Steam engine Birkenhead passing beneath Hemingfield Colliery

Steaming ahead

There’s nothing more inspiring than arriving at Hemingfield to find a steam engine on the move and already at work. The Friends of Hemingfield Colliery are lucky to have the Elsecar Heritage Railway right by our site,  on a branch line first laid in 1850 as part of the the South Yorkshire Coal Railway (enabled by the 1847 South Yorkshire Doncaster and Goole Railway Act).  Built to serve Elsecar’s collieries and ironworks, the line transformed the market for Earl Fitzwilliam’s coal, opening lucrative markets beyond the reach of the Dearne and Dove canal. Barnsley and silkstone seam coals were soon on their way down the Great Northern Railway to London coal merchants at the Kings Cross coal depot.

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