Among the safety appliances which are to be found in the Mining Section
of the Inventions Exhibition is a model of an ingenious contrivance for
the prevention of overwinding, the joint patent of Mr. W.T. Lewis,
Aberdare, lead mineral agent to the Marquis of Bute, and W.H. Massey,
electric light engineer to the Queen. Both these gentlemen, having been
members of jury, were not allowed to compete for an award. The invention,
says _Engineering_, seems to possess considerable merit, and it should
prove of practical utility in collieries where enginemen are usually kept
winding for many hours at a stretch, and where the slightest mistake on
the part of the driver may lead to an accident.
Safety hooks are often fitted to winding ropes, and although the damage
to life and property is greatly reduced by the use of them, they do not
protect a descending cage from injury in a case of overwinding; besides
which, they are almost useless when a wild run takes place, an accident
which, strange to say, has already occurred many times after engines and
boilers have been laid off for repairs. Stop valves are left open, the
reversing lever is not fixed in mid-gear, steam is got up in the boilers
at a time when no one is in the engine house, and the engines run away.
[Illustration: LEWIS & MASSEY'S AUTOMATIC SAFETY GEAR.]
Various devices have been suggested and tried as a preventive, but their
application has either caused as much mischief as a bad accident, or it
has depended upon the driver doing something intentionally; whereas in
the automatic gear of Messrs. Massey and Lewis, of which an illustration
is annexed, there is nothing to cause damage or to interfere in any way
with the proper handling of the engines, and it is practically out of the
power of the driver to render the gear inoperative. It is here shown in
its simplest form as applied to the ordinary reversing and steam handles
of a winding engine, the only additions being an arm jointed to the top
of the valve spindle, with its connections to the shaft of the reversing
lever, and a disk receiving a suitable motion from the main shaft of the
engine. On the disk is a projecting piece or stop which is brought into
such positions, at or near the end of each journey, that the stop valve
cannot be opened, except slightly, when the reversing lever is not set
for winding in the proper direction, or when the cages have reached a
point beyond which it is undesirable that the engine driver should have
the power of turning on full steam. Thus, if one cage is at bank, the
driver cannot draw it up into the head gear suddenly; but after it has
been lifted slowly off the keeps or fangs, and the reversing lever thrown
over, the stop valve can be lifted wide open; and supposing that while
the engine is running the driver neglects to shut off steam in proper
time, then the projecting piece on the disk in traveling round, slowly
or quickly, and by steps according to requirements, will come in contact
with the driver, and so prevent an accident by bringing the reversing
lever into or beyond mid-gear.
Messrs. Lewis and Massey contemplate the use of governors in combination
with various forms of their automatic gear, so as to provide for every
imaginable case of winding, and also to avoid accidents when heavy loads
are sent down a pit; the special feature in their mechanism being that
when two or more things happen with regard to the positions of steam or
reversing handles, speed or position of cages in the pit, whatever it may
be necessary to do to meet the particular case shall be done
automatically.
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