Electrical Workshop

The workbench along the left wall of the electrical workshop at Elrington Colliery is one of the more intact surviving surfaces on a site that has seen a great deal of change since the mine closed in December 1962. The bench serviced the electrical systems that ran through the surface complex, including BHP's underground battery locomotive haulage network, which operated on a 3 ft 6 in gauge underground railway. Elrington Colliery was developed from 1924 by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, a company whose principal shareholders were the Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited. The intent was direct: supply hard bituminous coking coal from the Main Greta Seam to BHP's Newcastle steelworks. Shaft sinking commenced in January 1925, with two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, driven to the seam at 1,190 ft below the surface. Coal production commenced in 1930. BHP designed the mine for a target output of 3,000 tonnes per day, a figure the colliery never reached. Actual output across the 1950s ran at approximately 250,000 to 340,000 tons per year, roughly half the planned capacity. The mine became known informally as the "Peter Pan Colliery" because, like Peter Pan, it never grew up. When BHP closed the colliery in December 1962, approximately 90 men were affected. Large reserves of coal remained in the seam. The company cited persistent operating losses. The railway branch was dismantled the following year. The site did not go idle for long. On 17 June 1964, BHP opened Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd at the former colliery workshops, employing approximately 50 tradesmen. The electrical workshop, with its long workbench and overhead lighting, was part of that inherited fabric. This photograph from 2017 records what that space holds now.