My Father worked here far many years, located in Helensberg NSW, he took my brother and I down to the underground stables where they used to keep the pit ponies, it still had hay, harnesses and fences all intact. I later worked there for a weeks work experience, underground with a mechanical fitter, repairing shuttle cars etc. It was 100 years old then, great to see it is still operational.
Wow, very mechanically entertaining and insightful - don't like music in the background of such machinery videos but this choice of sound was good, combined with sounds from the machines. Could watch this 100 times over
I spent a lot of time in Cliff's Oak Grove Mine in Alabama working on scoop batteries and chargers. Ran from 800' to 1200' down with elevators at each end about 12 miles apart. I was in Jim Walter which was 2k ft down. I miss working with the miners , great bunch to work with.
Can u clarify some novice thoughts.....how we identify the location for mines? There is no internal undergroundwater ways as we see in openwells & borewells? How the long underground passage survive uncollapsed?
@@muhammedakbar9228 They use sounding sonar that penetrates the ground for 5km then reflects back . The transmitters are only 30W but powerful enough to trigger minor earthquakes when they are used. The military has more powerful transmitters that they use to locate caves, mines, voids underground as they fly over a landscape. To the mining roof support-coal mines insert roof bolts into the ceiling with epoxy in front of the bolts to secure them every 5' apart. The other method is to use large wood beams across and supported by "cribs" with heavy gauge screen wire in between sections of the mine to catch any pieces that break loose they call "widow makers".
@@asafgl4281 I was 65yrs old and had been lifting 200lb battery cells , carrying them to the coal scoop batteries then installing them. My lower back started giving me trouble due to previous injury years earlier.
@@LkOutMtnMan i understand now.. I was a miner in a copper mine in middle east, first month my back , especially my lower and middle back.. But one day i woke up at morning and felt no more... It came back only after i have stop working there....by the years almost every one who suffered from back issue will suffer again... From my experience solution is go to chiropractor for adjusting...after few times one after another you will see an improve...
Not really the two methods here. The purpose of the Continuous miner panel is to set up the next longwall block for extraction. Yes the coal mined by the C/M is added to the total but that is not really the point of it's operation.
One of the best videos for showing the different facts of an underground cal mine I have seen. Shows you why the boys should get paid big bucks. Hot, wet, gassey, humid, muddy, dusty, cold in winter, hot in summer.......great video.
@@seanbrophy9096 I was surprised how warm it was underground. For some reason I thought it would be cold so when I went under for a pilot I was really surprised to be sweating!
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Great video. This is the stuff that not only helped build our modern civilization, but keep it running. Coal is one of the most important resources ever harnessed by humanity.
It's funny how it looks exactly like where I'm from in the coal fields of Southwest Virginia Appalachian mountains. The mine, prep plant, and the surrounding mountains. You can't tell much of a difference from an aerial view. I no longer live there, but growing up everyone I knew had something to do with coal. The Obama years sure took its toll on an entire region. Those joy miners and shuttle cars were developed where I grew up. This way of mining coal was developed in the Appalachian mountains of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. Amazing! I know guys who would travel all over the world educating coal producers. Now Peabody mines coal all over the world, including out West and Illinois. My brother n law is a foreman in Alabama. I guess Peabody is Americas largest coal producer. I don't think I've ever seen a piner like this one. Is this a long wall mines. I've never seen a long wall supports like these either. Of course it's been years since I've been underground. Yes I have since I got a better look.
I know you probably moved a long time ago but a couple weeks ago I saw a surface operation right outside of Grundy. You know of any coal companies still operating in Buchanan County or the surrounding areas?
Nicely done video. I am really surprised that with all those giant piles of coal, that they use loaders to load the train. Seems like a basic conveyor system could do it faster and with fewer operators, though I suppose that if they are loading it along the whole length of the train, it might be faster this way unless they used a silo system.
On the long wall it uses its own conveyer. Trains are loaded with hoppers usually. The train pulls under it and it gets loaded with washed or unwashed coal.
@@Keith_Mikell I don't know why everyone keeps saying this, because if you watch the first 30 seconds of the video you see no hoppers or silos, you see wheel loaders loading trucks from stockpile, and multiple loaders loading train cars from a larger stockpile. My comment was wondering why they DON'T have hoppers to load the railroad cars from, and the comments are about the long wall miner far below, and that they use hoppers, which they obviously don't lol
Props to the men and women working in coal mines. Such A dangerous job. I'll I'm thinking while watching this...black lung disease and cave ins. Really hard working people.
A couple babies on here insecure about their pecker size. If a women wants to work side by side doing a shitty job and can hang, why are you scared? Afraid they will make you look bad? I'm a welder and one of the best welders I have ever met was a women.
I only spent 6 years in an underground pit. Got in as a 47 y/o cleanskin during the mining boom. Out with the bust. This bought back memories. As a car driver and sometimes cablehand and general dog's body in development panels of a bord and pillar mine. The warning sound of the miner's movements gave me flashbacks. It is a very shitty place to work but the pay was good enough and we had lots of laughs while doing a tough gig. Sadly, the best thing about the place was the blokes and the worse thing about the place was the blokes. A bigger collection of dumb, lazy overpaid morons I have never met! We went bust due to low coal prices and increased operating costs. We killed cables and gear like it was free! Those that wasted their pay and didn't find another high paying mining gig are now learning what it's like to be a labourer on 50k a year. Glad to have ticked that box and be debt free but very glad to be out of it and shiftwork. Stuff that, life is too short. Stay safe boys.
