inside crank

Which of course you can leave off or replace with a cast iron jobby.

Here for your perusal is Dimbath Deep Navigation no.2 (see how I've suggested the existence of an entire no.1 pit without having to model it), Britishified with NCB notices and neglect.  Note the half-built canteen and pithead baths in the background, severely mutilated Kitmaster 'modern shop with flat' kit with scaffolding, more Britishness as the NCB, formed in 1947, promised canteens and pithead baths are all it's collieries and built them during the early 50s. so this is a period 'pin' as well.  You will be relieved to hear that some tidying up has taken place since the photo was taken, though a colliery should be quite messy!  The chimney and water tank are now straightened...

Backstory (I like backstories) is that the pit was developed with government money during WW2 after a seam of particularly high quality low sulphur coking coal was opened up; the other colliery buildings pre-date this.  The tippler/loader is of course Walther's Cornerstone 'Diamond Coal' kit, steel frame corrugated sheeting, looking perfectly at home in South Wales with it's air of general neglect and poor quality wartime austerity paint job.  It is of course intended to represent an Appalachian 'level' or 'slope' drift mine, but a conveyor up from the headframe sorts that out.  Headframe is a DAPR 3D print, £28.

It's 'H0ness' is revealed in the stairways, and (if you want to rivet count) the doorways, but is not obvious or completely implausible.  It was a joy to build, Amercican quality, very little flash and everthing fitted perfectly.  IIRC I paid £48 new for it, cf Bachmann Scencraft Pithead for 5p short of £60 beer vouchers and that's before you think about tipplers, washeries, fan houses, boiler houses, pump rooms &c.  There's no comparison; Walther's are way ahead of the game in everthing except scale, and that doesn't matter as much as you'd think it would with these larger industrial buildings.  Absolutely the right choice for my colliery, two loading roads and the slack bin, brilliant, no connection happy customer.

You certainly get a lot for your money. It's a very impressive structure. I did toy with the idea of a pit scene when I was first imagining my layout (notice I didn't say planning it), but decided that I wouldn't have the space to do it justice. Instead I opted for a small gas works.

By the way, I like the scaffolding around the canteen in the background. It's a nice touch.

Thanks; it's exactly the look I was going for.  Kit from Scale Model Scenery, comes with ladders, cement mixer, a skip (too modern for me) and a shovel. 

Collieries do take up a lot of room, even South Wales ones on restricted valley floor sites, and despite the overwhelming bulk and 'presence' of Diamond Coal, mine is actually quite cramped, 3 sidings capable of taking 9 wagons (the longest train the layout can handle anyway) and two shorter ones, and Diamond can 'only' handle 3 wagons per road under the loader; twice that number would be more typical.  The weighbridge is on the approach road, which is not really an ideal place for it but there's no room anywhere else; it is assumed that it can be locked out of use while trains are shunted over it.  Wagons often have to be positioned on the loader roads during shunting.  I probably wouldn't have been able to find a site for it had the room not had the inglenook in that position, and even then the other buildings are up on the mountainside (not unprototypical for South Wales).

Diamond replaces a Faller 'Old Mine' kit, which looked much less British and had a bit of a 'Snow White and the Seven Persons Of Restricted Growth' feel to it, but The Squeeze, who is Polish and whose father is a Silesian miner, says it is typica6l of such buildings in her part of the world.  'Old Mine' took up more room and had only one loading road; Diamond is much better, and I have never regretted buying it.  If I had more room, I'd be going in for the Cornerstone Coke Ovens as well.