Talk:Hartley Colliery disaster

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on January 16, 2014, January 16, 2015, January 16, 2018, January 16, 2021, and January 16, 2024.

untitled[edit]

There is an article on the beam strength of the Hartley beam in Practical Mechanics Journal and its reasons for breakage, this is referred to by reprinting most of the article (with commentary?) in Engineering Facts and Figures for 1863 pages 79-100 Published by A. Fullarton & Co, 1863 Archivist — Preceding unsigned comment added by Archivist (talk • contribs) 10:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming?[edit]

See Category talk:Mining disasters for a discussion on whether to rename this and similar articles to remove the capitalisation. Ziggurat 21:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, a giant railroad track breaks, how did it pump water and what was it's purpose?[edit]

This is the first thing I asked when reading this. Why do they have an oversized rail line running down their mine shaft? And is that an equal sized railway line inverted underneath it? What were they for? How did they work? The article does nothing to explain anything to do with the thing that ultimately caused the 200+ deaths itself. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 00:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Beam engine for an explanation. The drawing thereon gives an explanation of the working of an earlier type of beam engine whilst the photo of the Crofton engine shows the sort of beam in use at Hartley. The "giant railroad track" is the beam, and it shouldn't have been in the shaft, that's the whole point! If you look at the close-up engraving on the Hartley page you can see that it broke at the pivot point, there was nothing then to prevent the pump rods pulling it into the shaft after which gravity did the rest. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite[edit]

I have rewritten and extended the article significantly. There is more work to do, but I shall not be able to attend to it for about a week. I'll try and finish it off properly when I get back. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:11, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Illustrations of failed beam[edit]

It would be interesting to know which- if either- of the images of the failed beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hart1.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hartley3.jpg is accurate. Until then I think that saying that one or other might indicate metallurgical defects is premature: it might be that neither artist had visited the site and that both were fanciful. MarkMLl (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Did you bother to look at large size images before condeming them? The interesting thing is not the differences, but the key similarities. they are clearly by different artists, and yet:

The blow hole on the upper left hand segment where the boss meets the main upright: identical location in both drawings.
The imperfections in the same location on the right. One drawing shows a series of small ones, the other a vaguely irregular shape.
The pronounced kink in the fracture bottom right is visible in both.
The break in the retaining rim on the right hand side only.

Of the two the ILN is slightly more "prettified" for publication and has a couple of errors (axle is square at one end, hexagonal at the other for instance), but they tend to indicate independant drawings. Ironically, the errors in the ILN drawing reinforce they agreement on salient features. I suspect that a staff artist was dispatched north, sketched key detail and an outline of the rest before heading south again for publication; a common method of working. The other engraving however shows the eye of a skilled draughtsman making a technical copy. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:28, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you really don't mind, while I raised issues I didn't go so far as condemning the illustrations out of hand. And I did spend quite some time with the full-sized images, considering them in the context of photographs of preserved engines and of my own engineering experience. I think that your suggestion that multiple artists sketched the fractured end of the beam with the detail- particularly the surrounding building- being filled in later is plausible.

Apart from that, an extremely interesting article: I particularly appreciated the suggestion that this accident had a major impact on early safety legislation etc. since something obviously had to be done to level the field: individual owners could not boost their profit by not sinking a second shaft. MarkMLl (talk) 10:26, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I read "premature" as a condemnation, particularly since there are supporting text references. Leaving that aside, there is a general prejudice today in not trusting drawings, but in a pre-photographic era draughtsmen and artists were trained in detailed representational art. Thanks for the compliment! :-)

Whether to sink one or more pits was a little more complex. Collieries which had started shallow and gradually deepened tended to have two shafts, see for instance Felling mine disaster. Operationally it is easier to have separate up- and down-cast pits, particularly in gassy mines. Whether to maximise production or minimise costs has always been at the heart of business. At Hester they knew from Hartley Old Pit how deep the coal was; after all the shaft was sunk straight down to the low main and reached the coal about a year after starting. In this particular location don't forget that there there was another issue: the colliery ran out under the sea and it is a bit awkward to sink a shaft under the ocean (but IIRC they did that once in Scotland)! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:24, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Trawling through contemporary newspaper reporting, both engravings are somewhat inaccurately credited; both originally accompanied an ILN article (1 Feb 1862) (the Newcastle Journal of 25 Jan 1862, commenting on how relatively deserted the pithead had become once the worst was known, specifically notes the presence of two artists from the ILN).

Sorry - forgot to sign the above when first posted.Rjccumbria (talk) 09:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

'Causes' - modern forensic engineering vs Victorian expert evidence[edit]

The ILN article of 1 Feb 1862 describes the large hole as 6" long and 4" deep (150mm X 100mm for those not used to God's own units) and a 'a natural shrinkage in the process of cooling' (and therefore technically not a blowhole). All engineers who have inspected the beam (it says) agree the void did not materially weaken the beam. The ILN article seems to be pointing to failure of a linkage between pump and beam as causing shock loading of the beam , rather than the beam having been weakened by dropping back into its bearings in a bodged bearing change.Rjccumbria (talk) 09:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry - forgot to sign the above when first posted. Further reading shows that evidence given at the two inquests as reported in the Newcastle papers at the time (most notably that immediately after failure the fracture surface was bright throughout) would tend to go against the theory (?OR?) currently advanced in the Causes section. Any good reason for this? I have not attempted a rewrite reflecting the inquest evidence yet, but chiefly because of Xmas activities Rjccumbria (talk) 09:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]