Gate Road

A roadway driven along the side of a longwall panel to serve the face: air in, coal out, men and materials in and out. Every longwall face has two, and they are named by which way the air goes through them.

Historical usage

The word gate for a way or road is old and general in the English coalfields, and it attached itself to the longwall roadways as longwall working spread. The Somerset coalfield's own usage survives in the verdict of the 1895 inquest at Conygre, which places the shot that caused the explosion in the through road.

How it worked

Gate roads are driven to the back of a panel before longwall mining begins. The road on one side is the maingate or headgate, the other the tailgate. Intake air travels up the maingate, across the face and out along the tailgate, which is the U ventilation that most faces use; the maingate also carries the conveyor belt that takes coal from the face towards the shaft, with a crusher and a beam stage loader where the face conveyor discharges into it. On an advancing face the gates are formed as the face moves forward. On a retreating face only the maingate is driven in advance, and the tailgate is formed behind the face by ripping stone from above the coal to give a road high enough to walk in.

Why it was used

A longwall face is a machine a couple of hundred metres long that cannot make its own access. Everything it needs and everything it produces has to travel along its two ends, and its ventilation depends on there being exactly two, so that fresh air has one way in and one way out.

Risks & limitations

Gate roads sit in ground that the face has disturbed or is about to disturb, so they squeeze, and a tailgate formed behind a retreating face has the goaf on one side of it. The tailgate is also where the return air goes, carrying away the coal dust and the methane from the face and the goaf, so it is the part of the district most likely to be gassy.

Regional variation

Maingate and headgate are the same thing. Older and local words for a roadway serving a face include the through road in Somerset, and the archive's separate entries for the level, the crosscut and the return airway cover the same function in other systems of working.

Related terminology

Crosscut, Goaf, Longwall, Return Airway, Shearer

Sources

1. (secondary) Glossary of coal mining terminology — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Longwall mining — Wikipedia

Record created: 11 September 2026 · Last researched: 11 September 2026