Sherwood Colliery - steam winding engine
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Sherwood Colliery - steam winding engine by Chris Allen as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Sherwood Colliery - steam winding engine
Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 25 Mar 1981
Sherwood had a pair of Fraser & Chalmers winding engines. This is the large 1903 built cross compound with cylinders 32" & 53" bores x 66" stroke and rated at 2800 horsepower. It was stopped and scrapped in 1982. This shows the driving position alongside the high-pressure cylinder. The driver is in his seat and if not driving when I took this would have been shortly thereafter. The engine was winding coal (at a higher speed than men) and was in operation 24 hours per day. Many of the National Coal Board unit mechanical engineers were willing to allow small groups of enthusiasts into their working engine houses to see the last days of these amazing machines. We were always very careful not to get in the way or interfere with the safe running on the mines, although we did set up our tripods in some surprising places (I once set up on top of the cylinder of a large running engine).
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
53.156931
Longitude
-1.198382