MINISTER VISITS MINE
MR SULLIVAN FINDS HEIGHT A HANDICAP
LOW ROOFS UNDERGROUND
■‘The Press" Special Service
AUCKLAND, January 31. The Minister of Mines (Mr W. Sullivan) found his height (6ft 4in) an embarrassment when he made an undergrdund inspection of the Alison State mine, seven miles from Huntly, yesterday. The roofs of the drives were sometimes as low as five feet and most of the time he had to crouch. Near the faces the roofs were higher and he had a chance to stand up. The Minister, who Was paying his first official visit to the Waikato mines, put on blue overalls and gumboots and a miner’s protective helmet with the electric safety lamp battery strapped at his waist. He walked about a mile in the mine tunnels and saw men working at the faces and levels several hundred feet below the Rotowaro railway station. After checking in pipes, cigarettes, and matches at the safety cabin at the pithead, the party walked down the long incline df the main haulage way of the Alison No. 2 mine and turned off into branch tunnels leading to a new section of about seven acres which is being worked under the railway station site. Laden trucks of coal moving up the haulage way to the pithead passed as the party descended and men were busy at branch junctions switching on more full trucks coming from the coal faces. ' Electric Cutters
Mining officials in the party explained the Equipment being used in the mine to the Minister, and in the B section slant, Mr Sullivan saw Mr Jack Roberts using one of the latest electrically-operated coal cutters. Made in Scotland, the cutter moved on its own tractor tracks, while the driver swung a long cutting boom into position halfway up the coal face so that steel teeth on an endless chain could cut a deep six-inch slash horizontally across the face. Firing holes were then bored near the roof above the cut where charges could be exploded to bring the coal down for shovelling and trucking away.
Miners were also at work digging out coal from a face which had been fired recently, while in another bay men were measuring the roof before placing in props. Others sawed props and carried them into position. Many of the men were surprised to see the Minister on his rounds underground. although several commented that even in overalls he was "too well dressed” to be a miner.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26026, 1 February 1950, Page 4
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410MINISTER VISITS MINE Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26026, 1 February 1950, Page 4
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