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You can never go on too long HPW! Every word is valuable to me. I all helps paint a picture of the life and times of my ancestors. It's not always a pretty picture but it's vivid and full of detail. As you say, pitwork isn't an easy thing to describe to someone like me, who's never been, let alone worked down a coal mine. It isn't easy for us either when the 'experts' write about it using a terminology which only miners can understand. I really appreciate the time and effort yourself, Vic and Pete take to write about coalmining and the way you explain the terminology as it crops up in the text. Now, here's something from my field of work that you miners might find interesting: You mention "Gates" - tailgates, dummygates, mothergates and panelgates and you say that these 'gates' are "roadways". I, in my naivety, when these 'gates' have previously been mentioned have thought that it was a gate of the open and close kind. Now I know otherwise!But did you know that you've been speaking a bit of Swedish (Old Norse, to be precise) every time you speak of gates down the pit. Gate - meaning roadway - comes from the Scandinavian word gata - a word, still in use today, meaning 'street'. It can be found above ground as well in some street names like: Oldgate, Oldgate within, Newgate etc. So, I think you have earned the title 'HPW Honorary Swede'.