The MSLR's Fitzwilliam Stubbin Lane Colliery Branch at Parkgate, The Mosaic & Narrative - Various

In this second of the series of colliery railways, the 1st being that devoted to the Thurgoland Branch, which left the Woodhead Main line, just before the Thurgoland Tunnel, to head of north-east to the Stanhope Silkstone Main Colliery, see-
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this second line is much more contemporary having survived into the 1980s. The reason for the line resulted from the sinking of pits in the area, the 1st sod being cut on 14 November 1913 and a Wagonway was built to transport coal south to the Dun Navigation. what later became the Sheffield & S.Yorks Navigation(S&SYN). Initially, the movement of coal from the pits, used what was at first a Wagonway, the 'Low Stubbin Incline', and Rail Tramway, to deliver the 'black nuggets' of coal to the staithes at the northern end of the Earl's short canal which had a junction with S&SYN. This waterway, the Greasbrough canal, was opened in 1780 to serve the pits of the Marquess of Rockingham on the west and north side of Rawmarsh; the Marquess died two years later and the estate passed to Earl Fitzwilliam. He owned the pits at High Stubbin & Swallow Wood and from the early 19th century these were joined to the canal by a Wagonway or 'Incline', so the coal could be either delivered to the coke ovens or trans-shipped further afield. This was is was the situation for a goodly number of years until the Sheffield & Rotherham Railway arrived in 1839, and built a branch line from its line at Holmes Junction, opened the year before, and joined the Earle's Incline railway at Parkgate alongside the canal. The Earl's estate bought a steam locomotive in 1840 for use on the line and the wagonway was re-built to accommodate a standard gauge loco to provide the motive power for the transport of the coal to the coke ovens of the SOuth Yorkshire Chemical Co. Ltd; they in turn proved coke for the blast furnaces at the Parkgate Iron & Steel works, a short distance away. Coal was also transferred onto barges at the coal staithes at the northern end of the canal, which had a junction with the main cut at Parkgate, the South Yorkshire & Sheffield Navigation, the coal then being transported onwards to Hull and Sheffield. Once the North Midland had built its railway in the area in the 1840s, between Derby and Leeds, the line passing through its station at Masbrough, the original connection of the colliery branch which went off to Holmes Junction was not required anymore and the line was finally closed in 1977. In the later years of the 1800s, the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway built its own line through the area and to the south of the Midland's line, providing a junction at Rotherham Road for a line which ran alongside the Greasbrough Canal to the canal head with its coke ovens and coal staithes. As seen in the video, the line can be divided into two parts, both originally using the Incline, the lower section serving New Stubbin Colliery, sunk between 1913 and 1915, was changed to locomotive working when the Midland and MSLR railway lines finally arrived, the upper section retaining its Wagonway. The final steam motive power was provided by two examples built by Hudswell Clarke & Co. of Leeds, No. 34, an outside cylinder, six-coupled side tank locomotive, No.1523, built in 1925, originally at the Appleby-Frodingham Steel Company in Scunthorpe, and which came to the line in the 1950s. The other was No.37, an outside cylinder, six-coupled saddle tank and they both worked until the mid-1960s, when the line became fully dieselised, Hudswell Clarke again supplying the power. The colliery ceased production on 6 July 1978 but the buildings were retained for a while as an underground store, until the mid-1980s when the site was cleared.

This first, mosaic image, in the pair of pieces on the Stubbin Colliery branch, shows the scene as it looked from the turn of the last century upto the situation in around 1960; there being no point in showing anything after that, map-wise, as changes in industrial usage around the southern end at Parkgate has obliterated almost all signs of what the area's past history was. The video which follows is in two parts, as mentioned above, the southern end around the canal and the second part from the Westfield Pumping station to the northern end of the New Stubbin site. Here are the details relating to the pictures in this mosaic-

1. Top left. An aerial view taken in 1947 from the 'Britain from Above' website, albeit in low resolution, showing all aspects of the colliery and associated Brickworks to the north-east. The line of the Low Stubbin Incline can clearly be seen heading towards the High Stubbin Colliery over to the left. The Incline then ran from the High Stubbin colliery area, north-east to yet another of the Earl Fitzwilliam sites at Low Stubbin, next to Wentworth Lane. Presumably the coal tubs were sent down the incline under gravity to end up at the rail head at the New Stubbin Colliery to the south. This picture also shows the open, and essentially vegetation free nature of the landscape in those years. There are a multitude of coal wagons around the place at the colliery site and the Brickworks appears to be supplied from material in the quarry right next door to it; called Bank Pit. At left is the hamlet of Upper Haugh with farmland occupying most of the other space and, in the right background, Swinton.. 'Twas a different world', back then, 2 or 3 years after the end of World War II and most attempting to recover from 5 years of nightmare ... lest hope recent events don't result in a nightmare of different proportions.

