Acland No. 2 Colliery

Acland No. 2 Colliery is a heritage-listed former mine at 2 Francis Street, Acland, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 29 June 2007.

The former Acland No 2 Colliery is a small underground coalmine close to Oakey on the Darling Downs. It comprises most of the above ground structures associated with the mine together with associated machinery, filled in mine portals and spoil heap. Coal was one of the first minerals in Queensland to be commercially mined. However, development of the coal mining industry was slow. Until the 1950s, coal was produced to supply the local market only: steamships at first; followed by steam locomotives later in the 19th century. A symbiotic relationship existed between Queensland Government Railways and the coal industry. Queensland Railways was the coal industry's largest customer since coal supplies were essential to the functioning of the rail network. At the same time rail transport was essential to the viability of coalmines: a mine could not survive commercially unless it was directly linked to the rail network. In Queensland, development of the coal industry was closely linked to the growth of the rail network. From the late 1950s, the industry experienced major change owing to the conversion from steam locomotives to diesel locomotives by Queensland Rail, the rapid growth of the export market and the development of large-scale open cut mining. By the end of the 20th century, Queensland was the nation's largest coal producer and over 90% of the state's coalmines were open cut. Coal exploration in the eastern Darling Downs was initially stimulated by demand for coal at the locomotive depot in Chinchilla. After a branch line opened between Oakey and Cooyar in c.1913, mining commenced in the Acland region in the vicinity of the railway line. The first coalmines in the district included Sugarloaf Colliery, Kingsthorpe Mine, Balgowan Colliery, Willaroo Mine and the Acland Coal Company Limited Mine. The Acland No 2 Colliery opened in 1929. Initially at Acland, coal mining utilised manual methods. Coal was excavated from the mine face and loaded into "skips" using hand implements. The skips were moved manually along an underground tramline to the main underground haul road. Here, they were attached to a steam operated cable and pulley system that hauled them to the pithead. When the skips arrived at the pithead they passed over a weighbridge. Until the 1950s, the miners' pay was based on the weight of coal that they produced. They used a tag system to identify their skips. The weighbridge and tally desk used for determining the weight of coal each miner excavated survive extant at Acland. The introduction of electricity in the Oakey area in the late 1940s stimulated increased mechanisation of the area's coalmines. Conversion to more mechanised methods at Acland commenced in the early 1950s. In 1951, the gauge of the underground tram rail was increased and the tunnels were widened to permit the access of small diesel locomotives. Two Jenbach 15 locomotives were introduced in 1952 together with larger steel skips. Mechanical tipplers (still extant) were installed at the pithead to handle the new steel skips. The tippler was a device for emptying the coal from the skips into the coal processing plant. In 1953, a new screening plant was installed. Contamination of Acland coal with foreign material had been a source of concern to the mine's customers. The new plant ensured the production of cleaner, graded coal. The screen has now been removed from the mine site. The new plant also included two elevators of steel construction and a 30-by-4-foot (9.1 by 1.2 m) picking belt. The picking belt was used to facilitate the removal, by hand, of rock from the

Monument data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).