Electrical Workbench

The electrical workshop at Elrington Colliery sat inside the main workshop building, sharing the structure with the machine shop and compressor room. It was a working space built around a specific problem: battery locomotives hauled coal through 3 ft 6 in gauge underground railways, and those locomotives needed to be maintained, repaired, and kept in service. That job belonged to the electrical workshop and the people who worked in it. Elrington Colliery was sunk by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, with principal shareholders Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited. Shaft-sinking commenced in January 1925, and coal production began in 1930 once two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, had been driven down 1,190 ft to the Main Greta Seam. The seam produced a hard, bituminous coal with low ash content, mined specifically to supply BHP's Newcastle steelworks. BHP designed Elrington to demonstrate what modern, mechanised coal extraction could do. The planned output was 3,000 tonnes per day. It never got there. The mine ran for more than three decades at roughly half that figure, earning the nickname "The Peter Pan Colliery", because, like Peter Pan, it never grew up. It never achieved the output BHP had built it for. The gates closed in December 1962. BHP cited persistent operating losses. At the time of closure, approximately 90 men were affected, and large reserves of coal remained in the seam, unworked. The Elrington railway branch was dismantled in 1963. What this photograph records is the workbench the electricians used. The tools are still there. The components are still arranged more or less as they were left. The workshop itself, part of a building that kept the mine's underground haulage running for over 30 years, stands largely as it was. Captured at Elrington Colliery in 2017.