The Flockton Tramway and Kaye's Mineral Railway

[Ruston]

Two disused railways for the price of one dog-walk, last Sunday.

 

The Flockton Tramway is a name I have given this line for reference but I don't think it ever had a name as such as it was a private mineral trmway and never carried passengers. It was built sometime around 1772-78 by the Milnes family  as a wooden tramway or "Newcastle Road" to carry coals from their pits around Flockton, in the parish of Shitlington, West Riding, to the Calder & Hebble Navigation at Horbury Bridge, about 3 miles away..

 

The main pit being known as Lane End Colliery, which worked up to eight different seams of coal from 15 to 33 inches in depth and in 1843 it employed 500 men and boys (employing females underground was outlawed in 1842) and, by the standards of the time, was considered a large colliery.

 

The line was worked by horses and self-acting inclines. At sometime post 1816 the line was relaid with Stephenson & Losh type fish-bellied cast iron edge rails on cast iron chairs and stone blocks. The route included a tunnel and one of the earliest railway viaducts.

 

By 1878 some of the line had been relaid with flat bottom rail and on the lower, flatter section, locomotive haulage was in use in the form of a Manning Wardle F class locomotive of 3ft. 9in gauge.

 

In 1893 the miners came out on strike as part of the Great Yorkshire, Lancashire and Midlands coal strike of that year. The leases on the land ran out in December of 1893 and were not renewed, thus the colliery closed and the company, Milnes, Stansfield & Co. went into liquidation owing creditors £56,968 17s 8d.

 

Kaye's Mineral Railway was a standard gauge pivately-owned railway, serving pits that were originally owned by Sir John Lister Lister Kaye of Denby Grange. The pits and railway later became the Denby Grange Collieries and included Caphouse (now the NCM), Wood Pit (later known as Denby Grange) and Victoria Colliery. The line was about 5 miles in length and included 3 rope-worked inclines and 2 switchbacks on the loco-hauled lower section. The line fed into the L&Y at Crigglestone and to staithes on the Calder & Hebble Navigation.

 

Part of the lower section remained in use with the National Coal Board and it's successor British Coal right up until 1993 as British Oak Disposal Point.

 

Walking along Hayne Lane. This is now nothing more than a footpath but was once a lane. The picture is looking south. The stone gatepost could well be a gate for the tramway crossing. The clump of trees in the middle distance has grown on a small mine tip and the line of trees in the distance is Dial Wood and the line of the Kaye line.

 

Looking north at the same spot. The clump of trees on the left is the site of another pit along the tramway's route. The white building is the Reindeer public house and the chimney that is visible is that of Caphouse colliery, now the National Coalmining Museum.

 

Looking down the course of the incline of the Kaye line at New Hall. The upper part, where I was standing, is a tarmac road now names New Hall approach.

 

Looking up the incline.

 

Part way up the incline, at the edge of Dial Wood is what I suspect is the remains of a pumping engine house that would have been part of a pit served by the tramway. I am stood on the road which was the Kaye line trackbed. The Kaye line appears to have been constructed through a waste tip of this earlier pit at this point.

 

Looking approx. SSW from the Kaye line trackbed and showing the viaduct of the tramway. I suspect the land on the right of the viaduct has been bult up since its construction. The tunnel which passed under the Kaye line is supposed to survive but I have been unable to locate it.

 

Almost at the top of New Hall Approach is the chimney of No.1 incline engine house.

 

It was very hot and by now I'd had enough even if the dog hadn't, so I decided to call it a day and go for a drink...