@@fidelmontollaiii7866 Sorry mate, I'm Australian. Pit = Mine Here we use both terms A person might work in an underground or open cut pit or an underground or open cut mine. I think the term comes from the Brits(British) Hope this helps👍
I believe Peabody bought the Shoal Creek Mine here in Alabama , wasn't in that mine but I did work in Jim Walter, Oak Grove, Alliance, Jessie Creek and another mine or two as battery tech for Enersys. I repaired scoop and shuttle car batteries and chargers. I liked my work and I liked the type of people I worked with , you could count on them all to watch your back .
1 - even though the electricity cable for the machines remind me of automatic retractable vacuum cleaner cords, it amazes me still how they don't run over their own power cables. Plus the constant flexing, unwinding and retracting of the power cables surely wear the out over time causing kinks and breaks in the line. 2 - even though I KNOW it a mine, it made me a little fascinated that the machines were back coal dust dirty. I 'expected' them to be pristine white and clean. Guess I didn't expect this workplace to be dirty from being used.
I work for a company that builds them. They look so beautiful when they leave the workshop...then they go underground & when they come home for a major overhaul they look so sad.
It would be good to have all of the video ,the audio in the mine is a big part of it ,no offence Intended and i thank you for the video ,,,it's just someting to consider,, i reemphasize Appreciation for your time and effort,,, ,,thanks
I worked on longwall chocks and as a diesel shuttle car operator in the late 70s and 80s. I thought electric shuttle cars were long gone. The technology doesn't look like it has changed much.
When I was 17 , I started out in the coal mines digging ditch and then later packing timber up the raises . After 6 months in the mine you get a miners permit that allows you to go and work at the mining face . Another year doing this and you write a test for your A class miners papers and get to be an operator . I ran a Joy Continous . Lots of dust in the winter time - lots of timber when you drive a decline - building a road called corduroy so the miner does not get stuck .This was for a company called Coleman Collieries in the Crows Nest Pass in Alberta . When I was 21 - then changed to working in a hard rock mine.
i started mining at a mine called APPIN, close to this mine.... i worked in mines for 38 years and retired 2 x years ago..... do i miss it.... NO, stay safe fellas
Australian coal mining above and underground is the safest best regulated in the world. Retired now but spent last 15 yrs delivering parts for Joy Global now Komatsu to Glencore long wall pits. Heaps of girls working in mines but mainly above ground.
J J imagine living in eastern KY or West Virginia where they take the tops off of whole mountains and dump the overburden in the valleys, covering up streams and killing everything downstream from the runoff. Also imagine the hideous mess that’s left when they leave. Now that the coal industry is all but gone, imagine whole communities left with nothing but destroyed landscapes, undrinkable water, no jobs, and no opportunity.
Not in the mine but as a truck driver I have carted plenty of coal out of here to Illawarra Coke Works & Corrimal Coke Works .Most is loaded out on trains from here . Coal wash or reject is also what we carted out of there .
More like a metallic mine than a coal mine. How can you stop the lateral pressure? or ceiling prints? I didn't see any steel fortifications and I think it's great because the risk seems low. I was also wondering about the calorie content and coal thickness. Greetings from Turkey
@@michaelovitch I found! This is a place for a fire extinguisher except that it is not present on this machine. Look at 3:58, the red cylinder on the left then look at 3:11, the tube is empty.
Ringinator They are called "bat bags" and they are part of the explosion suppression system of the mine.They are made of a brittle type of plastic that will break open easily in the event of an explosion and disperse the stone dust into the atmosphere.It is to stop a methane explosion from propagating into a coal dust explosion.The pressure wave from a methane explosion will cause coal dust from the ribs(sides) ,floor etc to be stirred up into the path of the flame front of the initial methane explosion and as coal dust is also explosive it will then ignite,stirring up more coal dust and the explosion with then be self propagating and will travel throughout the mine.The stone dust which is also applied to the coal ribs then intermingles with the coal dust creating an inert mixture and hopefully stops the explosion from propagating.
The first picture of the intake vent shaft is wrong thats the return air mines do not force ventilation down the mine its pulled thru the mine by means of exhaust fans
The air just doesn’t get pulled from underground you need it to enter through another vent shaft for the vent fan to pull air through the mine. No drifts at that mine
Not true anyway. Most are exhausting but Ive worked some that pushed it in. The first time was middle of winter on a new panel 12 breaks from the drift mouth. Insulated clothes were a must and shuttle car guys wore goggles to keep the dust out of tbeir eyes when they turned into the last open break. Talk about miserable.
@@peterwilks531 correct. Shuttle car had only just gone into the panel that day. Oddly the day the film crew arrived. 103's people- didnt do our 103's did we
They are called bat bags, filled with stone dust in case of methane explosion the shock wave will bust the bags open and prevent coal dust from being flicked up and causing another explosion.
If you do see women there then all the trouble starts. Keep the bitchs out. Next you see you work mates getting laid off as the bitch has said he heard my feelings. What's the old saying how can you trust someone who bleeds 5 to 7 days and doesn't die. I will leave you with that to think about.
@@doxielain2231 And there’s not a damn feminist there! Is it with these guys that flashy feminists want to get the same paycheck? Let them then work like men!
