Description

Midland Railway Butterley: locomotive no 158A

The Notts-Derby Coalfield grew directly from the introduction of first canals and then railways to the region.

The Erewash, Cromford and Nottingham Canals first tapped the rich coal seams of the Erewash Valley, while the Chesterfield Canal connected the Rother valley with River Humber and the sea and the Grantham Canal opened up the Vale of Belvoir to trade.

The Midland Railway was founded primarily to move coal to market, and its rival the Great Northern Railway pushed into Midland territory to tap into the same collieries. Optimistic late-coming main lines, the Great Central and the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast railways proved over-ambitious and never fulfilled their potential.

The 64-page tour handbook covers all five of the canals in the region, and the heritage railways that celebrate the heyday of transport in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – the Midland Railway Butterley, the Great Central Railway at Loughborough and Ruddington, and the Barrow Hill Roundhouse – together with other railway sites including Bennerley Viaduct, Fledborough Viaduct and the Derby Railway Village.

For further information about the sites in the tour handbook, please click here.

If you prefer not to use the PayPal button above, please send a cheque for £10.00 per copy payable to Mike Higginbottom at 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Contact:  0114-242-0951 or 07946-650672 or mike@mikehigginbottominterestingtimes.co.uk