Kimmeridge is the type locality for Kimmeridge clay, the geological formation that covers most of the parish. Within the clay are bands of bituminous shale, which in the history of the village have been the focus of several attempts to create an industrial centre. An oil well has operated on the shore of Kimmeridge Bay since 1959.

The roughly semi-circular Kimmeridge Bay is southwest of Kimmeridge village. It is backed by low cliffs of soft shale, and beneath the cliffs is a large wave-cut platform (known as The Flats) and a rocky shore with rock pools and attendant ecology. Kimmeridge Bay is a surfer and diver area.

Europe, Portugal, Lisboa, Cais do Sodre, Calceteiros , calçada portuguesa (slighly cut)

When you visit a Portuguese town you will notice the elegant traditional pavement with its small stones placed in all kinds of graphical motives and mosaiques. Placing and maintaining them is a craft. Two workers (calceteiros) are seen here performing it.

“Portuguese pavement (calçada portuguesa, Europ is a traditional-style pavement is a traditional-style pavement used for many pedestrian areas in Portugal. It consists of small flat pieces of various different stones, arranged to form a pattern or picture, like a mosaic. It can also be found in Olivença and throughout old Portuguese colonies, such as Brazil and Macau. Portuguese workers are also hired for their skill in creating these pavements in places such as Gibraltar. Being usually used in sidewalks, it is in squares and atriums that this art finds its deepest expression. Paving as a craft is believed to have originated in Mesopotamia, where rocky materials were used in the inside and outside of constructions, being later brought to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The Romans used to pave the vias connecting the empire using materials to be found in the surroundings. Some of the techniques introduced then are still applied on the calçada, most noticeably the use of a foundation and a surfacing.

While São Paulo is currently reforming the sidewalks of its Paulista Avenue, here one of the places in the city that has Portuguese pavement, and exchanging it for a more cheap and common type of pavement, in other Brazilians cities such as Rio de Janeiro it remains popular, nearly ubiquitous in the wealthier areas.” (Source: here)

One of the core pieces of traffic making up the Montana Rail Link’s overhead traffic for BNSF is the large fleets of coal trains that shuttle Powder River Basin sub-bituminous coal from the mines in Wyoming and Montana to Roberts Bank, British Columbia for export to overseas customers. Seen here at De Smet with a fresh crew ready to handle the run from Missoula, Montana to Spokane, Washington, these coal loads still have quite a long run ahead of them before reaching their unloading point.

A set of helper units pushes a loaded unit coal train as it begins its journey back down the Manor Branch. The first couple of miles out of Bailey are uphill, so loaded trains get a push from the rear.

www.visitstannes.info/about/history/the-white-church/

Listed Building Grade II*

List Entry Number : 1196364

Date First Listed : 22 February 1991

Also known as "the White Church". Congregational church, now united Reformed church. 1904 and 1911, by Briggs, Wolstenholme and Thornley; with stained glass by Luke S. Walmesley of St Annes and Charles Elliott of London.

Mostly white faience, but hall to rear of red brick with buff terracotta dressings; slate and bituminous asphalt roofs.Free Byzantine style.

The principal element is a square vessel with a domed roof, a tall octagonal minaret tower at the north-east corner and octagonal turrets with domed lanterns at the south-east and north-west corners. Each of these 3 corners has an extruded 3-sided porch with pilasters, dentilled cornice and geometrical panelled parapet, and a round-headed doorway in the centre bay; the roof of the main porch, at the north-east corner, has swept and scrolled brackets to the corners of the tower, which has tall round-headed panels in the sides, a dentilled cornice, and a 3-stage lantern or belfry, the 1st stage open-arcaded, the 2nd with latticed windows, and the top with a domed roof surmounted by a cross. The 2 principal sides are filled with wide projected gabled bays which have large segmental-headed tripartite windows, and parapets; and attached to the west side of the north-west porch is an octagonal parlour with round-headed windows and a domed roof. Attached at the rear is a hall of red brick, on a parallel axis, the east gable having a Diocletian window with run-out vousoirs of buff terracotta.

INTERIOR: square main vessel with chamfered corners (porches in 2 corners, choir vestry and organ chamber in the others) and in each side a wide segmental-arched alcove illuminated by stained glass windows illustrating biblical scenes, a large number of historical religious figures, and events such as the departure of the Pilgrim fathers and the Great Ejection of Nonconformist clergy. The item is an unusual design and forms a very conspicuous and well-known landmark between Lytham and St Annes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_buildings_in_Lytham

historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1196364

47 years after the Pennsy folded, assimilated into the ill-fated Penn Central, a load of Western Pennsylvania bituminous coal rolls east past still-operational PRR signals behind the Erie-built PRR heritage unit.

Jellico lies in the heart of Tennessee’s coal mining region. The Jellico Coalfield was famous for its high quality bituminous coal. Mining firms owned eighty percent of the land in Campbell and Claiborne counties, providing most of the jobs in this impoverished area of northern Tennessee between 1880 and 1930.

