Visit to the National Coal Mining Museum

Published June 4, 2014

We’ve had an interesting day at the National Coal Mining Museum attending the opening of a New Exhibition, “Courage, Camaraderie & Community”. We were invited because we’d made a (admittedly small) contribution to their display (see the Pics). Thanks to the team there, for making us feel very welcome, and to Ian the mine guide, who gave us a very entertaining tour.

In other news, we’ve started to use our much neglected twitter account, apparently it’s all the rage with the youth these days 😉 So we are now twits, tweeters, twitterers or wherever they are called. So if you are into that sort of thing you can follow us @apedaleheritage or visit our twitter page at twitter.com/apedaleheritage.

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Half Term Mine Tours

Published May 26, 2014

Half term already? If you are looking for something to do with the kids/grand kids, we will be running mine tours tomorrow (Tuesday) and Wednesday, and the museum will be open too. The café will be open as usual all week.

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From the archives: Sentinel 4wVBT

Published May 24, 2014

Things have been a bit quite around here, possibly its the quiet before the storm that is our mining gala in three weeks time. So lets have a dip into our archives and look at another local colliery locomotive, in this case from Silverdale Colliery. At first glance you may think that this is a diesel, but it’s actually a Sentinel 4wVBT vertical boilered steam locomotive. No 9535 was one of two bought in 1952 by the NCB for this area, the other going to Holditch. This example was used until 1968 after which it was retired to a siding at Silverdale. Four year later it was rescued and moved to Foxfield for restoration, after which its owner ran it on Telford Steam Railway. Today it’s back at Foxfield but needs work to be put back into working order again.

Did I mention the gala? All the latest information can be found here :- https://www.apedale.co.uk/gala/

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Gala Details Published

Published May 11, 2014
Apedale Gala 2014

With just over a month to go until the big day, many of the preparations are done, and we’ve got our fingers crossed for fine weather!  You can see the latest details of our mining gala on our newly updated gala page, click here to view it.  There’s also the full running order of bands and artists who’ll be performing throughout the day. We had a great line up of talent last year, this year we think we may have topped that!  There’s a few faces that will be familiar from last year and a great variety of local talent.

Here’s a taster of just one of the artists who will be appearing…

Post by Chamu – singer.
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Age UK North Staffordshire project to capture mining memories

Published May 11, 2014
Age UK North Staffordshire

Age UK North staffs have received a £10,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for an exciting project, `Mining the Past – Shaping our Lives’, in Newcastle-under-Lyme. The project focuses on bringing together local ex-miners, their families and their carers to talk about their lives, and record and share their history and heritage.

Through the project ex-miners will be able share testimonies, information, photos and other memorabilia on the Collieryweb, through the media, presentations and displays at prominent local venues, including here at Apedale Mining Museum.

The group meets weekly on Monday mornings from 11am-1pm at Newcastle Library, and is open to anybody aged 50 and over who has connections or recollections of pit life in Newcastle. A cuppa is provided! Click here for details.

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Bears and Cars

Published April 29, 2014

This bank holiday weekend, the Railway is running a Teddy Bears Outing event.  Kids can go free as long as they bring along a teddy bear (other similar stuffed toys are OK too!).  Adults are welcome to bring along their Teddys too although I’m afraid that doesn’t qualify them for the offer!  In the museum we’ll be running a teddy bear hunt, as I’m sure I overheard our naughty teddies hatching another escape plan, so they’ll need to be rounded up again.

On Sunday 11th May, the following weekend, the Railway will also be having a Classic Cars and Steam day, with a flyover by an RAF spitfire at 1:30 (obviously this will be weather permitting). So plenty going on in May!

I was going to call this post Car-Bear-Etta – but thought better of it!

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Loco Swap

Published April 27, 2014

A while ago the railway chaps asked if they could swap out the Motor Rail loco that’s been part of their display in the museum for many a good year, as they wanted to use it as part of the tracks to trenches event this year (http://www.wdlr.org.uk/). The little petrol engined loco was built for service in World War One, although the war ended before it was delivered. It’s being replaced by the recently restored Motor Rail 5038 “City of Gloucester”. Yesterday a team of crack loco movers descended on the museum to do the swap. Doors were removed, heads were scratched, breath was sharply in-taken, tea was drunk and the work commenced. I think they may have dropped it at one point but it was manoeuvred out of the doors with skates and sections of rail and it’s replacement is safely installed in it’s place.

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The Heat is On!

Published April 27, 2014

Our heating system is finally up and running, a little later than we’d hoped but better late than never.  Since it’s still a little nippy out we certainly felt the benefit today!  The system heats the café area, and uses a ground source heat pump, installed by local company Retherm. Ground source heat pumps extract heat from a system of underground pipes and are typically much more energy efficient than a traditional boiler, running at about 300%-400% efficiency.  Which means for every unit of electricity used to run the system we get 3 to 4 units of heat out.  It’s been a long haul to get this far, and we’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to the effort.

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Easter Opening Part 2

Published April 20, 2014

For the second week of Easter we’ll be opening the museum and running mine tours on Easter Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Check back here to see if we can do any later in the week! Also Genesis will be demonstrating his smithing skills in the Forge on Easter Monday. The railway will be running on Monday as well, for the final day of this years Easter Egg hunt.

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Easter Raffle Winners

Published April 20, 2014

The results of our Easter raffle are:- Ticket 746 wins the 1st prize, the Large Chocolate Egg and Ticket 661 wins 2nd prize, the cake in the shape of a miner!

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