Victoria Colliery
00, Southern Region, 12 @ 4 foot
Video
Screen
Patent Fuel Works
Coke & Breeze
Services Pit
props
Electric
Weighbridge
Entries
Panoramas
Screen
For a model railways the screen is the modelled aspect of a colliery (coal mine)
as this is where most of the railway activity takes place. At the screen
coal is
cleaned (waste rock removed), sized and loaded into railway wagons. The screen
at Victoria Colliery has four conveyor belt allowing the gentle loading of four sizes
of coal. The sidings are on a grade so that empty wagons can be moved without
the need for a shunting engine.
Patent
Fuel Works
Collieries produced small
coal that was
often difficult to sell. One use of small coal was to mix it with a
binder (tar, cement and clay have been used) run it through a press
allow to dry creating ovoids originally called patient fuel but now
normally called briquettes. Hopefully the patient fuel/briquettes are more
profitable than small coal. At least one Colliery in the Mellis
Valley is known to have manufactured patient fuel/briquettes.
Coke & Breeze
Another use for small coal is to make
coke by heating coal in
the absents of air.
Several collieries in the Mellis Valley are known to have made coke. The
coke screen is smaller than the coal screen as coke
doesn't need cleaning and is divided into two sizes coke and breeze (small
coke), To avoid breakages a conveyor is used to gently lower the coke into
wagons. Breeze is treated much more roughly - it is dropped through a hole in
the screen floor directly into the wagons below.
Services
An efficient colliery needs services provided by carpenters,
fillers, black smiths etc. This group of buildings is where they work.
Pit props
This is where the railway delivers pit props. Pit
props are used in the mine to support the roofs of underground workings.
Electric - the reception hopper
In the real world collieries (coal mine) received empty and
sent out full coal wagons. This is difficult to do with a portable
exhibition layouts. Thankfully research turned up several cases of coal fuelled
electrical power stations being located next to a colliery - an example is Norchard in the Forest of Dean. This has happened at Victoria Colliery where an
off scene electrical power station takes most of Victoria Colliery's coal. For
cost and chemical reasons the electrical power station also used coal from other
collieries. The patent fuel works and coke works also uses some coal from other
collieries. Together these explains the arrival of full and the departure of
empty coal wagons.
The arriving coal wagons are emptied by opening two hatches in their floor
and dropping the coal into the reception hopper. Opening the hatches gets most
of the coal out of the wagon but then some poor soul has to go into the wagon
and shovel and brush out the remainder.
The
Weighbridge
At collieries wagons were weighed on arrival and
departure.
Entries
Panoramas