In 1906, a railroad car packed with dynamite exploded in Jellico, killing eight and destroying part of the town. The town quickly recovered, however, and many of the buildings in the Main Street area dated from this period.

DSCF4695

The steam crews on Connecticut's Valley Railroad strive to fire their locomotives as cleanly as possible. After all, they have lots of sensitive neighbors all along the line, including private residences, and marinas, where expensive yacht owners don't want their white sails stained by soot and cinders. The railroad provides very detailed instruction to their fireman as to where they can fire and where they absolutely must be clean stack. They also have experimented with a variety of coal types, including mixes of both bituminous (soft) and anthracite (hard) coal. In this scene, Consolidation #97, a 1926-vintage Alco product, takes a short excursion consist through the meadow in Centerbrook, just north of the Essex Station at roughly Milepost 4.4, en route to Deep River on a late October afternoon. This train was performing for a 2024 Dak Dillon Photography charter, and the crew was actually trying to make some smoke for us, albeit unsuccessfully.

A view of the loading point at the Grivice on the 760mm narrow gauge industrial railway where wagons loaded with coal are ready for despatch as 0-8-0 Class 55 steam locomotive, 55-99, continues along the single line heading a charter train. The Tuzla Basin in Bosnia is amongst the largest supplier of lignite and sub-bituminous coal in Eastern Europe, won from four large open pits, which supply the Tuzla thermal electric plant - Bosnia's largest power station (715 MW). Coal is transported by both conventional and narrow gauge railways largely by diesel engines but steam locomotives are still used for shunting and as a backup for the diesels. Banovici, Bosnia Herzegovina.

And for that brief moment in black and white, one can almost feel the cinders under ones feet and smell the bituminous coal smoke and believe, just believe. Signed up for another 611/NCTM extravaganza and because of that I dug through the pix to come up with some steam pix from the April photo shoot.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.

The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.

The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.

The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.

A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.

The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.

Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.

Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.

The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.

A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.

A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.

The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.

The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.

The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.

Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.

The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.

In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.

In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.

Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

This is a composite image created to celebrate the mining industry that was once prevalent in the Welsh valleys in which I now live.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

SOO 4402 crawls past the Northland Bituminous silos, decorated with a large American flag. This clean shot was made possible due to this unit being all by itself as it was heading back to CHS to pick up more cars.

View On Black

An empty coal train heads back to the mines of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Running south through the Mon River Valley, the lumbering steel and aluminum giant rolls right down the center of Main Street in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania (creeping at less than 10 miles per hour). Note the "Weight Limit 8 Tons" sign at the entrance to Main Street. An empty coal train weighs in the neighborhood of 2,500 to 3,000 tons. When this train makes its return trip north, with a hundred or more hoppers filled with bituminous coal, it will weigh well over 12,000 tons.

Bergbaumuseum Schloss Burgk in Freital - Blick auf die erste elektrische Grubenlokomotive der Welt. Die "Dorothea" (griechisch: "Geschenk Gottes") genannte Lok wurde von Siemens & Halske in Berlin gebaut und kam ab 1882 bis 1927 im Königlichen Steinkohlenwerk Zauckerode zum Einsatz.

------------------------

The first electric mine railway in the world was developed by Siemens & Halske for bituminous coal mining in Saxon Zauckerode near Dresden (now Freital) and was being worked as early as 1882 on the 5th main cross-passage of the Oppel Shaft run by the Royal Saxon Coal Works.

------------------------

Instagram I Homepage

------------------------

Dieses Foto ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwendung ist nur mit ausdrücklicher schriftlicher Genehmigung meinerseits zulässig. Dies gilt auch für die Nutzung auf privaten Homepages.

------------------------

Please Note: This photo ist (C) Copyrighted & All Rights Reserved. Do not use this image in any form without my written permission.

------------------------

Carbon (C, atomic number 6) In the form of bituminous coal mined in Emery County, Utah. Variation on the theme "periodic table" for the Macro Mondays group. HMM

@ ~ )

A bit late with the 365 up-load, I have taken the shots, just a few time constraints as a result of hugging Mom !

The withdrawal on the 1 January 2008 of the existing British Standards for asphalt and their replacement with new European Standards represented a change for the road-surfacing sector on an unprecedented scale !

A New European Standard BS EN 13108 Parts 1 to 7 replaced the former British Standards ~ BS 594 (Hot Rolled Asphalt) and BS 4987 (Bituminous Macadams) !

I wouldn' t know the ' game ' now but it was good to come across this small asphalt team resurfacing one of the city centres principal roads despite all the snow the city recently has suffered ! Brought back some good memories, and, as I now have taken up photography, I can record them too ! A couple of other shots in the comment box, I wont bore you all with the remainder !

