INSIGHT : A Coal Mine Tour

Have you ever been to a live coal mine tour..?

Most of you have not and that is pretty obvious as not all of us can get the chance to be there.

So , today we'll gonna take you to an exciting and an awesome coal mine tour.

Tourists take a picture just outside the Saoner coal mine. Western Coalfields Limited (WCL), in association with the Maharashtra tourism board, is inviting tourists to go underground, into a live coal mine, in Saoner, Nagpur district. This extremely lifelike model has been built to replicate the interiors for senior citizens or the physically challenged or children - all of whom might not be able to take the actual tour. Minors, for instance (forgive the pun), are not allowed underground.

Before beginning the 200-metre descent, WCL safety officer Birendra Choudhary explains the layout of the coalmine. It stretches across 5 km, and is situated about 60 metres under the water table. “A canal taking water from the Kolar River runs directly above the Saoner mines, so we have to be extra cautious about the water pressure on the mine roof. Supervisors have to carry out daily checks on pressure and seepage,” says WCL general manager DM Gokhale. 

 Every tourist must wear a torch helmet and reflective jackets. Then they take the man-riding system down into the mine. A safety officer accompanies each group. “The descent to the bottom of the mine is thrilling in itself,” says engineering student Ujjwal Lende, 22, from Nagpur (not in frame). “It’s eerie to be swaying and bobbing down a dark dark tunnel.” 

Temperatures underground can range from 5° Celsius to 30° Celsius, depending on the weather. Here, WCL ventilation officer PS Bhadke explains how a convergence recorder monitors the pressure on the roof of the mine. It uses a colour-code system to signal when the roof is either weakening from below or under too much pressure from above. Green means it’s safe, yellow is a sign that you need to reinforce this patch, while red means it is unsafe and needs immediate repairs. 

Tourists spend about 45 minutes in the mine, before they take the minimalist chair car back up. Miners, however, are down here all day. These sturdy, bright yellow telephones are their only link with the outside world. These are used for routine coordination, and to make SOS calls during emergency situations. 

“It was only when we suddenly heard a loud, deafening bang that we realised there was coal being blasted out of the rock just 200 metres away,” says tourist and machine design student Karan Mahajan, 22. “That was the only time I was a little scared, at the thought that if something went wrong, we’d be trapped inside.” 

An average shift for a miner is six hours, with no above-ground breaks. The primary risks they face are blasting accidents, coal dust explosion, methane-led combustion, sidefalls or cave-ins and leakages of methane or carbon monoxide from gas pocket.

A mine worker takes a break in the first-aid corner. “A miner works against the forces of nature,” says general manager Gokhale. “In a situation like a water inrush, every mine has an ‘escape chamber’, which is a 2.5 m x 4.8 m safe room that miners can retreat into and seal behind them, in case all routes to the surface are temporarily choked.” 

 Back on the surface, their tour completed, the group of tourists watch the last step of the mining process, where the freshly mined coal is sprayed with water before it is piled onto trucks and taken to power plants. To take the tour yourself, go to the MTDC website. To watch our video of the tour, go to the videos section on this website. 

                                               

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