Mine railway

It is little remembered, but the mix of heavy and bulky materials which had to be hauled into and out of mines gave rise to the first several generations of railways, at first made of wooden rails, but eventually adding protective iron, steam locomotion by fixed engines and the earliest commercial steam locomotives, all in and around the works around mines.

[3] Wagonways (or tramways) were developed in Germany in the 1550s to facilitate the transport of ore tubs to and from mines, using primitive wooden rails.

[8] Though the first documentary record of this is later, its construction probably preceded the Wollaton Wagonway, completed in 1604, hitherto regarded as the earliest British installation.

Huntingdon Beaumont, who was concerned with mining at Strelley, also laid down broad wooden rails near Newcastle upon Tyne, on which a single horse could haul fifty to sixty bushels (130–150 kg) of coal.

Ralph Allen, for example, constructed a tramway to transport stone from a local quarry to supply the needs of the builders of the Georgian terraces of Bath.

The wagonways were engineered so that trains of coal wagons could descend to the staithe by gravity, being braked by a brakesman who would "sprag" the wheels by jamming them.

A tendency to concentrate employees started when Benjamin Huntsman, looking for higher quality clock springs, found in 1740[11] that he could produce high quality steel in unprecedented quantities (crucible steel to replace blister steel) in using ceramic crucibles in the same fuel shortage/glass industry inspired reverbatory furnaces that were spurring the coal mining, coking, cast-iron cannon foundries, and the much in demand gateway or stimulus products[11] of the glass making industries.

[11] This trend concentrating effort into bigger central located but larger enterprises[11] turned into a trend spurred by Henry Cort's iron processing patent of 1784[11] leading in short order to foundries collocating near coal mines[3] and accelerating the practice of supplanting the nations cottage industries.

This was later replaced by L-shaped iron rails, which were attached to the mine floor, meaning that no sleepers were required and hence leaving easy access for the feet of children or animals to propel more drams.

In the very cramped conditions of hand-hewn mining tunnels, children were also often used before the advent of child labour legislation, either pushing the carts themselves or tending to animals that did (see below).

Ponies began to be used underground, often replacing child or female labour, as distances from pit head to coal face became greater.

The first known recorded use in Britain was in the County Durham coalfield in 1750; in the United States, mules were the dominant source of animal power in the mine industry, with horses and ponies used to a lesser extent.

In later years, mechanical haulage was quickly introduced on the main underground roads replacing the pony hauls and ponies tended to be confined to the shorter runs from coal face to main road (known in North East England as "putting", in the United States as "tramming" or "gathering"[19]) which were more difficult to mechanise.

Mining and later railway engineers designed their tramways so that full (heavy) trains would use gravity down the slope, while horses would be used to pull the empty drams back to the workings.

Probably the last colliery horse to work underground in a British coal mine, Robbie, was retired from Pant y Gasseg, near Pontypool, in May 1999.

[20] In the 19th century after the mid-1840s, when the German invention of wire rope became available from manufactories in both Europe and North America, large stationary steam engines on the surface with cables reaching underground were commonly used for mine haulage.

Unsurprisingly, the innovation-minded managers of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company pioneered the technology in America using it to allow the dead-lift of loaded coal consists 1,100 feet (340 m) up the Ashley Planes, and the augmentation of their works in and above the Panther Creek Valley[21] with new gravity switchback sections and return cable inclines, but most notably by installing two cable lift sections and expanding the already famous Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway with a 'back track' dropping car return time from 3–4 hours to about 20 minutes, which the new inclines then fed from new mine shafts and coal breakers farther down into the valley.

Typically, manual labor, mules or pit ponies were used in gathering filled cars from the working areas (galleries were driven across seams as much as possible) to main haulage ways.

[23] In the first decade of the 20th century, electric locomotives were displacing animal power for this secondary haulage role in mines[24] where sparking triggered explosive methane buildup was a lesser danger.

Porter's mine locomotives required a minimum 5-foot clearance and 4-foot width when operating on 3-foot gauge track, where they could handle a 20-foot radius curve.

[40] Nonetheless, both Baldwin and Vulcan continued to advertise steam locomotives for underground use outside the coal industry as late as 1921.

This method of propulsion had the advantage of being safe but the disadvantage of high operating costs due to very limited range before it was necessary to recharge the air tanks.

Narrow gauge compressed air locomotives were manufactured for mines in Germany as early as 1875, with tanks pressurized to 4 or 5 bar.

[44] Ordinary mine compressed-air systems operating at 100 psi (7 bar) only allowed a few hundred feet of travel.

[47] The first electric mine railway in the world was developed by Siemens & Halske for bituminous coal mining in Saxon Zauckerode near Dresden (now Freital) and was being worked as early as 1882 on the 5th main cross-passage of the Oppel Shaft run by the Royal Saxon Coal Works.

There were large scale deliveries of electric locomotives for these railways from AEG, Siemens & Halske, Siemens-Schuckert Works (SSW) and the Union Electricitäts-Gesellschaft (UEG) in these countries.

The disadvantage of a crab locomotive was that someone had to pull the haulage cable from the winch to the working face, threading it over pulleys at any sharp turns.

Battery powered locomotives and systems solved many of the potential problems that combustion engines present, especially regarding fumes, ventilation and heat generation.

Until 1995 the largest single, narrow gauge, above-ground, mine and coal railway network in Europe was in the Leipzig-Altenburg lignite field in Germany.

In December 1999, the last 900 mm (2 ft 11+7⁄16 in) railway in the Central German coal mining field in Lusatia was closed.