South Wales Coalfield

picture info	South Wales Coalfield The South Wales Coalfield (Welsh: Maes glo De Cymru) is a large region of south Wales that is rich in coal deposits, especially the South Wales Valleys [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Welsh Language Welsh (Cymraeg [kəmˈrɑːɨɡ] (listen) or y Gymraeg [ə gəmˈrɑːɨɡ]) is a Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut Province, Argentina). Historically, it has also been known in English as 'British', 'Cambrian', 'Cambric' and 'Cymric'. According to the United Kingdom Census 2011, 19 percent of residents in Wales aged three and over were able to speak Welsh. According to the 2001 Census, 21 per cent of the population aged 3+ were able to speak Welsh. This suggests that there was a decrease in the number of Welsh speakers in Wales from 2001 to 2011 – from about 582,000 to 562,000 respectively [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and, since the 1880s, has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine a pit, and the above-ground structures the pit head. In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine. In the United States, "colliery" has been used to describe a coal mine operation but nowadays the word is not commonly used. Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunnelling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Newport Docks Newport Docks is the collective name for a group of docks in the city of Newport, south-east Wales. By the eighteenth century there were a number of wharves on the west shore of the River Usk; iron and coal were the principal outward traffic. The considerable tidal range and muddy banks made the wharves inconvenient, and as trade grew, in 1858 the Town Dock was opened. It was soon extended, and trade increased further. The Alexandra Dock was established and opened a large dock of the same name in 1875, followed by a second dock ("The South Dock") in 1893 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Adit An adit (from Latin aditus, entrance) is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, ventilated, and minerals extracted at the lowest convenient level. Adits are also used to explore for mineral veins. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Canal Canals, or navigations, are human-made channels, or artificial waterways, for water conveyance, or to service water transport vehicles. In most cases, the engineered works will have a series of dams and locks that create reservoirs of low speed current flow [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Swansea Canal The Swansea Canal (Welsh: Camlas Abertawe) was a canal constructed by the Swansea Canal Navigation Company between 1794 and 1798, running for 16.5 miles (26.6 km) from Swansea to Hen Neuadd, Abercraf in South Wales. It was steeply graded, and 36 locks were needed to enable it to rise 373 feet (114 m) over its length. The main cargos were coal, iron and steel, and the enterprise was profitable. Sold to the Great Western Railway in 1873, it continued to make a profit until 1895. A period of decline followed, with the last commercial traffic using the waterway in 1931. Subsequently, parts of it were closed and filled in under a succession of owners, but around 5 miles (8.0 km) remain in water [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Glamorganshire Canal The Glamorganshire Canal was a valley-side canal, in South Wales, UK, running from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Railway Rolling stock in a rail transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars (carriages and wagons) can be coupled into longer trains. The operation is carried out by a railway company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway electrification system or produce their own power, usually by diesel engines. Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system. Railways are a safe land transport system when compared to other forms of transport. Railway transport is capable of high levels of passenger and cargo utilization and energy efficiency, but is often less flexible and more capital-intensive than road transport, when lower traffic levels are considered. The oldest known, man/animal-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC in Corinth, Greece [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Cardiff Cardiff (/ˈkɑːrdɪf/ ( listen); Welsh: Caerdydd Welsh pronunciation: [kairˈdiːð, kaˑɨrˈdɨːð]) is the capital and largest city in Wales and the eleventh-largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is the country's chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for Wales [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Llanelli Llanelli ("St Elli's Parish"; Welsh pronunciation: [ɬaˈnɛɬi]), the largest town in both the county of Carmarthenshire and the preserved county of Dyfed, Wales, sits on the Loughor estuary on the West Wales coast, approximately 10 miles (16 km) west-northwest of Swansea and 12 miles (19 km) south-east of the county town, Carmarthen. The town is famous for its proud rugby tradition and is a centre of tinplate production. Llanelli is surrounded by a number of villages and communities in the Llanelli Rural district [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Barry, Vale Of Glamorgan Barry (Welsh: Y Barri pronounced [ə ˈbarɪ]) is a town in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, on the north coast of the Bristol Channel approximately 9 miles (14 km) south-southwest of Cardiff. Barry is a seaside resort, with attractions including several beaches and the resurrected Barry Island Pleasure Park. According to the 2011 census, the population of Barry was 51,502, making it the sixth largest town in Wales, after Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Merthyr Tydfil and Wrexham. Once a small village, Barry has absorbed its larger neighbouring villages of Cadoxton and Barry Island. It grew significantly from the 1880s with the development of Barry Docks, which in 1913 was the largest coal port in the world [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Iron Ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in colour from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the form of magnetite (Fe ₃O ₄, 72.4% Fe), hematite (Fe ₂O ₃, 69.9% Fe), goethite (FeO(OH), 62.9% Fe), limonite (FeO(OH)·n(H₂O), 55% Fe) or siderite (FeCO₃, 48.2% Fe). Ores containing very high quantities of hematite or magnetite (greater than about 60% iron) are known as "natural ore" or "direct shipping ore", meaning they can be fed directly into iron-making blast furnaces [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Steam Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon, along with variable quantities of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is a fossil fuel that forms when dead plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal, and lastly anthracite. This involves biological and geological processes. The geological processes take place over millions of years. Throughout human history, coal has been used as an energy resource, primarily burned for the production of electricity and heat, and is also used for industrial purposes, such as refining metals [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Blaenavon Blaenavon (Welsh: Blaenafon) is a town in south eastern Wales, lying at the source of the Afon Lwyd north of Pontypool, within the boundaries of the historic county of Monmouthshire and the preserved county of Gwent. The town lies high on a hillside and has a population of 6,055. Blaenavon literally means "front of the river" or loosely "river's source" in the Welsh language [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]
picture info	Limestone Limestone is a sedimentary rock, composed mainly of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). About 10% of sedimentary rocks are limestones. The solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes, in which water erodes the limestone over thousands to millions of years [...More Info...] [...Related Items...]