When the bridge was built in 1931, the Mt Lindsay Road was the main Tenterfield to Brisbane link. The bridge was constructed by NSW Department of Main Roads in 1931 to address access requirements as the crossing at Koreelah Creek was a ford, with steep approaches, and was frequently blocked for long periods.Mr. W. L. Jemison was the contractor for the work at the lump sum price of 8,729 pounds. The date of completion, according to the contract, was 22nd September, 1930.

The following extract is taken from a Department of Main Roads publication dated 1930:

"The new high level bridge has a total length of 211 ft. 6 inches and a width of roadway between kerbs of 20 feet, and is to he constructed entirely of reinforced concrete. It consists of a 160-feet barrel arch span with open spandrels and an approach span 25ft. 9 inches. long at either end. The latter are of the usual deck girder type, resting at one end on a trestle buried in the earthwork of the approaches and carried down to rock, and at the other, on a pier carried down to the abutment of the arch. The rapidity of the flood waters and the very large drift brought down thereby necessitated the use of a single span for the central portion of the structure, while the inaccessibility of the locality and the consequent high price of steel delivered to the bridge site were contributing factors in the decision to use a concrete arch, for which the foundations and the general situation as regards elevation of roadway were ideal. The superstructure has been designed to be as light in weight as possible and consists of deck girders sup- ported on columns. The girders are spaced at 8 feet centres and have a span of 12 ft. 2 in. centre to centre of columns. In order to reduce secondary stresses in the arch ring from the columns, the footings of the short columns will be hinged. A 1 inch bituminous expansion joint will be provided at the junction of the approach spans of the superstructure and the arch.

All columns exposed to flood will be strengthened by a cross wall extending to a height of 2 feet above high flood level. The arch will be 160 feet between springings, with a rise of 31 feet, giving a ratio of length to rise of 5.17. The barrel of the arch will have a uniform width of 20 feet, with a thickness at the crown of 22 inches, and at the springing 36 inches. The arch ring has been shaped to conform with the line of pressure from dead load only and, consequently, the only bending stresses from dead load result from arch shortening. The live load stresses for various sections were derived from the consideration of influence lines. The maximum temperature range was assumed at plus or minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. No stresses due to shrinkage were included, as the method specified for the construction of the arch, viz., by sections in a prescribed order, should reduce shrinkage to a minimum. The slenderness of the arch barrel tends to reduce temperature stress, but increases the tendency to buckling. It is, therefore. specified that the superstructure shall be completed before the form work under the arch is lowered. The abutments of the arch are to be carried down to hard sandstone. The maximum foundation pressure will be 9.5 tons per square foot and the maximum stress in the arch ring will not exceed 650 Ib. per square inch. The lowest point of the foundation will be 13 ft. 6 in. under normal water level. The highest flood level will be 17 feet above the springings and 16 feet under the deck level at the crown. The total amount of concrete will be 750 cubic yards and of steel 44.5 tons.

Mr. W. L. Jemison is the contractor for the work at the lump sum price of 8,729 pounds. The date of completion, according to the contract is 22nd September, 1930. On completion this bridge will include the longest concrete arch span in New South Wales. With its height and situation, it should present a fine appearance and become an interesting example of aesthetic design."

Source: New South Wales Heritage Register.

Despite the unusually high temperature for November and resultant lack of exhaust, the sight of a working 'Kriegslok' on the main line in 2014 was quite remarkable, even then! Ex-Yugoslavian Railways 2-10-0 No.33248 trundles into the Bosnian Railways Ljubace exchange sidings at Breze with a long loaded train from the Dubrave mine loading point on 5th November 2014. The 'Tuzla Basin' in northeastern Bosnia Herzegovina has been an industrial mainstay since the 1880s and is one of the largest suppliers of lignite (brown coal) and sub-bituminous coal to several power plants in the region, including Bosnia's largest (715 MW) steam-electric plant located in Tuzla, which is reliant on the provision of its fuel from the two loading points at Dubrave and Sikulje from steam locomotives originally built during the 2nd World War and intended for a limited operational life!

© Gordon Edgar - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission

Dutch landscapes -

The Oosterschelde pumping station was built in 1910. It was founded as a steam pumping station and operated as such until 1932. In that year another pumping station was built. The steam engine ca and the coal shed have completely disappeared. It concerns a building of one building layer on a T-shaped floor plan. The short side of the T points to the dike and housed the machine. The long side is in the water building above a barrel vault. The short side has an unhistoric bituminous roofing, the long side is covered with stuccoed pans. The façade openings are still partly historic. The former steam pumping station is of general interest because of: - the characteristic structure (arrangement of functionally related building volumes) and placement (half on the dike, half in the water); - the relationship with chimney and service residence; - the relationship with the polder that dumped this pumping station.

