Enrichment plant
The renovated enrichment plant of the Mining Museum was opened to visitors in 2015. The building dates back to 1956 and operated as an enrichment factory until 2001. Now the building offers interesting experiences on its five floors. The enrichment factory includes a limestone tower, where in addition to the exhibition there is an observation platform with exciting views.
The enrichment plant is the main building of the museum, which hides a large and interactive exhibition about the formation of oil shale, its deposits, mining, and use. Also, the future of energy production is depicted. In the enrichment plant, you can experience hands-on exhibits, read and listen to stories. The most exciting exhibit on the first floor, which both children and parents love, is the simulator of a drilling machine.
There is also a ticket and information desk as well as a café on the ground floor of the main building. It is also the entrance to the underground mining museum, observation tower, and exhibition. You can also buy museum souvenirs there.
Underground Museum
The underground museum is certainly the most exciting part of the Mining Museum, which consists of former mining passages with a total length of 1 kilometer.
During the tour, you will follow the footsteps of real miners and get a sense of their daily working life in fresh, dark mining passages. You will gain new knowledge about oil shale mining, industry operation, and development. During the underground trip, you will pass through various miners’ underground work and rest places, ride a real underground mining train, and get acquainted with various underground techniques and mining technologies. You can also order a delicious miner’s lunch and enjoy it in a real underground miners’ canteen.
You are allowed to the underground museum only with an experienced guide.
The White House
In the old administrative building, you can go back to 1980 and see the conditions under which both, the mine managers and the miners worked. There are 19 rooms in the White House, you can get acquainted with the old-time work and living rooms and see how the wealthier miners of that time lived in the miner’s apartment.
On the ground floor there are:
- manager’s office
- nurse’s office
- miner’s apartment
- accounting
- room of the department head
- guard’s room
- washroom
- laundry drying room
- archive
- room with excavation measuring instruments
- switch room (entire local call center)
The duration of the tour is 30 mins.
Territory
The entire territory of the Mining Museum is interconnected by traffic routes. Outdoors are of mining equipment, a pumping station, a bunker, a stoll mouth, a sorting complex, an old administrative building, a boiler house, and a picturesque pond. It is possible to see the bucket of the largest excavator in Europe, weighing about 50 tons and the giant dump truck BelAZ. The territory can be explored both independently and with a guide.
In winter, the territory of the mining museum becomes an attractive winter center for the whole family.