Some major site upgrades have taken place tonight that require some explanation.

Update 1 of 3 : New 'mine' types

As part of the ongoing improvements to catalogue both underground remains and the above ground 'major surface features' facility (work still ongoing) the site now has the capability to classify locations others than mines and quarries.

When adding / editing mine details, you will now find that the 'add a mine page' is broken down into more logical blocks as follows:

1) Name & Classifcation

Name and Alternative name as before. Mineral/Product as before.

However the 'Identify as' drop-down menu now includes the following:

Mine
Quarry
Colliery (all from this point are new)
Tramway
Railway
Mill
Smelt Mill
Port
Factory
Tunnel
Shaft
Trial

Those being the classifications arrived at after discussion on this site's forum. These are stored as 'lookup' values, so the list can be added to very easily.

Some of these requrie a mineral/product to be entered, some do not. The distinction is fairly logical. A railway does not insist on a mineral/product for example, whereas a mine, quarry or colliery does. If a mineral/product is required the validation will alert you. If a mineral/product is not required then you can optionally add one if it is applicable.

Please do read the notes when adding locations other than mines/quarries. If a factory, tramway etc only served a single mine/quarry/colliery then the best approach is for a site administrator to create a dedicated album within that mine or quarry.

As another example, if a trial later formed part of a mine, quarry or colliery then similarly that trial might better be served with an album in the mine/quarry/colliery it was later absorbed into. However if it remained a trial then it is better catalogued as a trial in its own right.

However if a factory, port, railway, mill, smelt mill etc. served a number of mines, quarries or colleries then please do feel free to add it as a location in it's own right. In the event of any doubt please do feel free to post the enquiry on the forum.

2) Description

Optional (as before) but appreciated if descriptions could be completed to provide quality information to all members.

3) Location

See next post!

4) Security & Links

All as before, just separated under this new heading.

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Great upgrades, judging by the time stamps of the posts you have been burning the midnight mine light batteries :zzz:

Is is going to be possible to change existing mines to the new types by the user who put them in or will it be a case of asking the admins to do this?

Mr Mike.

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Great upgrades for certain .... I was wondering that too. 😉

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Agree with previous posts but still not sure how to enter stamps and tin streams and possibly blowing houses.

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Surely Stamps is part of a mill and a blowing house is a form of smelt mill... :thumbsup:

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Yes, on reflection you are right. I'll leave tin streams for the moment as I imagine Simon could do with a bit of peace and quiet.

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Yep the guy done good

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Is having "railway" and "tramway" as seperate headings going to lead to confusion?

As I am posting, I am not sure if it is me misreading it, but when you go to "Mine Search" it says "Enter keyword", it gives you various drop down boxes, but I can't see a box for a keyword. Or do I need to go to specsavers?

Just trying to put it plainly-

Railways are just heavier, more permanent versions of mineral tramways/plateways tending to operate scheduled freight/passenger services on a regular basis.

Tramways tend to be slower lighter laid industrial conerns being used as required often horse or hand drawn but there is of course some overlap with Railways. Many early tramways became railways.

Railways and Tramways are essentially different.

:thumbup:

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Just trying to put it plainly-

Railways are just heavier, more permanent versions of mineral tramways/plateways tending to operate scheduled freight/passenger services on a regular basis.

Tramways tend to be slower lighter laid industrial conerns being used as required often horse or hand drawn but there is of course some overlap with Railways. Many early tramways became railways.

Railways and Tramways are essentially different.

:thumbup:

Whilst I agree with you in theory, in practise, far more "tramways" are known as "railways" though, especially if outside the immediate vicinty of a mine or quarry!

Yer I know... drives you batty... some railways were known as tramways yet were heavily laid and permanent as at Wisbech, then you get some so called railways around the NE which were lightly laid tramways in reality. Like I say its a grey area so I always try and categorise under the common title given. So if history says its a tramway then so be it etc.

Railways is a big interest for me as are early plateways etc and people are always debating this...