South Korean domestic bituminous coal carrier "HANJIN GREEN" (한진 그린)

Yeosu power plant pier, Yeosu, Korea

She is transporting bituminous coal from Gwangyang to Yeosu with another carrier "KOREX YEOSU"

flickr.com/photos/98415324@N07/51908680794

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

From the red clay to bituminous, and the carts to vans, village landscape has changed much. Looking up, when you then spot a stray cattle, you know you have the city behind you, the grass on both sides are greener, the air is cooler and filled with sweet, fresh, powerfully evocative smell of fresh shower.

Breathe in...

© All rights reserved, don´t use this image without my permission. Contact me at debmalya86@gmail.com

This old farm house, heavy on the white - plenty of lead in the paint I bet, is across Jasper Road from the International "Binder" shot that I recently posted. This is the Erie - Wise Homestead Museum farm house that looks fairly spiffed for the museum collection. Certainly, agricultural museums are far more valuable than the crops that were formerly grown on the lands... so long as we can get our food from Argentina and China. Of course, the Chinese chow is more likely processed with melamine for the benefits of extra protien. My Gawd, my dog just died! Probably not getting enough cheese whiz. The one pet here is my early robin worming the sparse but early spring grass. Oh well, the early bird, etal. He might have done better in February and early March. The robin could be shooed away with the broom.

The old farm house caught my attention because of the rain barrel under the porch gutter and I started tracking eDDie's fresh snow yet again. Perhaps the barrel is not original but I thought about Colorado state legislators bashing each other about collecting rain water from a roof, currently illegal. Why? That water would never be useful nor drain onto the Wise property, one way or the otherwise. There is massive difference between draining water and having a barrel in the draining rhereof. Genius. Sheesh! The US suffers from an overburden of stupid people who buy their way into the gummint for personal gain. Business is best done by buying politicians.

This spot is near Erie and the route of the original rails west through Leyner (at current #287), Valmont and to Boulder before challenging the fooyhills. In fact, coal trains probably rumblied and steamed past and have been seen not far south of this porch, good sleeping! They probably only traveled in daytime though I bet passengers had to mind the coal dust on the seats. Mmmm, even more effective than COPD. Several coal mines were scattered around the farms near early Erie. I remember head frames near the Leyner area, south of Lagtown. Coal was hauled to Boulder by the rails. Fortunately most of the US coal companies have failed or been reorganized; suck eggs Kochs! Blankenship recieved but a year for murdering his laborers. Certainly this area was a great spot for agriculture as well as coal mining. Boulder got it's start in 1858 while prior to 1870 was the founding of Erie for its bituminous coal deposits. Coal is still delivered to Valmont via another rail route. The route can still be traced on Google maps east from Valmont.

On our trip down south, February 24, 2018. We stopped at Shag Point/Matakaea as I had never been there before. Matakaea is the name of the pa (fortified village). We have left Dunedin and going to stay in Timaru for a night before heading back to Christchurch.

Shag Point/Matakaea has a rich history, from early Ngai Tahu settlement to historic coalmining. The area has diverse marine life. It has interesting flora, is great for wildlife viewing, and is geologically fascinating.

Flat rock platforms provide an easy haul-out site for New Zealand fur seals, and cliff-top viewing areas allow you to observe seal behaviour without disturbing their rest.

Whalers discovered the first bituminous coal in New Zealand here in the 1830s. By 1862 the exposed coal seams were found to be commercially viable and were successfully mined until 1972, when flooding eventually closed shafts that extended under the coast. Evidence of coal mining is still obvious throughout the reserve.

Matakaea is jointly managed by DOC and Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu. Matakaea has Topuni status. The mana (authority) and rangatiratanga (chieftainship) of Ngai Tahu over the area is recognised publicly by this status. Ngai Tahu takes an active role in managing the natural and cultural values of the area.

For More Info: www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/otago/p...

136 empty coal hoppers trail behind three units on this southbound Union Pacific train in Mequon, Wisconsin. Train originated at the Edgewater Generating Station in Sheboygan and is bound for a sub-bituminous mine in Wyoming. The icicles on the nose of the lead unit add a nice holiday touch.

or, the absence thereof

Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.

The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.

The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.

The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.

A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.

The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.

Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.

Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.

The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.

A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.

A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.

The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.

The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.

The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.

Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.

The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.

In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.

In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.

Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

A red-winged blackbird perches on an Enbridge Line 9 oil pipeline sign in a Centennial Park wetland, Toronto.

This 639 km pipeline, now owned by Enbridge Pipelines Inc., has passed through southern Ontario, including highly populated Toronto and Mississauga neighborhoods and parkland, since 1976. Originally built to transport light crude oil from Sarnia to Montreal, it was reversed in the late 1990s to pump imported crude westward.

In 2014, Enbridge applied to Canada's National Energy Board to switch the direction of the aging pipeline back, in order to feed Alberta heavy, tar/oil sands crude to eastern refineries. In March 2014, the NEB granted Enbridge approval - despite opponents who argued that the increased output of the thicker and highly toxic bitumen, which the pipeline was not built to carry, puts communities at risk, threatens water supplies and endangers ecologically sensitive areas.

