This is Britain, of course the National Coal Mining Museum is a thing!
I’ve been before as a youngling, but thought I’d pay a visit as an adult while passing through the area.
Be warned, however! I was really looking forward to going down a coal mine today. Turns out the coal mine tours have been suspended since last year with no clear indication of if or when they’ll restart. Check before you visit.
The overground museum is still open, though, so I got a chance to pull some levers, twist some knobs and have photos taken of me standing next to large, miscellaneous pieces of industrial machinery as I gaze into the middle-distance.
There are also mine ponies. No photos of Aladdin the pony, sadly, as there was a bunch school kids hogging the photo ops.
Coal mining life looks brutal
Coal mining life does not look fun. At all. This probably isn’t landing with you as a grand revelation. Dark. Noisy. Intoxicating. Back-breaking. Poor. Do not let the big, beaming smile on the manakin operating the control room fool you – coal mining sucks.
Here’s a picture of what coal miners would look like if they were made of plastic and had just seen a man with a Google Pixel for the first time.
See, they’re not happy.
The saddest bit was reading how old some of the miners were. There’s a memorial to miners who died during a major mining incident with maybe a hundred names on; some of those names belong to people as young as eight. Tragic.
Even above ground, some of the facilities gave me prison vibes.
Was closing the UK mines a good idea?
I can’t say I’m disappointed that coal mining wasn’t available to me as a career option at the age of eight. But, I left with mixed feelings. Closing the mines in the UK put a lot of people out of work and into poverty. I don’t know enough about this, so picked up Jeremy Paxman’s Black Gold in the shop to learn more. It’s in the bookshelf backlog – estimated start for about 2035.
At the same time, closing Britain’s coal mines just moved supply elsewhere to meet demand. While heavy machinery extracts the vast majority of commercial coal these days, manual labour remains prevalent in developing nations like India, China, Pakistan, and parts of Africa. We know burning coal kills the planet, but it’s also having a much more direct, tangible impact on human beings right now.
There’s good news, though! The UK officially stopped using coal to generate electricity on September 30, 2024, ending a 142-year reliance on the fossil fuel. This milestone made the UK the first major economy and G7 nation to completely phase out coal power. Boom!
The sooner the rest of the world abandons coal, the better.
Anyway, to summarise, I’m not a big fan of coal mining, but here’s a picture of me stood in front of one.
