engineering

Oakdale Colliery

Oakdale Colliery is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Oakdale Colliery rather than just read about it. In short: Oakdale Colliery was a coal mine located in the Sirhowy Valley, one of the valleys of South Wales. In the early years of the twentieth century the need for coal was growing both in America and Europe, and local business men in Wales were looking for new opportunities to fill the demand.

Key takeaways

Oakdale Colliery belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Oakdale Colliery to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Oakdale Colliery from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Oakdale Colliery was a coal mine located in the Sirhowy Valley, one of the valleys of South Wales. In the early years of the twentieth century the need for coal was growing both in America and Europe, and local business men in Wales were looking for new opportunities to fill the demand. Among these were a group known as the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, made up of wealthy industrialists from the Maclaren, Markham, Pochin, Whitworth and Wyllie families. They decided to create a group of collieries in the Sirhowy Valley, which explorations had told them contained rich seams of " black gold." One of these was at the small rural hamlet of Rhiw Syr Dafydd. Work began clearing the site for the new colliery at Ty Mellyn, Oakdale, with the sinking of the pit in 1907. Waterloo shaft followed in 1911. The shafts, North (upcast), and South, were 626 and 650 yards deep respectively, and were the largest diameter shafts in South Wales at the time. Opened in 1911, the colliery was owned by the Oakdale Navigation Collieries Ltd, a subsidiary of the Tredegar Iron Company. At its peak in 1938 it employed a workforce of 2,235, when production reached one million tons per year. Oakdale was linked to Markham colliery and the Celynen North colliery in Newbridge in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making it the largest colliery in Gwent. The pit closed in 1989 and the tips have now been landscaped and converted into platforms for industrial development. The former site of Oakdale Colliery now sites Islwyn High School, which opened in 2016 to former students from Oakdale Comprehensive School, Pontllanfraith Comprehensive School and Cwmcarn Comprehensive School. Of the three, the Pontllanfraith school is the only one still standing, with no obvious plans in sight.

See also Oakdale, Caerphilly Oakdale Hospital

References

External links Welsh Coal Mines - check out the history of this pit. Oakdale Colliery Northern Mine Research Society Oakdale Village

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Oakdale Colliery

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Oakdale Colliery claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Oakdale Colliery before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Oakdale Colliery ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Oakdale Colliery

In research: Oakdale Colliery appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Oakdale Colliery in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Oakdale Colliery is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures in Caerphilly County Borough, Collieries in South Wales, Mine stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Oakdale Colliery outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Oakdale Colliery in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Oakdale Colliery means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Oakdale Colliery out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Oakdale Colliery in simple terms?

Why does Oakdale Colliery matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Oakdale Colliery?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Oakdale Colliery.