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The Age of Steam.
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Until now the only transport system underground had been a wheelbarrow on planks. This method had been used for centuries, wooden wheels running on wooden planks. An improvement to this method was the introduction of wooden rails which were an innovation of the 17th century.
Now came iron and rail ways improved.
Above ground rail transport improved even more rapidly and level haulages often ran for several miles. Where the ground sloped the empty wagons would be pulled up to the pit bank by the full wagons going down under their own weight on a self acting incline plane.
Sometimes a horse would pull up the empties and to save the horse unnecessary walking a special wagon was provided to take him on the downward journey.
These railways seldom carried the coal for more than a few miles, usually to the nearest seaport or waterway. Canals were built to carry the coal in horse drawn barges but horse-power was not enough for this rapidly expanding industry.
The Sun and Planet gear was invented by James Watt in 1782.
Now rotary motion made it possible for stationary steam engines to raise coal and to haul wagons, a new engineering age had begun.
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Iron, coal and steam made the last years of the 18th century the starting point of the modern world. Ideas followed ideas; if steam could turn wheels why not a steam engine ON wheels.Trevithick made the first attempt, using the same principles as in stationary engines. Blenkinsopp carried the idea forward and the first practical locomotive drew coal at Middleton Colliery.
The coalfields became the birthplace of the railways.
Now the industrial revolution neared its peak and coal mining boomed.
In the one hundred years after the Battle of Trafalgar production per year was to grow from 10 million tons to 225 million tons and to get it meant a vast increase in manpower. Wherever a mine was sunk invariably a village was built by the coal owners for their workforce and families by the thousands flocked from the towns and the countryside to find employment in this booming industry.
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"Neither drainage nor ventilation are sufficiently attended to for the health and comfort of the workpeople in the majority of cases where at some pits the ventilation is so imperfect as to be positively dangerous."
Firedamp remained the gravest danger.
Miners became skilled at detecting its presence by the flame of their naked candle but even so several men and boys were killed or burned each week by fire and explosions.
Perhaps the steel mill was the answer an invention of Carlisle Speding one of the great names in coal mining history. It was a steel wheel turned against a piece of flint lighting the workings with a shower of sparks which were thought to be not hot enough to ignite the firedamp but it was as dangerous as the candle.
Even the phosphorous light of rotting fish skins, miners were willing to try anything. They may as well as worked with no light at all, as sometimes they did but when gunpowder was used for blasting coal and a hand-drill was the only tool for drilling the coal a good light was essential. In any case as the fuse was a reed taper filled with gunpowder a candle was needed to light it.
With the blasting of coal came a new hazard; explosive coal dust.
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