Cronton colliery Closure / Sutton Manor

Description

[@dmcerrrmmmm]

Amazing....and if you go there now there is very little that shows what a large complex this was.

[@frazerweb]

Great old footage

[@999DaveUK]

I presume the video of Cronton was done around 1984/5. I worked there from 1964 to 1984. I can still recognise some of the pit head areas.

[@jackcro8825]

999DaveUK Must have been a sad day to see that happening

[@SuperCholdi]

Very informative from 1:02:57. Nice one dad!

[@malcolmbennett3309]

Cronton Colliery has a web site called "Cronton Colliery friends" now on Facebook why not check it out for anything related to Cronton Colliery.

[@jenniferhussey941]

That is my dad, Phil Hussey showing the two guys around Sutton Manor and he doesn't remember it at all!

[@jovicrayons7735]

+jennifer hussey i love you

[@jackcro8825]

Industry lost for every very sad.

[@Technics68]

This is a fascistic video and very rare to see my dad worked at cronton and my uncle and other members of the family from the 60s up to when it closed in 84 does anyone have any photos of the football team who use to play for cronton colliery cheers for posting and sharing this footage thank you

[@chrisdervin5420]

Salvaged a lot of the underground plant for other pits before it closed.

[@HaraldFinster]

Do you know if they used Ilgner converters to transform 3-phase-AC into DC for the winders? The huge wheel on the flat bed trailer at 57:13 looks like the flywheel of this type of converter. I photographed a similar installation at Britannia colliery in South Wales in 1990. (And I also took exterior shots of Sutton Manor in the course of the same trip from Germany.) Thank you for keeping up the memory with your video!

[@999DaveUK]

Just saw your question. I was an electrician there for 20 years and the winding system DC supply was derived from a Ward Leonard converter system using 3 phase ac drives as the prime movers. The converter shafts did have flywheels to smooth out any fluctuations under load. The outputs were connected to the DC motors in the winding house directly connected to the rope drums.

[@kevinbyrne7400]

Cronton had 2 Converter sets . The flywheels weighed 24 tons and run at 500 RPM ..When shut down they used to take hours to stop..

[@HaraldFinster]

@@kevinbyrne7400 Thanks a lot for your reply. At Britannia colliery I have been told that the energy stored in the flywheels was sufficient to wind the cages up and down several times. It would be interesting to know, how the Ilgners were started initially. I don't think that this would have been possible with regular asynchronous motors due to the long start up phase. Perhaps they could use the DC generators as motors to bring the converters up to speed slowly. (But where did they get the DC? Looks like a hen and egg problem to me.)

[@kevinbyrne7400]

Yes that's right .They did wind the cages up and down the shaft to help slow them down.Each flywheel had a brake on it but I never seen it used .A far as I can remember on start up they had a tank with oil I think in it. They would wind fingers into slowly. Something like that . It's amazing how all those tons sat on thin oil and white metal bearing. Shaft diameter was about 24 inch approx 600 mm.We change a white metal bearing once . Used a 25 ton jack to lift shaft 24 thousand of an inch and slud bearing out . Had to use engineering blue to scape bearing to bed it in..

[@HaraldFinster]

@@kevinbyrne7400 Kevin, that's really interesting and fascinating! I wish, more people would share their experience as you do. With regards to the bearings: a while ago I restored an old lathe with bronze bearings. The same principle like the white metal bearings. I had to scrape them too.