Because of the way the potash is won, the machinery leaves a nice clean edge on the tunnel walls – showing the geology off to its best advantage – also useful to tell you what you are cutting into as well!
Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
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As if one wasn’t enough – but I believe they go as far as six boom – pretty awesome! Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
Heliminers aren’t the only exotic pieces of machinery in use below – here is an Auger Borer – pretty useful if you want to make a bang! Ian Benson tells us: ”The fitted the scroll borer to an old joy shuttle car chassis several of these were built in the underground workshops. They immediately were called Scud borers as the first Gulf war was underway at the time and named after Saddam Hussein’s ineffective Scud missiles. These borers were a little crude but they did the job apart from being a little unwieldy.” Image courtesy of Alan Franks and thanks to Ian Benson for the update.
This is an image of a shuttle car collecting product from a Heliminer; the mined potash passing over the front of the Heliminer for collection in the cargo area. Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
Looks kind of space age, but this is strictly utilitarian; designed to get product (potash) from the back of the miner onto a moving belt system. Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
I suspect that I’d have to shout to make myself heard with this going flat-out in front of me! Notice the crush stacks on the right hand side of the image. Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
A close-up of the cutting face of a Heliminer; like a rotary miller with attitude! Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
Here, again at rest, is a Heliminer and Shuttle Car combination. Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
A Heliminer is a Remote Mining Vehicle; this posed shot shows the beast at rest. The mined product is collected in the powered scoop at the front and passed along a belt to the following shuttle car. When full the shuttle car connects to a horizontal belt system and discharges its load for transfer to the surface storage. Pretty cool beast ehh! Image courtesy of Alan Franks.
Then we make the top of the shaft nice and pretty ready to build the tower on! Alan Franks has told us: “This is excavating for shuttering to be installed for the Fan drift. ( Fans were sited at the top of this). Myself and two other men spent a week trying to retrieve the shuttering after concrete had been poured and set, with it being in like a valley as you can see, the mud kept sliding down as quick as we could dig out. We saved a few shutter panels but after the week we were told to leave the rest and they were just backfilled and buried.This would be around Christmas time 1969.” Image and update information courtesy of Alan Franks. |
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