How likely is it that a spill will occur?

Using data from Enbridge’s own reports, the Polaris Institute calculated that 804 spills occurred on Enbridge pipelines between 1999 and 2010, releasing approximately 161,475 barrels of crude oil into the environment.

And that over the last 20 years, there was an average of 250 pipeline incidents a year, spilling more than 2.5 million barrels of hazardous liquids - of which only half was recovered in cleanup efforts - causing over $6.3 billion in property damages.

What could happen if a spill happens?

In 2010, Enbridge's Line 6B pipeline ruptured in Michigan, releasing 843,444 gallons of Alberta crude oil into the Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River.

The largest inland oil pipeline spill in U.S. history, it cost over $767M (U.S.) to clean up, 148 homes evacuated after the spill still remain vacant and the EPA estimates as much as 180,000 gallons of oil, which contains toxic arsenic and lead, still lie on the river bottom.

Afterwards, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board warned that spills will continue until the pipeline industry pursues safety “with the same vigour as they pursue profits.”

Regardless of one's views on the continued use of fossil fuels, or the economic benefits of the oil industry, how would you like to have this pipeline running through your back yard?

Taken on May 24, 2015

--------------------------

■ Please don't use my images for any purpose, including on websites or blogs, without my explicit permission.

■ S.V.P ne pas utiliser cette photo sur un site web, blog ou tout autre média sans ma permission explicite.

© Tom Freda / All rights reserved - Tous droits réservés

Website I Flickriver I 500px l Twitter l Facebook

Smithing coal is a type of high-quality bituminous coal ideally suited for use in a blacksmith's coal forge. It is as free from ash, sulfur, and other impurities as possible.

NS 8100, the Nickel Plate Road heritage unit, dashes through the green signal at CP 50 outside Chambersburg, PA. The NKP is leading empty hopper train 747 east up the Lurgan Branch, returning the cars from North Carolina to Shire Oaks, PA for another load of bituminous power plant coal.

For Victor (bikriderstar)

Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.

The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.

The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.

The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.

A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.

The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.

Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.

Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.

The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.

A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.

A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.

The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.

The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.

The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.

Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.

The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.

In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.

In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.

Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

About the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway

Taken in Hartville, Ohio

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from many smaller railroads begun in the 19th century. Tapping the coal reserves of West Virginia, it formed the basis for the City of Newport News and the coal piers on Hampton Roads, and forged a rail link to the midwest, eventually reaching Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo in Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.

First through a merger which formed the Chessie System, it was later combined with the Seaboard Coast Line and Family Lines systems to become a key portion of CSX Transportation in the 1980s, with the addition of a substantial portion of Conrail in 1998. Today, the rails of the former C&O continue to transport West Virginia bituminous coal east to Hampton Roads and west the Great Lakes.

Leaving Alberta Dinosaur Provincial park we headed toward Red Deer, Alberta.

We stopped at the Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site at East Coulee, Alberta.

3 of 5.

The mine wooden coal tipple north side view with the covered coal conveyor line.

The sub-bituminous coal from the Drumheller mining district was mainly used for home heating, cooking and electrical generation.

The coal was also used to power steam locomotives of Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways on the prairies.

The flat-lying seams were easier to mine than those found in more mountainous areas, with lower levels of methane gas.

The coal-mining era lasted from 1911 to 1984, when the Atlas No. 3 and 4 mines closed.

The Atlas No. 3 Mine structures are preserved and form the basis of the National Historic Site, administered by the Atlas Mine Historical Society.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Well, perhaps not in Western Europe with the relentless push for green energy including our own government's commitment to phase out all power stations in UK in the next 10 years. But this does not apply to other parts of the world and Bosnia is no exception. The Tuzla Basin is amongst the largest supplier of lignite and sub-bituminous coal in Eastern Europe, won from four large open pits, which supply the Tuzla thermal electric plant - Bosnia's largest power station (715 MW). Coal is transported by both conventional and narrow gauge railways in Tuzla largely by diesel engines but steam locomotives are still used for shunting and as a backup for the diesels. In this scene, Kriegslok locomotive, 33-236 is seen hauling loaded coal wagons which will be taken to the power station by a 661 series Kennedy diesel locomotive. Sikulje, Tuzla, Bosnia Herzegovina.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Wath upon Dearne is a town south of the River Dearne in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) north of Rotherham and almost midway between Barnsley and Doncaster. It had a population of 11,816 at the 2011 census. It is twinned with Saint-Jean-de-Bournay in France.

Wath can be traced to Norman times. It appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wad and Waith. It remained for some centuries a rural settlement astride the junction of the old Doncaster–Barnsley and Rotherham–Pontefract roads, the latter a branch of Ryknield Street. North of the town was a ford across the River Dearne. The name has been linked to the Latin vadum and the Old Norse vath (ford or wading place). The town received a Royal Charter in 1312–1313 entitling it to a weekly Tuesday market and an annual two-day fair, but these were soon discontinued. The market was revived in 1814.

