Opencast coal mining

Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and, since the 1880s, has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa a coal mine and its structures are a colliery; a coal mine a pit; the above-ground structures the pit head. In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine. In the United States "colliery" has been used to describe a coal mine operation but nowadays the word is not commonly used.

Coal mining has had many developments over the recent years, from the early days of men tunnelling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts, to large open cut and long wall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of draglines, trucks, conveyors, jacks and shearers

Small-scale mining of surface deposits dates back thousands of years. For example, in Roman Britain, the Romans were exploiting all major coalfields (save those of North and South Staffordshire) by the late 2nd century AD. While much of its use remained local, a lively trade developed along the North Sea coast supplying coal to Yorkshire and London.

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