2. Centre. Main map of the area in 1905, from the junction with the GC line at Parkgate in the south and heading north-west, running to the west of Rawmarsh and passing Nether & Upper Haugh before turning to the north-east, past Higher Stubbin and on to terminate at Low Stubbin. The northern extremity was close to Warren House on Wentworth Road and this whole area is now covered in new housing, some of it in the process of expansion at the present time. Earl Fitzwilliam established colliers at Low and High Stubbin, and eventually at New Stubbin further south, and coal was transported away from there using an incline, built in two sections, one from Low Stubbin Colliery to High Stubbin and then on from High Stubbin to the coal staithes at the top of the Greasbrough Canal. This was until the arrival of the railways, when a branch line was built from a junction off the GC at Parkgate, and in fact as the map shows, there was also a connection to the Midland line, the branch line extending as far as the New Stubbin Colliery. This 1905 map shows that at this time there were Coke Ovens on the north-west side of the end of the canal, a bridge over the canal just south of the ovens which took a line over to the east, fanning out into a mass of sidings closer to Parkgate. The end of the canal branch from the Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation can be seen on the map with yet another set of sidings come of the branch line and heading south-west towards Parkgate. The end of the canal was just south of Mangham Road and that too has now been populated with a host of industrial units on both sides of the road completely obliterating any sign of the railway there; however, in 1982 Adrian Wynn was about with his camera and in the associated video, I have included this picture, with his permission. It is a stark testament to how things were starting to change in 1982 after the big industrial clearances of the area, here and all over. Mangham Quarry is also shown on the map, just above Mangham Road not far from the branch line rail alignment. The bridge over which the freight movements pass, shown in the associated video, can be seen to the south where the branch line curves round to form a junction with the GC's main line at Rotherham Road, home to both the GC's signalbox, also shown in the video and the Rotherham Road Station. The station is visible at the bottom of the map, juts under the Rotherham to Rawmarsh road bridge, and the map also shows, at this time, the signalbox in its old position, just beyond the station and next to the swing bridge over the Greasbrough Canal. The box must have been moved further west alongside the Stubbin Colliery Branch, when the swing bridge fell out of use and when the station finally succumbed to the closures in the 1970s; the final position of the signal box is also shown in the video. As can be seen from the terrain shown in picture 1 at top left and inspection of the map, the colliery branch wended its way northwards through countryside and behind housing and garden allotments to ride in grade towards the main colliery almost totally obliterated from view in the surrounding area; itself heavily festooned with iron & steel works, collieries and other heavy manufacturing concerns, all of which would have been enough to hide the site of the coal works further north. In this map, just as the alignment veers off from direct north to slightly north-west, a line comes off the branch and heads to the Earl Fitzwilliam pumping shaft at the Westfield Pump House on Westfield Road. The area of the pump house is still extant, as is the splendid looking pump house and this too is featured in the accompanying video. This facility was still in operation in 1923, the epoch of the map detail in picture 3, but by the 1950s, shown in the map in picture 6, the single track line to the pump house had gone, but the pumping station was still in place; as it was in October this year, see video! Apart from the main colliery sites, the map shows other colliery shafts, 'New Deep', a Roman Ridge(Road), Bank Pit brickworks, Kent's Main Colliery, Low Pottery, a 'Fever Hospital', the British Wagon Works, Car House Colliery and in the lower left corner, 'Primrose Bridge' over the Midland Main Line, which many of us will recognise as a vantage point for photography, and which is also still in place. This map identifies some of the features, shown in blue, mentioned here in the text, including the location of the long gone 'Swallow Wood Colliery', opened in 1828, and as can be seen here on this 1905 map, it had gone by this time, with only 'Old Shafts' marked, indicting where it used to be. Just a little further north from the Swallow Wood site, a road bridge passes over the Low Stubbin Incline, the route of this Incline later being used to extend the railway as far as Bank Pit Brick Works and the New Stubbin Colliery. This bridge is shown in the video as a 'Then & Now' piece featuring a picture by the noted railway photographer and writer, Adrian Booth, and a picture I took on the 15th September this year; the contrast between the two pictures couldn't be more stark. This change in the fortunes of the branch is also reflected in a similar fashion with the 'Then & Now' pictures, four and five, featured on this page, see the details which follow next.

3. Top right. Detail from the top of the 1905 map at centre, but this time in 1923, showing the end of the colliery Incline to both the Higher & Lower Stubbin sites. Now things have changed in the 18 or so years since the 1905 map and the two-part Incline has gone, there just being a track on the map to indicate its location. In addition, both the Higher and Low Stubbin collieries have gone and the sites look to have been cleared. The space where the collieries were located were left almost untouched for decades but over the last 10 or 20 years new housing development, Upper Haugh, on and near the Low Stubbin site, along with the Marquis Public house, built right on the old Wagonway trackbed and with some limited residential dwellings built on the site of Higher Stubbin. At the lower edge of this map, the New Stubbin Colliery and its railway can be seen which had its first 'sod cut', on 14 November 1913 and it took until 1915 to complete the sinking; this map is from 1923.