Until local government reorganization in 1974, Wath was in the historic county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Until the mid-19th century, the town had a racecourse of regional importance, linked to the estate at nearby Wentworth. This fell into disuse, but traces of it can be seen between Wath and Swinton and it is remembered in street names. There was a pottery at Newhill, close to deposits of clay, but it was overshadowed by the nearby Rockingham Pottery in Swinton. About the turn of the 19th century, the poet and newspaper editor James Montgomery, resident at the time, called it "the Queen of Villages". This rural character changed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, as coal mining developed.

The town lies over the South Yorkshire coalfield, where high-quality bituminous coal was dug from outcrops and near-surface seams in primitive bell pits for several centuries. Several high-grade seams are close to the surface, including the prolific Barnsley and Parkgate. The rising demand for coal arose from rapid local industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. The population swelled, and local infrastructure developed round the coalmining, but this reliance on one industry led to future problems.

The Dearne and Dove Canal opened in stages from 1798 to 1804 to access the collieries on the south side of the Dearne Valley. It passed through the town on an embankment just north of the High Street and then turned north into the valley. This wide section was known locally as the "Bay of Biscay". The canal closed in 1961 after many years of disuse and poor repair. Much of the canal line has since been used for roads, one of them called Biscay Way.

By the 20th century, heavy industry was evident, with many large collieries – Wath Main and Manvers Main were the two usually mentioned. After the Second World War, the collieries clustered around Manvers developed into a complex, also covering coal preparation, coal products and a coking plant, which was not only visible, but polluted the air for miles around.

Rail took over coal transportation from the canal. Wath upon Dearne became a rail-freight centre of national importance. Wath marshalling yard, built north of the town in 1907, was one of the biggest and for its time one of the most modern railway marshalling yards in the country, as one of the eastern ends of the trans-Pennine Manchester–Sheffield–Wath electrified railway (also known as the Woodhead Line), a project that spanned the Second World War and partly responded to the need to move large amounts of Wath coal to customers in North-West England.

Wath once had three railway stations: Wath Central in Moor Road, Wath (Hull and Barnsley) and Wath North both in Station Road. Wath North, the most distant, was the last to close in 1968, under the Beeching Axe. There has been talk of opening a station on the Sheffield–Wakefield–Leeds line at Manvers, roughly a mile from the town centre.

The local coal industry succumbed to a dramatic decline in the British coal-mining industry precipitated by a change in government economic policy in the early 1980s. This had knock-on effects on many subsidiary local industries and caused local hardship.

The 1985 miners' strike was sparked by the impending closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow, a neighbouring village often seen as part of Wath. Along with the whole of the Dearne Valley, Wath was classified as an impoverished area and received public money, including European funds. These were put to regenerating the area from the mid-1990s onwards, causing a degree of economic revival. It made the area more rural, as much land to the north of the town once used by collieries and marshalling yards was returned to scrubland and countryside, dotted with light industrial and commercial office parks. This regeneration of what was still classified as brownfield land has involved building it over with industrial and commercial parks. Large housing developments have also been started.

Wath upon Dearne centres on Montgomery Square, with the town's main shops, the library and the bus station. To its west is the substantial Norman All Saints Church, on a small leafy green, with Wath Hall, the Montgomery Hall and a campus of the Dearne Valley College. The several town-centre pubs include a branch of Wetherspoons and Wath Tap, Rotherham's first micro-pub specialising in locally brewed real ale. From 1892 to 1974 Wath Hall served as the local seat of government for Wath upon Dearne.

Today Wath is still emerging from the coal-industry collapse, although jobs and some low-level affluences have returned. After a hiatus between the clearing of former colliery land and recent redevelopment, when the area felt rather rural, the construction of large distribution centres to the north of the town is restoring an industrial feel, but without the pollution issues of coal. Several distribution warehouses for the clothing chain Next have opened. Much new housing is being built on reclaimed land.

Wath Festival, held round the Early May Bank Holiday, is a folk and acoustic music and arts festival founded by members of the Wath Morris Dancing Team in 1972. It has grown to host known names on the folk, acoustic and world music scene. While festival events occur across the town, most larger concerts are held at the Montgomery Hall Theatre and Community Venue. Those appearing have included Dougie MacLean, Fairport Convention, Martin Simpson, John Tams, Frances Black, John McCusker, Stacey Earle and Eddi Reader.

The festival marked its 40th anniversary in 2012. Wath won Village Festival of the Year in the 2013 FATEA Awards.[11] The festival has been a supporter of young artists such as Lucy Ward, and Greg Russell & Ciaran Algar. It has also hosted the Wath Festival Young Performers' Award, founded by the Sheffield-based musician Charlie Barker in 2011, who handed it over to a festival committee in 2014. Winners have included Luke Hirst & Sarah Smout, Sunjay, Rose Redd and Hannah Cumming.

