Room and Pillar Long Wall Strip Mining Surface Mining

In long wall mining, miners created tunnels directly in the coal seam and supported the tunnels using pit props and pillars of rock. They would then work at the face of the coal seam, carefully coal along the long wall. Timbering along the mined area allowed activity at the seam, but workers often allowed the mined areas behind the current mine area to collapse. The long wall mining strategy was only effective only if the coal seem was thin, often no more than one and a half metres in thickness.