Coal Special. South Wales Colliers Go Down The Mine

(3 Mar 1930)
The first sound pictures of a British Coalmine exclusive to British Movietone News. GV Pan over pithead. MS Mass of miners collecting lamps. AT THE PITHEAD OF THE POWELL DUFFRYN PENALLTA COLLIERY. MS Minors leaving lift gate then shut with miners on lift. GV Man working steam winding equipment. CU Piston wheel turning. CU Machinery working. GV & MS Pithead wheel turning. GV Lift descends out of picture. MS Line of Miners have lamps checked. AT THE COAL FACE UNDERGROUND IN THE POWELL DUFFRYN CO. COLLIERY AT PENALLTA. MS Miner explains to camera "We are now 765 yards below the earth and about 1/4 mile from the pit bottom working what is known as a 4 feet seam". He moves away to show two men loading large chunks of coal onto a truck. MODERN PNEUMATIC PICKS GOUGE OUT MASSIVE LUMPS OF COAL. MCU Miner using pneumatic pick (x2 ). CU pick head into coal. MS Two miners piling up coal. MS Truck of coal, it is marked with chalk. MS Coal trucks move through picture. GV Truck onto lift. GV Truck arriving at pithead. GV Truck out of lift. GV Miner explaining "This is the Screen Tippler House, the trams of coal after leaving the pit top and coal having been weighed are now being unloaded. All the small coal below 3" mesh is taken out, and is further cleaned by a special plant. The large coal over 3" mesh passes onto a travelling table or picking belt, here any stone or inferior coal is removed, and the cleaned large coal is then loaded in the railway wagons". GV machines sorting coal. MS Truck onto machine is turned full circle. GV Large chunks of coal. Voice says "Leaving the Screen Tippler House we are now able to see the process of cleaning the large coal. The large coal is carried by the travelling table or picking belt and during its travel from the Tippler end to the railway wagon loading end all stone or foreign matter is removed. This picking belt is capable of dealing with nearly 150 tonnes per hour. The cleaning of the small coal which you will notice have been removed and which is being cleaned in a special plant." CU Coal being sorted. MS Coal elevator. Voice "We are now viewing the special plant for cleaning the coal below 3" mesh. On the left is the raw coal elevator. The coal and shale is fed into the primary wash box. This box separates the coal and the shale by the upward pulsation of the water in the box. This pulsation is caused by these valves that you see on the opposite side allowing air to pulsate the water upwards and downwards. The bed of coal and shale is raised up, the shale being heavier than coal sinks to the bottom onto the perforated plate and the coal is carried forward by the flow of the water. The shale being sunk to the bottom is elevated by the shale elevator to the storage tanker and is now ready to be taken away to the waste head. The coal leaves the end of the primary box for the sizing screen". Various shots of the process described. GV Tank engine pulls away with line of trucks.
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[@gb5uq]

White finger, black lung, deaf as a post working in almost total darkness over 2200 feet underground. People today have no idea what these men endured for a pittance Hero's every one of them.

[@I_am_BiG_Al]

I know crazy right? My grandad recently past and im facinated now about how they used to work like this

[@andrewh5457]

And some people say White privilege.

[@Bob-nu3xe]

also not forgetting gas/water bursting through , roof falls, if not for these men the industrial revolution and the wealth it brought to many would never have happened, in the end the men were treated appallingly, I know I was one, god bless them all

[@seansands424]

@@andrewh5457 Like f;ck it was

[@seansands424]

@@Bob-nu3xe People like Thacher in the 80s

[@josephe3697]

I started work in the pits as an apprentice electrician at age 15 in 1957.

[@youngbess1]

I am the proud granddaughter and great granddaughter of South Wales coal miners. My great grandfather died of black lung leaving my grandfather to earn for his mother and seven siblings - he went down pit at the age of 14.

[@seansands424]

And look how they were f;cking treated specially in the 80s

[@andrewh5457]

​@@seansands424I take it you mean Thatcher.?

[@gb5uq]

Quite deceptive how the camera lighting hides the fact that the men are working at the face in almost total darkness. The lamps give off only a modest glow as anyone that has used one will tell you.

[@NickiesAdventureChannel]

Thatcher forgot about these boys

[@jeffreyloftus3617]

She did many bad things during her time but closing the death traps was not one of them

[@krazytroutcatcher]

@@jeffreyloftus3617 Less of a death trap when they were closed. Just prior to closure, many £millions had been invested into building new, much more efficient collieries, whilst power stations were being converted to oil burning. The controversy at the time, wasn’t just the closure of pits, it included devastation of engineering companies, including other satellite suppliers to the collieries. Whole communities were built on the coal industry, sports grounds, welfare clubs, schools and colleges, including places of worship.

