HOMEPAGE PERSONAL PROFILE HISTORICAL REVIEW HOWEBRIDGE MRS BOOTHSTOWN MRS PURPOSE OF A MRS MOBILE WINDING ENGINE AMPUTATION KIT OFFICERS AND STAFF SELECTION OF RESCUEMEN BREATHING APP PRIME FEATURES OF BA GENERAL CONDUCT OXYGEN RESUSCITATORS HEAT AND HUMIDITY RESCUE COMMS CANARIES AND LAMPS SELF RESCUERS SEFA BREATHING APPARATUS PROTO BREATHING APPARATUS AERORLOX BREATHING APPARATUS SALVUS BREATHING APPARATUS SAVOX BREATHING APPARATUS MINOX BREATHING APPARATUS ANTIPOYS TUBE APPARATUS

The Lancashire Mines Rescue Service BOOTHSTOWN MINES RESCUE STATION. ARTIST DRAWING SHOWS THE GENERAL VIEW OF THE STATION AND DOMESTIC PREMISES. The Superintendent's house on the left and the two Instructors semi-detached houses on the right, along with the Station are on the main Ellenbrook Road. The Members of the Permanent Corps occupied the six pairs of semi-detached properties in Orchard Avenue, facing South. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOTHSTOWN MINES RESCUE STATION. From 1908, Rescue Services had been available to all mines in Lancashire and Cheshire, from the Central Mines Rescue Station at Howebridge and after the passing of the Coal Mines Act of 1911, additionally from Denton, St. Helens and Burnley. All four Rescue Stations had adopted the “Brigade System” (Scheme 'B' under the Regulations) where each colliery was required to maintain complete teams of rescue workers of not less than five men per team. The number of teams required by the Regulations were governed by the number of underground workers at the colliery. The “Brigade System” had performed efficiently, but in 1931, the Lancashire and Cheshire Coal Owners’ Association decided that the “Permanent Corps” System (Scheme 'A' under the Regulations), which was in the style the Fire Service, where a full team was always ready at the station for immediate turn out, would provide an even more efficient service. Accordingly, they built the new Mines Rescue Station on a four and a quarter acre site in Boothstown, in the urban district of Worsley. The site offered sufficient space for the Rescue Station itself, 12 houses for the Members of the Permanent Corps, 2 houses for the Instructors and a house for the Station Superintendent. In addition there were sufficient space for a tennis court, football field and a playing area for the children. In 1939, the Station Staff was augmented by appointing a 3rd Instructor and the Permanent Corps was increased to 14. Three more houses were built on the site. The Mines Inspectorate then agreed to extend the limiting radius of action to 20 miles. The main factors that influenced the choice of site for the new Rescue Station was that the village of Boothstown was now, more or less at the revised centre of the coalfield and the close proximity of the new trunk road between Manchester and Liverpool. The A580 dual carriageway gave a ready and speedy access to the Eastern and Western areas of the coalfield. The architects of the new Boothstown Station Complex were Messrs. Bradshaw, Gass and Hope of Bolton, who produced an outstanding design. Coal Owners and visitors from other coalfields in the Country were in abundance and the consensus of opinion was that the Boothstown prototype embodied all the essential features, required of a Mines Rescue Station and should form the yard stick for all future Rescue Stations in the Country. The main sections of the Boothstown Rescue Station were the Garage, which was sufficiently large, to house the two main rescue vans, two other vans and a personnel carrier; various administration and function rooms; apparatus storage and reservicing areas; changing quarters for the part-time rescuemen attending for practice, with shower rooms and extensive training galleries. The training galleries were equipped and set out to resemble the conditions underground, following fires, explosions and roof falls. They consisted of four chambers running East to West, each 90 feet in length with a cross-section of 12feet high and 8 feet wide, connected to a fifth chamber, at right angles, to the rear. This was 60 feet in length and of the same cross-section. In three of these legs, there were also upper and lower levels, giving a total travelling distance of over 200 yards. There were low and constricted sections (some only two feet high) and a 1 in 12 incline, all installed with colliery, metal tub tracks. Some areas were equipped with steel arched supports and others with wooden props supporting wooden, split bars. The wooden props were made so that they could be knocked out of place and repositioned. There was a large sand dump and an adequate supply of hession bags for the construction of roadway seals and mounds of rubble and small rocks for work with picks and shovels. There was also a dummy body weighing 150lbs fixed on a 'furley' type stretcher and the whole area was connected to a 'smoke box' in the station cellar so that the rescue teams, whilst wearing the breathing apparatus, for the full duration of 2 hours, could work in varying densities of smoke. Two powerful extractor fans were positioned at the ends of the two centre legs so that the complete training galleries could be quickly cleared of smoke within 3 minutes, if the need arose. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------