IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Main Bright Walk, MANSFIELD, NG19 7GL

Heading west under the railway.

A complete view and worthy of a geograph. The pit is long gone and after 26 years I have no idea which way I was pointing.

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 is a view of the low-pressure cylinder with its Corliss valve gear and Allan straight link reversing motion.

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).

This was the smaller of the two winding engines and was a horizontal duplex built in 1902 by Fraser & Chalmers of Erith. The Corliss valve cylinders were 26 x 54" and fitted with Seymour's patent valve gear (the only example I ever saw) under governor control. The parallel drum was 11' diameter. The engine was scrapped in 1983 but one cylinder was taken to the National Mining Museum at Lound Hall. This museum is long since closed and the fate of the cylinder is not known. The colliery was demolished many years ago. This shows the steam reversing engine alongside the governor that adjusts the cut-off of the steam to prevent the engine going too fast during the mid-portion of the wind. The winding drum is hidden behind the big guard and the curved section at its edge is one of the brake posts.

This was the smaller of the two winding engines and was a horizontal duplex built in 1902 by Fraser & Chalmers of Erith. The Corliss valve cylinders were 26 x 54" and fitted with Seymour's patent valve gear (the only example I ever saw) under governor control. The parallel drum was 11' diameter. The engine was scrapped in 1983 but one cylinder was taken to the National Mining Museum at Lound Hall. This museum is long since closed and the fate of the cylinder is not known. The colliery was demolished many years ago. This shows one of the cylinders with the Corliss valve gear including Seymour's trip gear. The steam (inlet) valves with the trip gear are at the top and the spring loaded dashpots to close them when tripped are down at floor level. The exhaust valves are in the bottom corners. The valves are operated from a central wristplate that is driven via Allan straight link reversing motion from two eccentrics on the crankshaft.

This was the smaller of the two winding engines and was a horizontal duplex built in 1902 by Fraser & Chalmers of Erith. The Corliss valve cylinders were 26 x 54" and fitted with Seymour's patent valve gear (the only example I ever saw) under governor control. The parallel drum was 11' diameter. The engine was scrapped in 1983 but one cylinder was taken to the National Mining Museum at Lound Hall. This museum is long since closed and the fate of the cylinder is not known. The colliery was demolished many years ago. This view shows a close-up of the Corliss valves with Seymour's gear. The steam (inlet) valves are in the top corners with variable cut-off under governor control and the exhaust valves are out of sight in the bottom corners. The vertical rod on the extreme right is oscillated by a separate eccentric and carries a cam at the top. The timing of this cam is varied by the governor. The cam bears on a pin that passes through the carrier oscillated by the wristplate (bottom centre) and pushes apart the trip dies to release the valve to be closed by a spring and dashpot assembly. The pin that pushes the dies apart is barely visible (I can see it, just). All this complexity is to allow for a later cut-off than is possible with more conventional Corliss gears and allows the engine to develop maximum power (up to 95% cut-off) while accelerating the cages and then let the governor shorten the cut-off and reduce the power during the constant speed phase of the wind.

This was the smaller of the two winding engines and was a horizontal duplex built in 1902 by Fraser & Chalmers of Erith. The Corliss valve cylinders were 26 x 54" and fitted with Seymour's patent valve gear (the only example I ever saw) under governor control. The parallel drum was 11' diameter. The engine was scrapped in 1983 but one cylinder was taken to the National Mining Museum at Lound Hall. This museum is long since closed and the fate of the cylinder is not known. The colliery was demolished many years ago.