2025 Round Up - Templeton South Pot - Railway Video!

Although there has been no blog post since 18/11, work in the South Pot has not stopped, with the work to mechanise the lowest haul continuing. 

In this time the following have been involved in the work, in no particular order: 
 - Sam Hill 
 - Alex Randall
 - Mike Kushy
 - Hollie London 
 - 'Mushroom' Dave Kinzlett
 - Sam Coleman
 - Lee Venning 

Thanks to the efforts of the above, the inclined railway track has been completed. This is mainly constructed from a large steel ladder liberated from the surface set up at Homeclose, and scaffold tube braced between the walls of the rift with another pair of tubes perpendicular to these to form the rails. This then ties onto the pre-existing ladder from the bottom of the cave up to the rift, by means of some bent sections of scaff. There is also a 'boat trailer keel roller' fitted here to guide the winch cable over the change in gradient. 

The previous team to dig here before us used a four wheeled frame with a bucket fitted to ride up this lower ladder, to a winch at the top of the ladder. They then handballed spoil up the rift. Our new system repurposed their frame, but with a full size beer barrel as a kibble, and with it's ground clearance increased to allow it to pass over the cable roller. At the top of the track, motive power is supplied by another of the trusty warrior winches, which is attached to the ladder using a similar bracket to as at the top of the South Pot ladder. There is a pulley deviation to keep the cable on the right alignment as the track turns slightly. 

Particular thanks go to Tuska for part funding this winch, Lee Venning for extending our power cable to this level, and John Hill for fabricating the mounting bracket. 

The rail system has been declared operational as of the 11th Jan 2026. In testing it suffered from one derailments when travelling up loaded, and this was caused by a rock overhanging the edge of the kibble, so completely avoidable. Travelling down unloaded is less perfect, with fairly regular derailments were the trolley transfers onto the lower ladder, but it is fairly predicable and only takes a gentle push to keep it on, which the loader can easily climb up to provide. So room for improvement... 

Over the holidays we had a visit from a couple of our associates from the Priory Road dig, Dave Kinzlett and Sam Coleman. Both very impressed with the whole site! Sam is steel fabricator, who is now keen to help, with luck he'll be able to make up a guide to stop this occasional derailment at some point. Also he'll be able to weld the railway components together, preventing any future shifting of the rails as their climbed over. It's hoped his next visit will be in Febuary. 

Elsewhere in the cave, the accursed dripping in Echo Pot has been greatly reduced by the construction of a small dam in the Echo Tunnel, which collects the water into a hose pipe to direct it elsewhere. Also the Echo Pot winch suffered a burnt out joint in it's remote cable, this has been repaired.
 
2025 Summary

 Start in Feb 2025 Existing hauling system reestablished (Much thanks to Tuska for providing the new winches to achieve this) New armoured power supply cable installed 21 large skips of rock brought to surface Approx 8m of forward progress made (to be honest I don't think any of us have measured it) Inclined rail system constructed, this should be much quicker and safer than hauling by hand. 

Finally, a very big thank you the Wednesday afternoon North Pot team for teaching us the operation of the surface kit, letting us use their diesel and not getting pissed off with us breaking things or gassing their dig with fumes. Without them maintaining the Templeton surface facilities our dig would simply not be possible. 2026 should be more of the same, though with faster progress with the new railway! 

Video below - if it works...

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