East Cleveland Image Archive

Because of the way the potash is won, the machinery leaves a nice clean edge on the tunnel walls – showing the geology off to its best advantage – also useful to tell you what you are cutting into as well!

Image courtesy of Alan Franks.

Heliminers aren’t the only exotic pieces of machinery in use below – here is an Auger Borer – pretty useful if you want to make a bang! Ian Benson tells us: ”The fitted the scroll borer to an old joy shuttle car chassis several of these were built in the underground workshops. They immediately were called Scud borers as the first Gulf war was underway at the time and named after Saddam Hussein’s ineffective Scud missiles. These borers were a little crude but they did the job apart from being a little unwieldy.”

Image courtesy of Alan Franks and thanks to Ian Benson for the update.

Looks kind of space age, but this is strictly utilitarian; designed to get product (potash) from the back of the miner onto a moving belt system.

Image courtesy of Alan Franks.

A close-up of the cutting face of a Heliminer; like a rotary miller with attitude!

Image courtesy of Alan Franks.

A Heliminer is a Remote Mining Vehicle; this posed shot shows the beast at rest.  The mined product is collected in the powered scoop at the front and passed along a belt to the following shuttle car.  When full the shuttle car connects to a horizontal belt system and discharges its load for transfer to the surface storage.

Pretty cool beast ehh!

Image courtesy of Alan Franks.