Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/193

Rh shoot, and drops into the railway waggon placed beneath to receive it. The mixed nuts and slack pass over a wire screen below, the nuts remain in the nut bin, and the slack, or fine coal, is deposited on the slack heap. Under the nut bin runs the sidings before referred to, and when a load of nuts is wanted, the empty waggon is run under the bin, a door opened, the waggon filled, the brake lifted, and the waggon runs down to the brake head to be hooked on to the drum. It may here be mentioned that at each of the brake heads strong blocks of wood are fixed, which are kept across the rails until the waggon is hooked on to the incline rope, and removed when the lowering is begun. The screen and shoots are completely roofed in, whereby the operation of screening is much more satisfactorily performed, the coal being always dry; and it is more comfortable for the men employed by the company in screening and loading; a matter of some importance considering that the screens are nearly 2000 ft. above the sea-level, and sometimes exposed to heavy wind and sleet. When the tub has been emptied, it is pulled out of the “cradle,” which has fallen back to its original position, and run on to the travelling chain, to be taken by it along the chain plane, and through the main headings of the Banbury mine to Coalbrookdale, or to be taken off at the nearer workings in the Banbury mine. The lowering capacity of the inclines is about 700 tons in eight hours, although it has never been worked up to that quantity in that time as yet, another screen and a band brake at the middle brake head being necessary for that output, as the works are now, and by working two shifts, the company can with ease get out and lower 800 to 900 tons in a day. The chain plane to the adit of the mine is about 1800 ft. in length, and for most of the way has been cut out of the solid rock face of the cliffs. Near the mine great chasms have been bridged over with masonry arches, and the plane supported by retaining walls 20 to 30 ft. in height, while in places the rock cutting on the inside of the plane forms precipices from 50 to 70 ft. in height.

The whole of the Westport Coal Company’s engineering works are of the strongest and most durable description, as the company wisely determined that it was better to make all the permanent works good at first so as to avoid the constant expenses of repair and replacing. The whole of the works were designed by and constructed under the superintendence of Messrs Young Brothers, civil engineers, and the successful completion of these large and difficult works, and the quickness and precision with which the traffic is conducted, is due chiefly to their ability and care.

The Westport Company’s works are the largest completed engineering works carried out by a private company in the Colony; and there is no similar work of this kind executed. The passenger railway incline between Lyon and Montreux in Switzerland is the nearest parallel case where the height and grade are somewhat similar; but there, there are central rails, and the brakes are worked by the conductor on the carriage. The inclines I have endeavoured to describe are unique as far as weights carried in one waggon, celerity of descent, and rapidity of handling are concerned.

The Koranui works are of a somewhat different character to those of the Westport Coal Company’s, inasmuch as the coal is not put into the railway trucks at the top of the inclines but at the bottom; the coal being worked to the foot of the inclines by a series of endless ropes.