May 30, 1913. THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN. 1117 TWO GROUPS OF VETERANS AT THE CANNOCK CHASE COLLIERY. •• Wobkmbn Employed at the Colliery—Ages ranging from 65 to 82 Years. fl r . i- ' ■ *« so r. —— ' * If «O . 7 i. i . Pi. W _ •£ ** ' V- z-x «> '* ;■< p- t* a] *- g: S' *“W ■ '7 ■> Pit Ponies over 20 Years of Age and still at Work down the Pits. good advice to colliery managers in South Wales— advice that was entitled to the utmost respect and con- sideration. Mr. Mavor travelled a good deal, saw all sorts and conditions of mine working, and was in a position to form a competent and unprejudiced view on the merits of the various conveyors used underground. The conveyor was evolved from the introduction of machine coal-cutters, but, as the author pointed out, it might also be profitably employed in connection with manual coal-hewing. In his (the speaker’s) opinion there were seams in South Wales worked by hand which could be more cheaply worked if a conveyor was installed, while it would tend to reduce the number of roadways that were so expensive to maintain in their collieries. Mr. William Stewart said those connected with mining owed a debt of gratitude to Mr. Mavor for his most able and exhaustive paper. (Applause.) The paper had come at an opportune time in South Wales, where in some of the collieries the thicker seams were being exhausted, and the management was falling back upon the thinner seams. Mr. Mavor had pointed out conditions where a conveyor would not be suitable, and some of those conditions were to be found in South Wales. One great difficulty experienced in South Wales was that of filling up the gob. Mr. Mavor had very SOUTH WALES INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERS. Dr. W. N. Atkinson Elected President. The ordinary general meeting of the South Wales Institute of Engineers took place at Cardiff on May 22. Mr. H. T. Wales, presiding at the outset, referred in sympathetic terms to the death of the president, Prof. Arch. C Elliott, D.Sc., M.Inst.C.E., and then announced that the council had unanimously invited Dr. W. N. Atkinson, H.M. Divisional Inspector of Mines, to fill the vacancy until the expiration of the presidential period on December 31 this year, and that gentleman had accepted the invitation. This intimation was received with applause, which was renewed when Dr. Atkinson took the chair. The meeting endorsed the action of the council in support of a movement to recognise the services of the late Dr. Elliott to the institute and to the science of mechanical engineering, the character and scope of this tribute being explained by Principal Griffiths. A subscription list was opened to supplement a grant by the council. Underground Conveying. A paper on this subject was read by Mr. Sam Mavor. An abstract appears elsewhere in this issue. Mr. W. D. Wight opened the discussion on the paper. He said Mr. Mavor had presented, with his customary lucidity, a paper which was likely to be recognised as a text-book on the subject of underground conveying. The continuous conveyor was, doubtless, the ideal method of carrying coal from the face to the trams, but for reasons the author had given there could be no such thing as a continuous conveyor. It behoved I them, therefore, to direct their attention to the six j other types described in the paper, Mr, Mavor tendered properly advised them not to attach too much import- ance to the argument that the employment of conveyors meant fewer roadways to maintain. They could easily conceive the reasonableness of this advice when they considered the difficulty in getting rubbish into a long working-face where conveyors were at work. In many instances it would be cheaper to make the roadways > but in seams where there was easy clod between the coals, and there was sufficient rubbish made in the face to fill the gobs, the conveyor probably possessed great advantages. As Mr. Mavor indicated, machines had been at work in South Wales, but owing to this difficulty of properly gobbing, the machines had been abandoned and the old system reverted to. If Mr. Mavor could furnish figures of the face cost of carrying coal by con- veyors, compared with the usual system, it would be a valuable addition to his paper. There was one matter that had to be considered in adopting coal-cutting machines and conveyors in South Wales collieries, and this was the question of width. He was afraid this would prove a serious obstacle. In many instances they found that the bottom was very hard to cut, and the result was they had not sufficient height; and where conveyors were at work in South Wales the average weight of trams was much less than where the trams were hand-filled. Mr. Hugh Bramwell, called on by the president, said his experience was so limited of the use of con- veyors, that he had not intended to take part in the discussion. In working a seam that was only 2 ft. 5 in. thick, the difficulty referred to by Mr. Stewart was found—namely, that there was too little height to fill the gob from the top of the conveyor. This machine was substituted by a conveyor consisting of a large endless iron band as a floor, which, by the manual turning of a handle, discharged into a tram at the end. The whole 1 was on wheels, and travelled along the face. As he had j said, his experience was small, and he could not say whether the conveyor method was a financial success or not. The President : I suppose the difficulty in South Wales would be the large pieces of coal to be dealt with ? Mr. Bramwell -. It would have something to do with