yard level.  The downcast will probably be represented by a painted or photographed headframe.

 

It's turned out pretty well, especially considering the speed at which it came together, a complete new board which I had not even planned on Nov 19!  What happened was that an Antiques Market in town which has a guy that does secondhand trains, Dinkys, and lead soldiers had a Hornby (ex Dapol) Austerity for £40, which I bought to share the work with my Hornby W4 Peckett.  The Squeeze asked what it was for, and when I told her it was to shunt the colliery, she came back with 'what colliery?'.  I explained that it was 'offstage' and had to be imagined, the loco takes the empties under the bridge and comes back a little while later with the loadeds.  'Well, why don't you build one, then?'  I further explained that it would mean rebuilding the fiddle yard further along that wall, and that the fy would get in the way of her accessing the wardrobe.  'Don't worry, I'm not that fat, go on, build it!'  Oh, yes, this one's definitely a keeper; I could hardly refuse after that exchange!