Svalbard, Gruve - 3
An adventure deep into Gruve - 3, an abandoned coal mine, frozen in time, preserving a glimps a lost way of life.
Gruve 3, a coal mine of the 20th century, frozen in time, closed mid shift. The new mine, with 21st century automation, used only a fraction of the labor for more output, rendering Gruve - 3 immediately obsolete.
On the left is an electric mine cart driver, in the center are 4 different age coal carts, and on the right is a coal bucket that would have been suspended overhead and transported to the harbor via the coal lift.
The coal mines are built in the permafrost of the arctic, so men working in the mine would spend a whole 12 hour shift below freezing. Boots like the ones pictured above were used to try and keep their feet warm.
When the ice sets in for the winter it could be months before shipments of equipment and spare parts show up, so all coal mines had blacksmiths to make and repair equipment on sight.
Coal is softer than the surrounding stone and can be broken apart using massive chainsaws.
These chainsaws are fully electric and moved by a wench system located in the back of the chainsaw. The cable of the wench would be attached to the end of the shaft and the saw would be dragged along the bottom of the coal vein loosening up coal from the wall. A metal sled located at the end of the coal vein would then drag the loosened coal back to the waiting mine carts. These saws were operated in spaces only one meter wide.
This is a mine cart control unit, a fully electric mine cart engine that was used to move long trains of coal carts in and out of the mine. You couldn’t have combustion in the mine because it was already hard enough to keep enough breathable oxygen in the shaft without adding exhaust. This engine is in the repair shop. Gruve-3 was the first mine in Svalbard that allowed women to work in the mine. (though women had always been on the island) These women worked mostly as safety personnel and the quality of life in the mine was improved so much after women began working here that the men began painting all the mine carts to make it a prettier place for them to work.
A wider view of the repair shop.
The original seed vault. Still holds wheat and barley as an experiment to see how long it will last at permafrost temperature.
There are no trees on the archipelago so all wood was imported, behind the axe you can see the wall of coal starting at the yellow sulfur layer and going to the ceiling of the of the mine shaft.
They spelled Svalbard wrong, and yes there are real sticks of dynamite in there from 30 years ago.
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