Regards ICLOK 😉

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I reaslise this will mean a bit more work (although hopefully very little). How about combining Railway and tramways as one drop down option? This will make it easier to find (and submit) things as there will be no confusion as to whether it is (or should be) listed under one or other heading, as they will all be together. In fact, I thought that was what had originally been suggested or agreed. After all this is mainly a mine/quarry website and so railways are a secondary interest to a lot of people on here. Myself not included - it is the railway/tramway side of things that got me interested in the first place!

Great by me as it takes out the need to categorise so we can just go by the name it was known as, Rail is my main hobby to which also got me into mines...

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Since posting my previous post, I have read through the thread proposing these changes. At one point (page 2) Vanoord suggests "tramway/railway", later (page 3) Simon requested additions alterations to Vannord's list, none suggesting this division were suggested, so am not sure why it has been done thus. An earlier suggestion was also "Wagonways/Tramways" too, again as a combined item.

To quote Vanoord's list properly:-

Mill - are Smeltmills the same thing?
Railway / Tramway
Port -
Tunnel -

The only discussion subsequent to this was relating to whether "Tunnel" needed to be seperate.

So, from this list of 4 additional headings, we have ended up with 9 additional ones. I am sure some of them are going to cause confusion, both to a submitter, and to a searcher!

Are we not saying it should really be railway/tramway/waggonway...
At the end of the day its only to provide a basic category... the contents name will ultimately define it, they are all forms of railways as far as I'm concerned just earlier or different forms.

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Exactly!

Exactly the same discussion was had (not that I entered into that) about differing mineral types. Some people ven suggested differing types of coal should have different catagories. That is fine if you are an expert on coal, but useless if you are not!

I think the new features and classifications can be summed up as; they are there to be used if they are needed, but if not, the added flexibility doesn't do any harm.

I don't want the site to be over complex, or confuse anybody.

To that end, regardless of what you add, be it a mill, mine or railway, it's searchable and indexed exactly as before. You can go by OS sheet, mineral type etc. You don't have to specify you're searching for a mine or mill, but in the results it will make it very clear what it is; 'View Mine', 'View Mill', 'View Railway' etc. Same for the mine name search; it'll find everything regardless of classification.

On the railway v tramway I put that in because I knew if I didn't and somebody classed (for example) the Croesor tramway as the Croesor Railway I'd be in trouble. And conversly the Ffestiniog Tramway doesn't sound right either.

What's important to add here is that a lot of this forms part of the (yet to be launched, probably Monday) Major Surface Feature system. I would not want to see every little tramway that served a single mine being given it's own listing. That would be best served (and the 'add a mine/location' page makes this clear) with an album in the mine it served. So railways, ports etc will likely get their own entries, same for factories and mills (if they served many mines) and anything that was specific to a mine gets a dedicated album in the relevant mine.

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[mod]Vanoord got bored and deleted a couple of posts.

People will have to decide for themselves whether something was a railway or a tramway and label it accordingly. It's a matter of considerable semantics, not particularly relevant and it's getting boring to continually see these arguments of exactly what something may be ;)[/mod]

As I understand it (Simon, correct me if I'm wrong!), the site uses the option chosen to describe the 'object' created. Thus, if you wished to create the Croesor Tramway, you would enter "Croesor", choose "Tramway" and the site will describe it as "Croesor Tramway".

Thus, there needs to be a difference between "Tramway" and Railway", otherwise we'd end up with "Croesor Railway/Tramway/Waggonway", which would be daft to sat the least ;)

As far as waggonway is concerned, I'd say ICLOK is quite right about the definitions and it would be considered a tramway:

Railways are just heavier, more permanent versions of mineral tramways/plateways tending to operate scheduled freight/passenger services on a regular basis.

Tramways tend to be slower lighter laid industrial conerns being used as required often horse or hand drawn but there is of course some overlap with Railways. Many early tramways became railways.

There will be some which may form the basis of debate, and some that do not necessarily conform to the above (yes, MerddinEmrys, you know which one 😉 ). These may justify their own debate in the forum, but I think it's unlikely in most cases...

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Yes. I think the labels Railway and Tramway should cover all eventualities. I don't know myself what the actual difference is. In the steam era I suppose railways would have used steam locomotives whilst tramways would have used horse or manpower. With the advent of small Infernal Combustion engines, the boundaries become a little blurred.