Mine Rider Journey in a Coal Mine

Transportation of the manpower to the working face is one of the vital part of the mining system. The closer it is to reach the working face, better the efficiency of the people. It does not exhaust the people from walking long distances though it gets habituated after few a month (personal experience). The working time is less effected as the people can work more on the working face than in commuting. 

In the old ages, it started by going through ladders to the coal deposit through small boreholes and excavate for few meters that is short walks to the coal faces. Later, the shafts came into play. Shafts have been a game-changer for the transportation of the manpower as well as for the material. The huge demand in the recent years started making the mines exploit the resources far away from the shaft. The technology was rapidly picking up in these years and then the Man Riding Systems were implemented in coal mines for swift movement of the personnel. 

The importance of personnel energy efficiency and the wastage of working hours made the great leap towards Man Riding Systems. The conventional Man riding systems are conveyor type while the new man riding systems can be through car or trains. I would like to take you all through my Man Riding journey.

In China, everything happens unexpected. It was Sunday evening, I was roaming around the city going through the tourist places and wondering about the beautiful sites. I was very tired and the next thing after I go to the hotel, I get a call that we are visiting a mine tomorrow morning. I am like not even a twenty-four-hour notice about the event. We went near the mine site next day morning and the mine was expected to be about 850 meters deep. The main shaft of the mine went only till about 600 meters as the coal seam at that level was the key focus of the mine last few years.

They said that we need to walk about 1.5 km and I was blindly following the fact that we will reach the face as that distance would be the normal walking distance to any working face. But to my surprise, we just reached a place with large equipment’s with no power in it. The cap lamps were the only prominent lights that made us look at different things. After about five minutes, the system started working and I noticed a new system that I haven’t been experience before, “Man Riding System”.

How cool!!! I heard a lot about these systems and I was excited to ride it and was bit nervous too. The rider seats were coming up and were taking a roundabout to go down. I was the third person to board the man rider. The first person was an old guy, he calmly went to the other side of the roundabout and hold the moving rider and sat on it and was on his path. I thought it is very easy, my confidence level boosted. The second person was my friend, he was more excited than me I assume. He didn’t go to the other side of the roundabout, he sat on the rider on this side itself. The rider due to its centrifugal force hit the wall after the roundabout and his world was shook for an instance but luckily he didn’t get hurt. I lost my whole confidence and was very nervous. Next was my turn.

I tried to calm myself and went to the other side of the roundabout and waited for my rider. I was going through all the thoughts about what do if I can’t get on the rider. After half a minute, there a comes a rider from the roundabout, thinking about what to do first. I can see it coming towards me, then suddenly my instincts made me to hold the rod sit on it like me sit on a Motor Bike (Dhoom Machale!!!! Haha…). But the instant I sat on the rider, it felt more like a Bullock Cart and can serve as perfect example. The speed of the rider was about 1-2m/s and the hanging makes you feel like the bullock cart going through ditches on the road. Then came the place to get down of the rider. It is not easy to get down on a slope. It reminded me of foot boarding which is common in Hyderabad buses. I got down and ran for a meter and a half to a halt.  

 After the visit to the working face, it was the time to go again on the Man rider. Now, I was like super confident about sitting on it. But to sit on the rider when it is going up is bit difficult than I thought. I went to the place near the belt where the rider will arrive, I did hold the bar but surprising when I did my action of sitting on it, I didn’t land on it (Haha). I gave up on that rider as it went away from the place where we were. On the slope, as the rider goes up, you need to be quick to land on it as it goes up the level. I waited for the next one which is 10m away from the one that went away. I made it quick this time to land on it. The same thing was needed on the top.

This was a wonderful experience on the Man rider. The technologies I learnt in Bachelors are now-a-days common things in the mines. I hope these experiences get better and better each passing day.

Image Credits: http://www.aphmel.com/man-riding-chairlift-system.html