4. A picture taken in 1978 by Adrian Booth, the railway photographer and writer, and reproduced here with his permission. This shows the Hudswell-Clark diesel shunter, #D1128, backing a rake of MGR coal wagons down grade, alongside the Greasbrough Canal. It will soon pass under what is now the Midland Main line bridge, see next picture, past the South Yorkshire Chemical Works behind the train on the right and on to the junction and sidings of the MSLR's main line at Rotherham Road. There was limited room for manoeuvre of the loco along the branch line and it looks as if the shunter always 'faced north', and depending on the grade was either at the high-end of the rake of wagons, as here, or at the low-end, as will be seen as the shunter passes under the road bridge, in the video which follows next. The shunter isn't far off the Rotherham Road sidings here and it must be backing the rake, wrong-line? back along the main line towards the sidings from where, after uncoupling, it will set off back to the colliery, 'funnel first'.

5. Lower right. The best I could do, looking south towards the MSLR's main line, this picture shows a similar vantage point, a little further up the branch line than that shown in picture 4. The bank on the right, behind the fisherman and palisade fence protecting the Midland line, was where the diesel shunter was reversing its rake of coal wagons down grade to the Rotherham Road sidings. This view being taken from the 'tow path', on the same side of the canal as in the previous picture, the canal banks now much showing much more in the way of unkempt undergrowth along the bank sides. Passing north across the bridge on the Midland Main line is a Cross Country class 220, 'Voyager', heading to Glasgow Central on the 1S35, eight hour service from Bath Spa, having departed around 06:00 that morning. It would have been interesting to see a similar picture with the shunter reversing under the Midland line with traction of that era, 1978, passing over the top!

6. Lower left. A later, 1950s, map showing the colliery branch, with all of the line up to the New Stubbin Colliery still in place, beyond that, the formation up to the Higher & Low Stubbin Collieries & the Low Stubbin Incline, have all been abandoned and removed. The South Yorkshire Chemical Works now stands prominent at the southern end of the line with the coke ovens & coal staithes surrounding the head of the canal still in situ as shown on the 1905 map at centre. The short line off the branch line, to the Westfield Pumping house has been removed but the pumping station was still in place at that time and in fact it is still there in 2016, see video. PArts of the Pumping Station site are now given over to small businesses as is part of the Pumping Station house itself. What this map also shows, once again, is the extent of the workings and rail-related infra-structure which once existed in this very dense area of old industry, the Parkgate Iron & Steel Works and the associated colliery taking up much of the land in-between and to either side of the two main lines, North Midland & MSLR to its south. 'Park Gate' has now become 'Parkgate' on the latest maps, the collieries have all gone and now only the Aldwarke site remains withe its U.E.S. United Engineering Steels division and still, currently owned by TATA.

Taken on: November 23, 2016

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New Stubbin Colliery

RHTT

Rail Head Treatment Train

Class 20

20303

20301

Max Joule 1958-1999

Direct Rail Services

DRS

Stocksbridge Works to York Thrall Europa

EWS

Class 66

66105

6Z58

Briggs Sidings to Ferrybridge Power Station

66192

6E31

Margam TC to Hartlepool BSC

66104

0J81

Doncaster LIP to Masbrough FD

Freightliner

66528

Madge Elliot MBE, Borders Railway Opening 2015

4G61

Ratcliffe Heavy Haul to Hunslet Yard

Devon & Cornwall Railway

DCR

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56311

Chaddesden Sidings to Stockton Thomson

56312

6Z61

66005

Belmont Down Yard to Didcot Power Station

Northern Rail

Class 144

144xxx

2R71

Sheffield to Scunthorpe

144005

2N25

Leeds to Sheffield

Class 142

142022

2R15

Lincoln to Adwick

142024

2P65

Scunthorpe to Lincoln

Earl Fitzwilliam Colliery Co. Ltd

G.C.R.

Great Central Railway

M.S.L.R.

Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway

Low Stubbin Incline

Nether Haugh

Coke Ovens

Coal Staithes

South Yorkshire Chemical Works

Hudswell Clarke

Diesel Shunter #D1128

MGR Wagons

Rotherham Road Signal Box

Parkgate Iron & Steel

Greasbrough Canal

Adrian Booth

Adrian Wynn

Westfield Pump House

Bank Pit

Swallow Wood Colliery

Sheffield & Rotherham Railway

Sheffield & S.Yorks Navigation « less

Sets appears in: • Parkgate

Groups appears in: • South Yorkshire Railway History

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