Don't get me wrong, I don't want to come across as some “'orny 'anded 'ero from the dark 'n' dirty”. I wasn't. For twenty years in the mining industry I was a desk jockey, albeit I did have cause to go down the pit and I was underground trained. But my palms remained pink and pappy.

But this is a recollection which many miners will have – the manriding conveyor.

Many coalfaces were some distance from the pit bottom, in the case of some North Eastern pits like Wearmouth and Ellington as much as 5 miles out under the North Sea. And therein lay one of the innate threats to their efficiency. By the time colliers had changed into their workwear, ridden the shaft and travelled miles to the coalface, a shift of 7.25 hours could be reduced to a coal cutting time (MAT) of as little as 4 hours. And miners were a conservative bunch (“recalcitrant bastards” some might say) who resisted aggressively changes to their working practices.

But all that's by-the-by. This piece is about the journey to the coalface.

In many cases this was done on a paddy – a small train not unlike the ones you find on a seaside prom, only dirtier. (In the case of the one at Bridlington, cleaner).

Sometimes however, it was supplemented or replaced by a manriding conveyor. This was a belt around 3 feet wide which transported coal out of the mine. It ran on rollers spaced about 10 metres apart and was continuous ie it looped back under itself at its ends.

Colliers would embark (jump on) as it moved at around 10 metres a second and then lie flat on the coals for the duration. This was surprisingly comfortable and a failsafe mechanism was needed at the end to prevent anyone dozy enough to fall asleep from going over the loop and into the crusher.

More frequently, the constant rhythm of gently bumping over the rollers could give you a bit of a semi and many a young lad “enjoyed” an unplanned and embarrassing sexual experience which his older workmates might happen to mention for the next two or three years.

All good clean fun.