What you need is a Time Team investigation Alan, was your dad a miner? I have been down quite a few holes in my time but never down a coal mine, I think the nearest to here were in Somerset. Quite a lot of coal and spar miners came down here to work when Consolidated Goldfields re opened the old Wheal Jane tin mine, yes I can believe that about the main use of the communication system, I only ever used the communication system once in an emergency, we were on dynamite duty (re stocking the magazine) everything was going ok and we unloaded and stacked the first load into the shaft station magazine, the cage was a double decker so it carried two dynamite wagons, the second load came down and when we pulled the first wagon out we saw that there was no gate grill on the back side of the cage, the wagon could have rolled out during the decent with poss not to good consequencies. The shaft was shut down and the shaft men were sent down to investigate, they found a mangled mess about 300ft down from grass jambed in the shafts timber sets, turned out they had a new banksman up top and he did not fit the cage gate on properly before sending the cage down.
Lawrence.
Lawrence.
