ICI salts away a Transit 500ft underground
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• The 22ewt Ford Transit that ICI Mond division has put into operation at its Meadow Bank Salt Mine at Winsford in Cheshire had to be cut in two and welded together again before it could start work. ICI has eight heavy trucks and a rock crushing plant working in the 500ft-deep mine.
When the Transit arrived from Ford main dealer, Knutsford Motors Ltd, it was stripped on the surface for re-assembly underground. The Transit driver's cab would not fit into the shaft cage, so it was cut horizontally across the middle and then welded together again when it reached the bottom.
Salt can be won two ways from the Cheshire beds by brine evaporation—or as at Meadow Bank, by mining methods. The explosives, packed in 501b red painted metal boxes, are stored in a cavern hewn out of the rock and it is from here that the Transit loads up with its stock of boxes and delivers them along with the detonators to the work faces.
All the vehicles in the mine run along wide roads which are surfaced with saltcrete—a mixture of cement and salt fines.
These vehicles need neither road tax discs nor registration plates but all roads are marked with authentic road signs.
Ninety-eight per cent of the salt from the mine is used on Britain's roads each winter and Meadow Bank works round the clock seven days a week to produce over lm tons each year.