Talk:Hartley Colliery disaster

message: There is an article on the beam strength of the Hartley beam in Practical Mechanics Journal and its reasons for breakage, 
this is referred to by reprinting most of the article (with commentary?) in
Engineering Facts and Figures for 1863 pages 79-100
Published by A. Fullarton & Co, 1863
Archivist  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Archivist (talk • contribs) 10:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: untitled

message: See Category talk:Mining disasters for a discussion on whether to rename this and similar articles to remove the capitalisation. Ziggurat 21:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Renaming?

message: This is the first thing I asked when reading this. Why do they have an oversized rail line running down their mine shaft? And is that an equal sized railway line inverted underneath it? What were they for? How did they work? The article does nothing to explain anything to do with the thing that ultimately caused the 200+ deaths itself. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 00:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: See Beam engine for an explanation.  The drawing thereon gives an explanation of the working of an earlier type of beam engine whilst the photo of the Crofton engine shows the sort of beam in use at Hartley.  The "giant railroad track" is the beam, and it shouldn't have been in the shaft, that's the whole point!  If you look at the close-up engraving on the Hartley page you can see that it broke at the pivot point, there was nothing then to prevent the pump rods pulling it into the shaft after which gravity did the rest. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cool, a giant railroad track breaks, how did it pump water and what was it's purpose? 

message: I have rewritten and extended the article significantly.  There is more work to do, but I shall not be able to attend to it for about a week.  I'll try and finish it off properly when I get back. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:11, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: :::The ILN article of 1 Feb 1862 describes the large hole as 6" long and 4" deep (150mm X 100mm for those not used to God's own units) and a 'a natural shrinkage in the process of cooling' (and therefore technically not a blowhole). All engineers who have inspected the beam (it says) agree the void did not materially weaken the beam. The ILN article seems to be pointing to failure of a linkage between pump and beam as causing shock loading of the beam , rather than the beam having been weakened by dropping back into its bearings in a bodged bearing change.Rjccumbria (talk) 09:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry - forgot to sign the above when first posted. Further reading shows that evidence given at the two inquests as reported in the Newcastle papers at the time (most notably that immediately after failure the fracture surface was bright throughout) would tend to go against the theory (?OR?) currently advanced in the Causes section. Any good reason for this? I have not attempted a rewrite reflecting the inquest evidence yet, but chiefly because of Xmas activities Rjccumbria (talk) 09:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: 'Causes' - modern forensic engineering vs Victorian expert evidence