Tahmoor Colliery

Tahmoor Colliery is an underground coal mine at

In 2013, extension of the mine was anticipated to take below a railway tunnel on the Main Southern railway line. To avoid the risk of subsidence within the tunnel, Xstrata funded the construction of a diversion around Redbank Hill to remove trains from the tunnel, which was filled with rock and sealed.[5]^[6]

Incidents

Tahmoor Colliery has a history of outbursts where gas trapped in the coal violently escapes during mining, throwing hundreds of tonnes of coal and rock, and large amounts of suffocating gas. One miner was killed as a consequence of one of these outbursts in 1985. In 1994, it was reported that Tahmoor had recorded 89 outbursts up to April 1992. In response to that fatality, practices and equipment were upgraded, initially to provide a separately-ventilated and armoured operator cabin, and later to provide remote control.^[7]

In September 2018, two men were trapped 160 metres (520 ft) underground when the lift cage jammed in the mine shaft. They were uninjured, and rescued late in the evening by