The event includes dancing by local morris and sword-dancing groups, street performances, workshops, children's events and a Saturday morning parade from Montgomery Hall through Montgomery Square and back to St James's Church, for a traditional throwing of bread buns from the parish church tower. Local schools, organisations and local Labour MP John Healey have joined in festival activities.

The RSPB's Old Moor nature reserve lies a mile to the north-west of the town. It occupies a "flash", where mining-induced subsidence of land close to a river has created wetlands.

Wath Athletic F.C. served the community from the 1880s to the Second World War, playing in the Midland League and reaching the 1st Round of the FA Cup in 1926. No senior team has represented the settlement since the 1950s, and Wath remains one of the largest places in Yorkshire without one. However, it has a Rugby Union team that plays in the Yorkshire Division 2.

Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.

The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.

The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.

The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.

A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.

The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.

Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.

Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.

The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.

A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.

A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.

The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.

The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.

The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.

Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.

The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.

In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.

In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.

Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Jellico lies in the heart of Tennessee’s coal mining region. The Jellico Coalfield was famous for its high quality bituminous coal. Mining firms owned eighty percent of the land in Campbell and Claiborne counties, providing most of the jobs in this impoverished area of northern Tennessee between 1880 and 1930.

In 1906, a railroad car packed with dynamite exploded in Jellico, killing eight and destroying part of the town. The town quickly recovered, however, and many of the buildings in the Main Street area dated from this period.

DSCF4667

Graceville Railway Station is located approximately nine and a half kilometres outbound on the Brisbane-Ipswich line (completed in 1875), one of seven rail lines radiating from the Brisbane central business district to serve the passenger, coal and freight markets of south-east Queensland. The station was established in 1884 to service new residential subdivisions, and had gained its current format by 1958 - 1959. It services the south-west commuter suburb of Graceville and comprises two island platforms with a butterfly-roofed station building of brick and concrete, four steel and timber platform awnings, and a subway system linking the leafy suburb on both sides of the tracks. It was one of a suite of station fit-outs carried out from the early 1950s and into the 1960s in anticipation of the electrification and quadruplication of the rail lines between Nundah and Corinda, and stands out as the first one completed, the most successful resolution of the design themes explored by the Railway Department's architects, and the most intact.

The passing of the Railway Act in 1863 initiated the era of state government owned and operated railways. The first such rail line between Ipswich and Grandchester was built in 1865, being part of a four-stage project that linked to Toowoomba in 1867, Dalby in 1868, and then to Warwick in 1871. In August 1872 Parliament approved the construction the Brisbane railway, but only from Ipswich to Oxley. A survey was required to select the appropriate site for a bridge over the Brisbane River and Oxley Point (now Chelmer) was chosen. On the 5th of October 1874 the line from Ipswich to Oxley West (now Sherwood) opened. It was extended to Oxley Point early the following year with a ferry transporting passengers across the river until the Albert Bridge, named after Queen Victoria's Consort, was opened on the 5th of July 1876 allowing a connection to the newly completed Indooroopilly line.

The areas now known as Chelmer, Graceville, Sherwood, and Corinda had been part of Boyland's Pocket, a colonial leasehold estate running sheep and cattle. After 1859 the area was subdivided into farms where various crops were grown. Cotton was attempted in the 1860s and sugar cane was grown in the 1860s and 1870s. When the railway was completed to Oxley Point in 1875, the only station between the river and Oxley was Oxley West (Sherwood). The suburban subdivision of Oxley Point began in the building boom of the 1880s and by November 1884 a railway station was operational at Graceville. The Railways Department had asked Samuel Grimes, the MLA for Oxley at the time, to name the station and he suggested one incorporating that of his baby daughter, Grace.

The process of expanding the function of the western line began in 1884. Duplication from Indooroopilly to Oxley was completed in June 1886 and extended to Ipswich by the 28th of March 1887. A shelter shed was constructed at the Graceville Station circa 1892. Land adjacent to the station was subdivided and auctioned on the 21st of November 1895 as Oatlands Estate; it comprised 16 perch allotments to the north of Verney Road on either side of the rail line. In 1897 a contract was let to build overbridges to Sherwood, Chelmer, and Graceville Stations.

A further suburban subdivision known as Graceville Estate was offered for sale in 1911 on the eastern side of the station along Verney Road. By January 1916 the level crossing dividing this roadway was eliminated and a new station was constructed in March incorporating overhead bridge access. Graceville continued to grow as a small suburban community through the interwar years. Its recreation reserve, which had been gazetted in 1904, became the site of the Graceville War Memorial, unveiled in 1929. Electricity was connected in 1920 and a picture theatre opened the following year near the station on Honour Avenue. A Progress Association formed, and the first Agricultural Show was held in 1921. In 1924, six shops, the Central Buildings, were built by Walter Taylor on Honour Avenue between Verney Road West and Rakeevan Road. He was also a driving force behind the building of the pre-cast concrete Uniting Church building on Oxley Road in 1930. A state school opened in 1928 and a Catholic school in 1937.

