- Kellingley Colliery
Kellingley Colliery is one of the newest of the few deep
coal mine s left in Britain today. It is situated about 1 1/2 miles east ofKnottingley inYorkshire . Its siting was mainly influenced by the close proximity of road, rail and canal routes.History
haft sinking procedure
Sinking the two shafts started in earnest in 1960. Sandy and porous
geology down to about convert|600|ft|m was waterlogged and about 36borehole s around each shaft position had subzero temperaturebrine pumped through them which froze the ground down to about convert|640|ft|m. The sinking personnel then had to work in subzero temperatures until the shafts were sunk below this frozen ground. The shafts were eventually sunk to a depth of around convert|800|yd.After a concrete lining sealed the shafts, the cooling
brine was stopped and the frozen ground allowed to thaw out. A thin cementisous mixture (grout )was then pumped, at high pressure, through holes bored through the concrete lining of the shafts, into the water bearing strata. When this set, it sealed out most of the water leaking through into the shafts and stabilized the ground around the upper part of the shafts. However, the pressure needed to pump in the mixture also caused the ground above to bulge up unevenly, causing the Winding Engine towers mounted above the shafts to tilt slightly. This had been anticipated and provision had been made to jack up each of the four legs that each tower stood upon. This was done regularly during this pumping phase to bring back the towers to the correct alignment. To keep the shafts to the correct alignment the age-old method of using plumb lines was used. Four steel lines, evenly spaced, were suspended around the inside of each shaft, all the way to the bottom of the shafts.When planning and building the surface infrastructure for the new colliery, facilities were provided for the employment of 3000 mineworkers but due to updated methods and machinery, only about 2000 were ever employed there at any one time.
Output
Quite a number of National and European output records were established during its lifetime under the management of the
National Coal Board andBritish Coal .Fact|date=August 2008Location Grid
The exact location of the colliery could be open to dispute as it lies directly on the
West Yorkshire andNorth Yorkshire boundary line with coal faces lying on both sides.ee also
List of Yorkshire Pits
References
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