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Hartley Colliery Disaster
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The fractured cast-iron beam
The Hartley Colliery Disaster was a major Mining accident or disaster in Northumberland, England in 1862.
Cause
In an age when methane or coal dust and firedamp explosions were common, the tragedy at Hartley Colliery, Northumberland, England was different because it was caused by fracture of a steam engine beam. The accident happened on 16 January 1862 when the huge beam used to de-water the mine suddenly broke, and one end plunged into the shaft of the pit. The colliery was worked by a single shaft, divided into two halves vertically by a brattice consisting of a wooden, airtight partition so that ventilation air could be drawn down one side and exhaled up the other. When the broken half of the beam fell, it demolished the brattice, and created a pile of debris towards the base of the shaft. It entombed 204 men and boys, who could not be rescued, and so suffocated and died.
Metal fatigue & Overload
Close-up of the fractured beam
The loss of life was extreme, even by Victorian era coal mining standards, and remains one of the worst mining accidents in England. The cause of the fracture in the beam was attributed at the time to overload from the pump rod system to which one of the beam was attached. However, it was well known at the time that cast iron was susceptible to sudden brittle failure, often from internal defects like blowholes. Several are visible in the fracture surfaces shown in the engravings at right. It was also susceptible to metal fatigue where repeated loading was involved.
The tragedy led to a direct change in the law to demand that all collieries be worked by two shafts.
References
- JE McCutcheon, The Hartley Colliery Disaster, E McCutcheon (1963).
- Helen and Baron Duckham, Great Pit Disasters: Great Britain 1700 to the present day, David & Charles (1973)
- PR Lewis, Disaster on the Dee: Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847, Tempus Publishing (2007) ISBN 978 0 7524 4266 2
External links
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