New boy here.

[colly0410]

Hi,

Now for the fun bit; as I say this belt really did move but jumping on in the well lit hopper area wasn't too much of a problem; the engineers would jump on and lay flat; the hopper guy would wait a minute then dump our tool bags on the belt and away we would go; getting off the belt though posed a real health risk because to judge it wrong we could have ended up being loaded into a tub; as we approached the pit bottom we could see the cap lamps of the team at the conveyor head and at this point we would rub a spanner across the bell wires; the belt would immediately start to lose speed and when judged slow enough we would jump off but the old wooden sleepers were always willing to trip us; if we landed OK then all was well but I've bounced from the wall a few times; back on our feet we would give another signal with the spanner then the belt speed would increase; the guys at the conveyor head though used to give us some stick as we waited for the tool bags to arrive; these tool bags were always very heavy filled with big spanners and wrecking bars etc.

I live to tell the tale and I had some good times at the pit; happy memories of the sixties.

Kind regards, Col.

Most belts down Hucknall were dual coal/man rider belts. I was coming up the Black Shale/Deep Soft intake drift on the high speed belt & there were a load of blokes on the getting off platform & I missed it & went through the safety bar. The belt started to slow down very slowly & I thought I was going in the bunker, when it eventually stopped I was way up in the roof girders & had to crawl out backwards  as no room to turn round. Blokes further down the standing belt were calling me names, the belt restarted & all was well. They were still chuntering about it in the baths...

Another pit story.... I was on the belt staff down Hucknall pit & someone had put a jack on the bottom belt of the Black Shale seam to Deep Soft seam drift belt & it was jammed in the return end, we reversed the belt & it un-jammed, removed jack & belt resumed running OK. We decided to make a bottom belt plough so it didn't happen again. We found a length of angle iron & started to construct a plough. Now common sense tells you to stop the belt & lock in out, but none of us had any common sense that day & we left the belt running. We lost control of the angle iron that went into the return end & ripped a gash about forty feet long in the belt before we could stop it. The overman (a gaffer) then went berserk & ranted & raved for 20 minutes threatening to sack the lot of us, me being an idiot didn't help the situation as I burst out laughing which enraged him even more, I always laugh when I shouldn't...