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NEWCASTLE COAL-MINES.

127

this is sometimes a very considerable distance. At the shaft, the baskets full of coal are hung to one another by chains, and then the uppermost is fastened to a rope, and drawn up by a sort of windlass, called a gin, set in motion by horses, or by a water-wheel, or by a steam-engine; as may be most convenient at each place. The depth of some of the mines below the surface is often seven or eight hundred feet.

When the coals have fairly arrived on the surface of the earth, they are carried a small distance from the mouth of the pit; and sorted into three heaps, according to their sizes.

There are between twenty and thirty coalmines in the neighbourhood of Newcastle. Some are within five miles of the river, and some almost twenty miles distant. To cart so heavy a substance all this distance would cost so much, that coals in London would amount to double

128

WAGGON-WAYS AND RAIL-ROADS.

their present price. But knowledge is fruitful in expedients. Waggon-ways, or rail-roads, of iron, are constructed, down which the waggons roll with great ease; so that one horse will draw as much as ten on a common road. A rail-road consists of two shallow grooves of iron, well fastened on stone-work in the ground, upon which the wheels of the carriage run; or, sometimes,

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Inclined rail-way with loaded train of waggons descending, and pulling an empty train up the declivity.

the rail-way consists of an iron ridge, fastened as before; and then the iron wheels of the carriage have each a shallow groove to work upon it.

WAGGON-WAYS AND RAIL-ROADS.

129

The rail-ways are also so contrived, that the train of loaded waggons in descending one line, draws a train of empty waggons up the other line. The waggons are of a funnel shape; and when one arrives at the wharf, a door in the bottom is opened, which lets the coals through into the keel, or barge, which is placed properly underneath.

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View on the River Tyne, showing the mode of shipping coal from
a straitt or platform.

The keel is a clumsy oval-shaped barge, in which the coals are rowed down the river to

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End of the straitt or platform, along which the baskets, filled with
coal, are brought on a rail-road from the mines, with the spout
through which they are discharged into the vessel.

the ships which wait to receive them. The keelmen are a numerous body, rough and hardy; not fewer than six thousand in number. But

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