Red Rake Mine - safety notice

[pwhole]

When all this stuff was opened up we had to keep it all very quiet for years, and there's still plenty around that hasn't been published or even released. We went down the Red Rake engine shaft more than once, and there's some amazing stuff down there too, but it's a very sketchy entrance. Sadly the tin shed collapse has blocked the shaft inside that, though that was already blocked with a load of scrap iron halfway down, which was a damned shame.

The Red Rake opencut at the top of the hill is also marvellous - it was much longer once, but much was filled in, and only the bottom portion survives.

There's loads more in the area to see, though some must still remain secret for now sadly.

Tin shed shaft

Engine shaft

Opencut

 

[AR]

What I really love about these is that you can see exactly the way the ore seam they were chasing runs/slopes/folds, from top to bottom. Thanks so much for sharing!

The survex doesn't even begin to capture the extremes of folding and twisting on Catsall Rake, where the major faults of Red Rake and Deep Rake have pulled it in different directions.

 

[Boy Engineer]

When all this stuff was opened up we had to keep it all very quiet for years, and there's still plenty around that hasn't been published or even released. We went down the Red Rake engine shaft more than once, and there's some amazing stuff down there too, but it's a very sketchy entrance. Sadly the tin shed collapse has blocked the shaft inside that, though that was already blocked with a load of scrap iron halfway down, which was a damned shame.

The Red Rake opencut at the top of the hill is also marvellous - it was much longer once, but much was filled in, and only the bottom portion survives.

There's loads more in the area to see, though some must still remain secret for now sadly.

Tin shed shaft

View attachment 25654

View attachment 25655

Engine shaft

View attachment 25656

Backing a car up those ramps must have been a bit nerve-wracking, but no worries about headroom in the pit.

 

[pwhole]

A few from down there - some sadly a bit steamy.

 

[pwhole]

From Stevens, 1939 - not great quality, and that's after some clean-up, but all I have. I think it's a first draft of a mineral report, but I don't have a cover page, and don't have time to go digging now. But the 'boat level' of today is at the start of the incline, and level with Brightside Sough - everything below that had to be pumped continuously whilst in work.

Catsall Rake and Dog Rake are labelled incorrectly, and Catsall Rake is the closer of the two.

 

[Tamsin]

Wow that's absolutely fascinating, thank you for sharing The workings must have been huge originally!

 

[pwhole]

From memory the accessible workings even now on Red Rake are over 600m laterally from the entrance, with additional routes up and down, plus all the workings on Catsall and Dog Rake. The bottom levels are permanently flooded.