THE ABERFORD RAILWAY

A number of British collieries provided a passenger service for their own work force (usually known as a ‘paddy train’) but in only two instances was this extended to a public service. Best known was the South Shields, Marsden & Whitburn Colliery Railway which ran a passenger service until November 1953 but there was one other far less well known example in West Yorkshire.

The coal measures at Garforth, originally a village just east of Leeds, are on the far north eastern corner of the Yorkshire coal field. As the coal outcropped here it was easily worked and mining began in early mediaeval times but was not properly developed into deep mines with shafts until the eighteenth century. The opening of the Leeds & Selby Railway on September 22, 1834, prompted Richard Gascoigne, owner of the various Garforth collieries