Journey

A train of trams or drams coupled together and hauled along an underground roadway by rope, the South Wales word for what the North East calls a set.

Historical usage

Gresley's 1883 glossary marks the word South Welsh and defines it as a train or set of trams all coupled together running upon an engine plane, 'as many as forty sometimes'. The Welsh Coal Mines glossary, drawn from twentieth-century colliery practice, puts a journey at about twenty-five drams shackled together and hauled in and out from the pit bottom by an endless rope or by main and tail rope. The man who went with it was the journey-man or rider.

How it worked

Drams were coupled with shackles and drawn along the main road — the dukie — by a haulage engine at the surface or at an engine plane underground, either on an endless rope running continuously or on a main-and-tail system that pulled the journey in one direction and back the other. The rider travelled with it and signalled the engineman by knocking wire, a length of thin rope hung along the roadway and connected at intervals to a signal. Sprags were pushed through the wheel spokes to slow or hold drams, and manholes were cut into the sides of the roadway at intervals so that men could stand clear as a journey went by.

Why it was used

One rope and one engine could move far more coal than horses, and a colliery raising several hundred tons a day needed the coal brought from the districts to the shaft faster than a haulier and a pony could bring it.

Risks & limitations

A moving journey on a road men also walked was one of the great killers underground, second only to falls of roof. The colliery fatality lists are full of it: boys detaching clips at the shaft sidings and falling between the tubs, men caught by a journey while carrying report books to the pit bottom, riders run over on inclines when a coupling or a brake failed. Manholes and refuge holes existed precisely because there was nowhere else to go when a journey came.

Regional variation

In Northumberland and Durham the same train is a set, run on a rolley-way and attended by a rolley-way man; Greenwell's northern glossary has rolley, rolley-way and rolley-way man but no journey. The vehicles differ with the word: drams and trams in South Wales, tubs and formerly corves in the North East.

Related terminology

Incline, Tub, Waggonway

Mines associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis — not every mine where this might plausibly apply.

• Sirhowy Ironworks — Blaenau Gwent (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…where the Monmouthshire Canal Company's own tramroad continued the journey to Newport; it opened in 1805. Between 1794 and 1818 the works were…”
• Beckwith Mine — Isle of Man (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…coal back for the mine's own pumping-engine boilers on the return journey. Despite this rich beginning, the deeper part of the mine and its…”

Sources

1. (primary) W. S. Gresley, A Glossary of Terms used in Coal Mining (1883) — W. S. Gresley; digitised by the Internet Archive
2. (secondary) Glossary of South Wales colliery terms — Welsh Coal Mines

Record created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 4 September 2026