<div align="center">(http://www1.sulekha.com/mstore/s19c/albums/Switzerland/Jungfrau%20ice%20tunnel.jpg)</div><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Blue Highway Linocut;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 36pt;"><strong>The Mines</strong></span></span></div><br/>The mines on The Cooler are the reason that the prison colony exists. The mineral found in long veins beneath the surface of the ice, known to the Empire as Gelumium was discovered some fifty years ago by an Imperial geological Survey team, who were examining the otherwise useless planet to see if it could be of any value to the empire. No credible explanation of exactly how the mineral came to be in the ice in such useful quantities has ever been put forward. Gelumium ore is found in trace quantities on a few other worlds which are either going through a period of intense glaciation, or have substantial ice caps, but HZ1128 is the first ice planet found to have anything more than a few grains of the stuff per million parts. In most situations where Gelumium is found, it is evenly distributed through the ice in such minute amounts as to make its extraction prohibitively expensive.<br/><br/>Refined Gelumium is extremely useful as a superconductor, and since it's inclusion in molecular circuitry the creation of AIs, ship-board computers and nanotechnology have all become 50% more efficient.<br/><br/>An ever increasing supply of the mineral is thus vital to the continued wealth of the Empire.<br/><br/>Gelumium is a yellowish green crystal. A thin vein of it looks for all the world like snow that has been pissed on! The main difference is that Gelumium does not melt when raised above 4°c. In fact it's melting point is 32°c.<br/><br/>The mines on HZ1128 are dug where the richest concentrations of Gelumium are found. Prison camps are always sited within easy walking distance of a mine shaft. Also within easy walking distance will be a shuttle pad.<br/><br/>Power to all facilities is provided mostly by wind turbines that are made of an extremely hard-wearing transparent polymer known as Duraplaz® This material is, in fact, used to make almost every structure and item on HZ1128. Duraplaz has some unique properties that make it the perfect material for use on the prison colony:<br/><br/>1) It is almost completely indestructible, having a similar molecular structure to Buckminsterfullerene, in a polymer form. It is almost totally inert and requires special catalysts to put it together and take it apart. It is totally resistant to extremes of temperature and is also a good insulator.<br/><br/>2) The open molecular structure is often threaded through with molecular sized strips of superconducting material, thus enabling the transmission of electricity via a hardened and all but indestructible power grid. Fluorescent materials can also be introduced into the polymer making the Duraplaz glow when a current is passed through it. It does so without producing any heat. Alternatively an exothermic material can be introduced that will warm up slightly when current passes through it.<br/><br/>3) It is completely transparent, meaning that there is no opportunity for inmates to hide anything by using it.<br/><br/>4) It is cheap and easy to manufacture in large quantities, in a wide variety of shapes.<br/><br/>5) It is very lightweight for it's volume, having an exceedingly low density.<br/><br/>In the mines themselves, the mine shafts and tunnels are lined with Duraplaz pillars and roof boards. Corner pieces that run along the yupper corners of the tunnels carry the electric current from the power grid, and are fluorescent. They are also hollow and are used to pump fresh air into the tunnels from the surface.<br/><br/>In larger, well used tunnels, Duraplaz rails will be laid to ease the passage of ore and spoil wagons to the surface. Ore and spoil wagons are also made from Duraplaz.<br/><br/>The wagons are 1m high (including the wheels) by 1m wide by 1.5m long. The volume of the wagon is 995 litres. If filled with liquid water each wagon would weigh exactly 1 ton. Filled with ice spoil, the wagons weigh about nine tenths of a ton. Filled with Gelumium crystals, they weigh around three quarters of a ton.<br/><br/>Wagons are propelled by inmates often referred to colloquially as "pit ponies". These inmates are usually equipped with a harness that attached to the hips and shoulders, enabling them to pull the wagons with maximum effect. Detachable harness shafts are connected to the front of the wagon. When the wagon reaches its destination, they are detached and moved to the opposite side for the return journey.<br/><br/>The spacer bars between the rails (often called sleepers after the construction of old fashioned railway systems) provide the pit ponies with traction.<br/><br/>A manual track switching system is used, operated by the pit ponies. Points are "run-through" from the trailing direction - in other words they will switch automatically as the wagon runs over them. In the facing direction, the pony must choose which track to take and operate the switch before she reaches the turning. Passing loops are provided at regular intervals in all tunnels.<br/><br/>In the smaller tunnels closer to the digging faces, there is no room for the larger wagons and so smaller wheeled buckets 500mm long by 300mm wide by 300mm deep are used to drag ore and spoil from the digging face.  The face workers will often be working in a space big enough to allow them to lie more or less on top of each other and no larger, as the average cross-section of a gelumium vein is around 200 square centimetres. The face workers are not there to widen the tunnel, that is the job of the excavation team that follows them.<br/><br/>Pit Ponies are often co-opted onto the excavation and shoring teams.<br/><br/>To bond the Duraplaz, a special catalyst tape called Plazweld® is used. This tape is supplied on rolls, under the supervision of the Pit-Prop chief. The tape is very tough and requires a steel blade to cut it. The only steel blades permitted on the planet are built into the Plazweld dispensers. The tape is placed between the two peices of Duraplaz and a thin red strip is pulled off the outside of it. This initiates a chemical reaction which is thermally neutral (takes in no heat and gives out no heat), which will permanently bond the Plazweld to any Duraplaz it is in contact with. The reaction takes a few seconds to complete, at the end of which the Plazweld will have gone from being a flexible strip to an immobile mass.<br/><br/>In the event that a piece of Duraplaz needs to be moved, or the possible accidental attachment of something to the Plazweld, a loquid solvent known as Solplaz® is provided. A single drop ot this solvent, applied to a strip of hardened Plazweld, will, after a few seconds, reduce it to a fine powder. This reaction is slightly exothermic (it gives out a small amount of heat). Thus it is recomended that Plazweld and Solplaz not be stored where they might come in accidental contact with each other while underground as accidental contact could result in possible melting of the ice.<br/><br/>All mining tools are made from Duraplaz.<br/><br/>Vertical shafts are all fitted with an electrically operated elevator.<br/><br/>At the pit-head, spoil wagons are routed to the spoil tip, where they are emptied.  The spoil tip is a number of long sidings that are being continually moved, extended and raised up so that when the pony activated the tip mechanism on the wagon, the wagon will empty itself of the ice dug out of the mine.<br/><br/>Ore wagons are routed to the sorting and grading area where they are also emptied into a hopper. This hopper raises the temperature of it's contents to 10°c, enough to melt the ice but not the Gelumium. The liquid water is allowed to flow away and is piped to the spoil top where it is allowed to re-freeze. The Gelumium crystals are released onto a conveyor belt where they are graded and loaded into three different wagons. Grade 1 is the finest crystal and contains the least impurities making it ideal for nanotech. Grade two is medium sized and mostly used for creating AI and computer circuitry. Grade three are the larger crystals and are most useful for making data storage chips. Grading is largely automatic but there is always a supervisor on hand overseeing the process.<br/><br/>The three graded wagons are then hauled by three more ponies to the shuttle pad, where they will be tipped into three waiting containers. When a container is almost full it's built in detector will signal this fact to the space station and a shuttle will be dispatched to retrieve it. The containers are returned to the planet filled with food stuffs, supplies and the occasional reward item.<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Anything I've forgotten or got wrong, let me know!