Underground Work
The coal-getting part of
the mining industry basically consists of three operations:
detaching the coal from the underground seam; transporting
it via horizontal tunnels to the pit shaft and raising
it to the surface. Originally, all three were done
by hand and today, in what mining industry is left
in the United Kingdom, it is done mechanically. During
the transition, horses did the transportation of the
coal from the seam to the pit shaft.
The main task for the horses was ‘hauling’. This meant
taking the empty 
drams from the main haulage system to the collier
at the coalface and bring the full ones to the haulage
system to be taken to the pit bottom.
However, it was not that simple. Conditions at the
coalface and along the narrow passages or ‘roads’
leading to the face varied considerably. The
collier obtained his section of the face, called a
‘stall’ or ‘heading’ in a quarterly draw. Similarly,
the haulier drew a ‘flat’ and two ponies for 3 months
at a time. A ‘flat’ was a collection point for drams
for 2 or 3 stalls and distances from the stalls to
the flat varied considerably. Sometimes the distance
for each journey could affect the haulier’s pay.
He may, for example, be given
a basic wage per score of drams at 80 yards [the average
journey for that pit] but be paid an increment as
the distance increased to 100 and 120 yards. As the
collier would be paid according the number of drams
filled, woe betide any haulier who did not remove
full drams and replace them with empty ones.
Both collier and haulier placed a ‘tally’ on each
dram so that their work could be accounted for. Some
roadways were so narrow that the ponies themselves
experienced difficulty in turning around to face the
other way and a special technique was employed:-
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A pony would tuck his head
between his front legs turn slowly till his
neck touched the sides then bring his back
legs in and spin like a top.
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There was the possibility
that at the face the boy might get, briefly, the assistance
of the men working there, but in the roadway he was
on his own. The roadways were simply tunnels equipped
with rails and their sole function was to facilitate
getting the coal away from the face.
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Roadway dimensions were
never generous. If a pony and dram could
scrape through without obvious injury, that
would do. But roadways never remained the
same. Convergence was a natural phenomenon,
roadways got lower and narrower by the hour
and inevitably one would dint the floor
or chip the roof and/or both, to retain
the original passage.
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………So if your lamp would be put out you
might have to wait for it to be lit again. There would
only be one lighting station in the district and one
man with the key to it. It meant that you might have
to go an hour or more without your lamp. You could not
afford to wait, as you were on piecework, so you just
carried on in the dark. You had to find where your tokens
were and the pony would take you to the empty dram and
then on to the coalface where the men had their lamps.
You could let Rosie go four miles to the coalface, by
herself, along the travelling way where there was no
danger from machinery. She would be there when you arrived,
not a foot wrong in the dark. We could not go 10 yards
without a lamp. ….
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