Interested in Helping?
The Museum is run by a group of volunteers who would welcome new colleagues as the Museum expands. If you live in the Lake District, have spare time and think you could help to run the Shop, take Underground Tours or help in any way on site, we'd love to hear from you. You'll find it a very friendly place with lovely views and it would be entirely up to you how much time you give. If you think you might be interested, please call Ian Hartland in the evening on 01768779202
UPDATE! Click here to read about Sir Tom, our new addition to the Threlkeld Museum Railway.
The History of Threlkeld Quarry & Mining Museum
Initially, rock was blasted loose from the quarry face by black powder (gunpowder) placed in deep drill holes at the base of the face, but in later years a mixture of fertiliser and diesel fuel was used. Both are relatively gentle explosives which shift out blocks of rock without shattering them. The broken rock was hand-loaded into wagons (‘tubs’) on a narrow gauge railway and fed to the crushers by gravity. The laden wagons pulled the empty ones back up to the face for refilling by means of a cable wound round a drum at the top of the incline. The primary and secondary crushers progressively reduced the size of the material. This was graded by passing through screens of different mesh sizes. At the face, the tubs were filled by hand at piecework rates; each man put his tally on his tub which was then removed and recorded by the tallyman at the original weighbridge (on the east side of the engine shed) as it passed by en route to the crushers.
To keep up with demand, more quarry faces had to be opened up. The railway, now operated by steam locomotives, was extended first to Spion Kop quarry and then to Bram Crag quarry further along St. John’s in the Vale and also down to the main line at the adjoining Threlkeld railway station.
