AbstractThe authors have conducted a laboratory‐scale gallery fire test on nine different rubber conveyor belts with fabric skeletons. The interior of the gallery used in this test was 2.5 m long, 0.35 m wide and 0.35 m high. The fire test on each sample was conducted in the upward airflow of the inclined gallery as well as in the horizontal one, and both 60 mm and 90 mm wide specimens, whose length was about 1.5 m, were provided for each test. The test results were compared with those from some other small‐scale flammability tests; i.e. the small‐scale flame, the oxygen index and the hot plate ignition tests. In addition, some problems in the laboratory‐scale gallery fire test were also discussed. As a result, it has been found empirically that determination of both the time to ignition and the flame‐propagation speed could be significant in case the flame propagated over the whole length of the belt specimen in the gallery, so that the fire resistance of the belt samples could be classified