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Sandwell Park Colliery.

Pedrocut

Master Barmmie
Sandwell Park Colliery.
(The Engineer, July 1905)

“Boring for coal has been in progress at the Moat Farm estate, near Sandwell Park Colliery, for about a year past, and in a report to the directors of the
Birmingham Coal Company Mr. Henry Johnson, mining engineer, states that while the boring contractors have been unable to produce cores of the coal bored, they have obtained a large quantity of coal from the bore. He is of opinion that the bore has encountered and passed through a thin end of the thick coal in close proximity to a fault. He therefore recommends the full development of the estate by the sinking of a pair of permanent shafts, and the erection of a modern colliery plant,

If this is impracticable, he strongly advises the sinking of a trial shaft. Another authority, Professor Hull, regards the results as "ạsufficient to prove that the Staffordshire thick coal is there, and that it should be opened out by shafts." The directors of the Birmingham Coal Company, under whose instructions the boring has taken place, have submitted these expert opinions, in association with their annual report, to the shareholders, at whose ensuing meeting it is proposed to take a vote as to laying out some £17,000 in sinking a trial shaft.”
 
Site is now in Sandwell Country Park.

Some notes copied from Sandwell Park Colliery Trail -well worth reading.

1897-1908 – A second pit is sunk 1.5 miles away (2.5 km) in the heart of Sandwell Valley Country Park called the Jubilee Pit because work started in the year of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee [2]. The decision to sink the Jubilee Pit was taken to extend production when the yield of the current colliery was estimated to run out by 1915 [4].

The remote location of the Jubilee Pit warranted extending the tramway. The line measured roughly 1.75 miles (2.9 km) in length and used a chain with power from a stationary steam engine to haul coal tubs in groups of three or four at a speed under 5 mph [2].

1960 – The Jubilee Pit closes marking the end of Sandwell Park Colliery.

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Sandwell Park Colliery Tramway
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Coal chutes to canal barges 1957
 
I grew up in West Brom so this is local stuff for me. I don't remember the coal tramway but my brother in law who's now 90 often tells me of how it was accepted practice for children (and adults) to 'pinch' coal from the trucks. The area was known as Wasson or 'Wossun' to locals.
 
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