Wednesday 26 August 2015

The National Coal Mining Museum. "A general look around". (Part one)

My recent trip to West Yorkshire was to take my dog Suzi to a consultant vet.  I had to leave her for the day so spent the time looking around Dewsbury and also the National mining Museum at Caphouse Colliery in The town of Overton.  
 

As you enter the Visitor Centre there is an exhibition of mining memorabilia and information. 

A recreation of a miners cottage. See the cricket bat, most mining villages had their own
cricket teams and played in local leagues against neighbouring pits.
The door hallway open is to the outside "privy", the only toilet.

A collection of various designs of miners lamps.

A coal merchants lorry.

This is a recreation of the pit ponies stable. This horse is stuffed!
Horses, or pit ponies were used below ground to pull coal tubs along railway tracks to take
the coal from the working pit face to the bottom of the mine shaft where it would be hauled
up to the surface.

"The Pit Head" where the men would be lowered down and the coal hauled up.

This is the winding gear that stood over the main pit shaft.

Old preserved coal tubs that were used below ground with the ponies to get the coal out.

The coal would be graded and then transported off site in these standard gauge railway coal
wagons.  Most coal went to power stations.

A saddle tank standard gauge locomotive used on the colliery site to haul coal wagons to
the national rail link for delivery. 

This one still bears the chalked name "Caphouse Colliery).
 
 

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