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Cleanup in Magnetometer

flakey

Member
Thanks to the help and patience of my friends on our trip down Magnetometer this weekend, we removed a decent handful of rusted angle iron, wood and oil drum bits from the chamber at the bottom of the entrance pitch.


IMG_20250316_190654.jpg
 
Good for you. I wonder if some of that was what Jack Myers' magnetometer picked up back in the day when he found the pothole and it was first properly explored?
 
This page on the CPC website seems to suggest the magnetometer picked up railway tracks which were used to cover the shaft entrance, and several other websites also say the magnetometer picked up whatever was covering the shaft. I haven’t found a canonical source. The angle iron we removed looked similar to what’s presently in use as lintels beneath the concrete sewer pipe entrance, so my guess is that it’s offcuts/spares from when the entrance was constructed.
 
I remember discussing this with Jack before he died. He certainly referred to railway lines they'd been told had been used to lay the cap on, which is why he used the magnetometer. Vaguer memory tells me he also mentioned other metal items incorporated into the old cap. I think there's something about this in Jack's caving records, which are available online if anyone wanted to wade through. But you may well be right of course; the old angle iron may not be related to the original cap.
 
Does Gingling entrance also have rails or have I misremembered? Was there a source of abandoned rails nearby?
 
Ah; I wasn't aware of that Langcliffe. Do you know the dates covered by it?
Sorry, I'm just the skivvy who adds the digital images to the BCRA Online Archive. Goon might know. Alternatively, if you have the volumes back at the NPC, you can compare them with what is in the archive.
 
There's a hard copy index in the NPC library which Alan J made (what a star!). Next time I get chance I'll have a flick through that and see if a gap is apparent.
 
There's a hard copy index in the NPC library which Alan J made (what a star!). Next time I get chance I'll have a flick through that and see if a gap is apparent.
I would be grateful for a scan of that. It may make the online volumes more accessible.
 
This page on the CPC website seems to suggest the magnetometer picked up railway tracks which were used to cover the shaft entrance, and several other websites also say the magnetometer picked up whatever was covering the shaft. I haven’t found a canonical source. The angle iron we removed looked similar to what’s presently in use as lintels beneath the concrete sewer pipe entrance, so my guess is that it’s offcuts/spares from when the entrance was constructed.

Jack Myers wrote up the discovery in an N.P.C. Journal, and Cymmie faithfully transcribed it for the BSA records.
 
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