[@andrewh5457]

So did Wilson I'm afraid.

[@benstevinson764]

Margaret Thatcher didn't Care about the Working Classes!

[@magicofchristmas1]

Worked there underground between 1989 and 1991

[@benstevinson764]

Working ⚒ Down the Pit Was a Hell of a Job! ⛏

[@richardevans3253]

Just imagine how upset people would be if on Remembrance Sunday ,they send the Police to intimidate and beat up Old Soldiers and yet the miners were treated disgracefully in 1984 and made fun of by the media

[@janekata1432]

A life of servitude.Thanks for sharing...

[@Msrosy145]

No gloves no helmets no safety gear. My dad lost part of his hand. And dies of black Lung. I can’t believe we lived through these times. It wasn’t living it was existing. Thank his they all closed.

[@robertsroberts1688]

Ros H im an american of with welsh decent one of my great grandfathers got crushed by an ore crusher and another was trapped in a collapse whilst another family member on my grandmothers side got trapped between a log and a railcar in virginia city

[@robertsroberts1688]

have a few ancestors that had civil war service on both sides of the war

[@andrewh5457]

I had 14 years underground, I also lost part of my hand when a heading machine fell on it, respect to your dad.

[@seansands424]

@@robertsroberts1688 No matter which country the working class gets shafted al the time

[@benstevinson764]

❤️ Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[@johnhopkins6658]

Penallta was the first pit I went down after my interview at Ystrad Fawr 1968.

[@littledanmcnamara1840]

My grandfather worked in penallta around that time. You may have worked with him

[@mariaandanthonyevans2925]

me and my father and grandfather worked in penallta in the 15 19 and 21 headings albert evans glyn evans mavric anthony evans from nelson

[@BackyardSwingset]

the opening whistle is like a death knell :(

[@grahamariss2111]

I was at the Big Pit mining museum in South Wales that allows you enter an actual mine of this generation of technology. Used to the modern long wall mining where miners work in protective cage / viser that moves forward with the face I was shocked how miners worked in front of supported area the miner guiding us said "yes you had to be very careful"!

[@deanandrew-gr1ch]

My grandfather has worked down more of the Rhondda pits and now suffering with white finger and dust. The government took his blue badge off him for dust and white finger which doesn't go away. If you asked a Welsh miner and a miner from pencillviania in the usa to look at the same bit of coal they would both know it off by heart as there's a seem thats runs under the Rhondda valleys in South Wales UK which goes from the Rhondda down under the Atlantic ocean and comes back up in pencillviania in the USA. Its called the dark artary if I remember rightly

[@hotdogking5910]

Dwe it's hard

[@billywilliamswilliams4198]

my dad worked here among other pits around the valleys when I was a kid.

[@regsymes1377]

Dirty dark and dangerous is what my oor old dad always sed. Just an ever reseeding page in the history books now

[@juliacoombs5441]

As with the other comments about 'gear', you see some of these guys wearing ties.

[@andrewh5457]

In the 70s, I worked underground, and one old guy wore a waist coat and dickibow.

[@benstevinson764]

My Grandad was a Coal Miner it was a Tough Job Down the Pit! ⛏️⚒️👷‍♂️

[@faisalsajjad8709]

Is coal mining still in process or working in coal mining has stopped nowadays

[@pastytit]

When men was men and boots was shoes and coats was jackets.

[@eileenpritchard9154]

Definitely,not like today bloody WOKE.

[@stillages1]

Fantastic to see, hand filling, tubs into the tippler, then sorting on the screens, then washing in the Peggy tub

[@davidjones3758]

If a film crew where not down there those pit props would not be so white and the miners would not have been so polite.Unfotunately the miners,like engineering got well and truly shafted by the Tories in the 70s and 80s.

[@althomas3168]

Shafted by the real capitalists of the working class.. the Union man

[@andrewh5457]

And shafted by Wilson before.

[@seansands424]

Remember it still hurts

[@seansands424]

@@andrewh5457 And by Hitler Thacher

[@andrewh5457]

@@seansands424 And by Scargill.

[@stuartpittard3153]

My grandfather went down the pit 2 days after his 14th birthday in 1917. He survived 51 years working at various pits in the llynfi, Garw and Ogmore valleys. Many Pits closed in the sixties but with British Rail going to Diesel and electric closures were inevitable. Thatcher was out to wreck the miners union no matter the cost. I always thought it was payback for the strikes of the early seventies and with the oil taxes from the north sea money was no object.

