Above is a corner view from the North West of the winding engine house at Glyn Pits. To within an inch or so, the building is thirty feet square, and thirty four feet from ground level to the eaves and placed on site between 1856 and 1865. This picture is too distant to see the fine quality of the masonry, which is dressed stone throughout, but one needs to be close to the building to really appreciate the workmanship, which is a tribute to the men who built it. On the West wall can be seen the three stone corbels which supported the backstays for the headgear. Between the two nearer corbels, and over the bricked up window on the right, can be seen the slot in the wall - now plastered with grease thrown from the rope - through which the up-cast rope left the building. while, the other rope exited the building through a slot in the roof. It was through the nearer of the two windows on the West wall that the engine driver would have viewed the pit-head, or 'Bank' when winding.
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This simple line animation shows live steam - colored blue - entering the the cylinder on the right of the drawing, forcing the piston up, and then by means of valves, forcing the piston back down. Exhaust steam - colored yellow - is exhausted to the left of the drawing . The piston rod is joined by a connecting rod to a crank shaft and this movement is stabilized by a cross head and guides. The crank is connected to a brake wheel and the two rope wheels, with the blue up-cast rope exiting through the slot between the corbels of the house, while the red, down-cast rope exits through a hole in the roof. Both shafts at the Glyn were 190 yards deep, with coal - and men -being wound from 186 yards, and as the reel-type rope wheels were around fifteen feet diameter, a diameter which varied as the amount of rope wound on them, each winding cycle took only about twelve or thirteen revolutions of the engine. It should be understood that with the 'Reel' type of rope-wheel, the rope wound on itself.
