Counting the working hours !

After that the miners have come to the colliery they first go to the dressing rooms changing from their ordinary clothing to the clothing they wear underground. This - and the showering after the shift - is traditionally not part of the payed working hours. That is why the working hours do not begin at the colliery's gate but in a corridor between the dressing rooms and the pit bank.

This is exactly what you can see here. In the racks there are cards - one for each miner. These cards are inserted into the grey boxes on the right before and after the shift. That is how the working hours are counted computer-controlled. Similar machines can of course be found at nearly all German collieries.