[@benstevinson764]

Thatcher abandoned and Forgot about These Lad's!!! ⛏ ⚒🌹✊

[@eileenpritchard9154]

So did WILSON.

[@caerleon87]

I used to deliver steel for props to penallta in about 1988..

[@michaeladams9641]

Man brute work! England was built on the backs of these Men!

[@alunhughes2632]

England ? this is south Wales.

[@CaelanDafydd]

​@@alunhughes2632 English cities were built on the back of Welsh labour. Billions of pounds abstracted from Wales and used to make England self-sufficient and wealthy. Meanwhile we were not even given a railway that connects north and south Wales. There's a reason all our major roads and railways run west to east, and that's the abstraction of coal wealth for the benefit of England, orchestrated by the UK government

[@alunhughes2632]

@@CaelanDafydd I am an old coal miner, and a life long socialist from the South Wales coalfield. Yes, we have always been exploited by successive London based governments. We have been given little in return for the wealth taken from our rich national resources. The people of the valleys of S Wales have suffered untold hardships over the years of exploitation by London.

[@CaelanDafydd]

@@alunhughes2632 It's sad to hear. I currently work in Cwm Cynon and work with older folks, many of whom are former miners, or were affected by mining in some form. It's a very interesting history, but it is certainly sad that this exploitation is rarely acknowledged in modern discourse. Most of what you see a hear from London media is "we subsidise Wales", when actually Welsh labour paid for their infrastructure

[@alunhughes2632]

@@CaelanDafydd I am in my 70s now and unfortunately not in the best of health. My grandfather, on my fathers side, came from Nefyn, north Wales, and worked his way south to find work in the collieries around Mountain Ash, where he met my grandmother. They moved to the Rhondda/Pontypridd, him working in the Standard Colliery, Ynyshir, where they settled and had eight boys, all future coal miners and six girls. My father met my mother in the Pontypridd/Beddau area where they settled and had myself and my two sisters. He worked in the Cwm Colliery, Beddau with me to follow years later., the last miner in our family. My mothers father came from the west, but found work in the local farms learning butchery, so stayed in the farming industry. I think that my history is rather typical of many south Wales people of the time.

[@hhuodod2209]

No helmets. Cornish miners had these since the 19th century. Wonder why they did have them x

[@butti9249]

Very impressive! Hard work, it's true! But, everyone was paid and maintained their family.

[@dexlab7794]

Not if the coal company had anything to say about it lol livable wages were fought for

[@kushcloud420]

My great great granddad died of coal on his lungs working the coal mines in Wales

[@benstevinson764]

Yes my Grandad worked down the Pit it was a Hell of a Job! ⛏

[@chancesareshewears]

Thank god these places were shut down

[@paulnicholson1906]

We just moved hazardous jobs overseas, who are you kidding?

[@mikekozi-lester3887]

Cool John

[@saturdayplayer2492]

My grandfather was absolutely determined that his boys should not go down the mine and made sure they had an education. Sadly the great depression meant that they couldn't stay in school as long as he would've liked but they never had to go down the pit despite their poverty in those difficult years.

[@Conquer..-]

This same technique is still used in India... New mines having the same technology.

[@barnbersonol]

I live in nearby Hengoed. Everyone round here (except me) calls it Penolter. Grrr!!

[@tobycollier9733]

Gonna continue my family’s history in a coal mine aswell

[@lolgamerxd8963]

Don't press read more! *Read More*

[@secretsix6]

it tickles me that back in them days everything was painted ready for the cameras we used to have stop coaling for a couple shifts to get the place ready for the vips an cameras a royal pita it was

[@bigoldgrizzly]

remember it well

[@edsternet]

This is fantastic but unuseable from here as the clouting great AP logo is an unecessary distraction.

[@BritishMovietone]

+Edward Brady - hi Edward, if you wish to use British Movietone outside of KZbin, please don't hestiate to get in touch with our licencing team - www.aparchive.com/ContactUs - best wishes - Jenny @ Movietone

[@edsternet]

Thats great thank you

[@theogdirkdiggler]

Music sure sucked back then.....🙄

[@seansands424]

Music sure sucked now

[@mikeevans93]

Yakki da

[@lordsofafan372]

Iechyd dda😂

[@Garwfechan-ry5lk]

That is more like Chinese . Iechyd da in Modern Welsh, I myself can speak the Ancient Tongue as well , it has changed very litle apart from the Stupid Wenglish, old Cymric ( Brythonic Celtic ) Iachyd Da, Bretons was Echid Da Cornish Iachyd Dda Cumbria Iechau da Caledonian ( Pictish) Iachyn Dda. Yakki da is Pidgin !