In 1946 a Commission of Enquiry into the Electrification of the Brisbane Suburban Railway System was held and its 1947 report recommended the installation of a similar electric rail system to Sydney and Melbourne. It was argued that electrification would provide a faster, cleaner service and would eventually lead to the settlement of the outer suburbs. In February 1949 approval was given to electrify the Brisbane suburban railway system at an estimated cost £5,888,000. Planning began in February 1950. The project included an upgrade of stations, platforms, the signalling system between Corinda and Northgate and the provision of subways at some stations. Subways were installed to avoid overhead bridges in the vicinity of power lines. The quadruplication of the line from Corinda to Virginia was necessary, with or without the electrification process, because both incorporated important freight lines; Virginia on the main northern line and Corinda on the main western line. The survey between Virginia and Corinda was completed by June 1950. The quadruplication was later extended to Zillmere.

In 1957 Queensland's new Country-Liberal government under Frank Nicklin commissioned consultants Ford, Bacon, and Davis to report on the Railway Department's efficiency, facilities, and operations. Their recommendations were numerous, and included a total abandonment of electrification in favour of dieselisation, and steam engines were phased out from 1960.

The quadruplication project, however, was continued. Track layouts were produced by the Permanent Way and Works team, Graceville being drawn in 1955. To accommodate the new works at this station, a number of partial resumptions were undertaken in Appel Street, where two houses and the house/shop on the corner of Verney Avenue were moved east on their allotments. Railway plans indicate a very busy shopping precinct along the opposite roadway, Honour Avenue. The new station layout allowed for one wide suburban island platform, on which a new station building and two awnings with integral seating were to be built, and one narrow main-line island platform, which was to house two awnings with more integral seating. The station structures were designed to fit the layouts.

During this time the Queensland Railways architect's office was experimenting with modernist designs for the department's buildings and awnings, being influenced by architectural trends coming from Britain, Europe, and the United States. There had been not only an influential pre-war migration of European architects to Queensland - professionals like Karl Langer who occupied a role with the railways from 1939 until 1946 - but also a post-war flow of architects from Britain and Europe who came to the State in search of work and brought with them the architectural ideas and training that were driving forward the large task of post-war reconstruction and housing provision being undertaken in their countries of origin.

Under Principal Railway Architect John Sydney Egan, new station designs were prepared for the quadruplication project. An overall concept for the form and structure of the station buildings was established, but the designs were non-standardised, and took account of platform width, which varied from station to station. Architect Jan Kral was responsible for the Graceville and Chelmer designs and signed-off on the drawings for Sherwood station as Acting Principal Architect. He was born in Poland and studied at Stuttgart University after the war. He came to Australia in 1950 and was employed by the Queensland Railways the following year, initially as a draftsman, becoming a Senior Architect by 1958. While the designs were all somewhat different, they shared a form derived from a long, thin building, rectangular in plan and made with a regular procession of columns, surmounted by a butterfly roof that cantilevered over each platform side to shelter waiting and alighting rail passengers. A number of standardised plans for Railways Department butterfly-roofed awnings were developed and used between 1949 and 1960, many having been designed by Bevis Thelwall. A common palette of materials including reinforced concrete, steel and exposed brickwork was used. The steel work was all prefabricated at the Northgate workshops. Graceville Station was the first of these station fit-outs to be completed within the quadruplication project between Corinda and Roma Street.

The main building at Graceville had a butterfly roof formed with a reinforced concrete slab lined with bituminous felt and supported on ten pre-cast, reinforced concrete beams that cantilevered off a continuous lintel resting on ten brick piers. A range of materials were used to fill the gaps between the brick frame: including orange-coloured face brick, screened openings, some small sections of render and various aluminium-framed windows. On either side of this building, two wide butterfly-roofed, steel-framed shelters with built-in seating were erected. Each was made up of four sets of steel columns and cantilevered steel tapering I-beams bolted together. The seating, made with timber slats and a steel and timber frame, was placed back-to-back facing each track. Dividing each row of seating were metal ribbed screens. Fitted to each steel column and under each beam were panels framed in steel and filled with glass above the seat level and sheet steel below. The other narrower platform necessitated smaller butterfly-roofed awnings be built there. They were essentially the same construction as the larger ones with only three bays, two of which were given over to seating. The subway system with its street ramps and stairs to both platforms was constructed with reinforced concrete.

In June 1958 the Commissioner reported that new concrete and brick station buildings were under construction at Sherwood, Graceville, Chelmer, Indooroopilly, and Auchenflower, and subways were completed or under construction at Graceville, Chelmer, Taringa, and Nundah. The Graceville complex of station buildings, awnings, and subway, and enlarged and raised platforms at a cost of £16,686, was the first of these new stations to open in mid-1959. Chelmer, with an identical layout of one building and four awnings, all butterfly-roofed, opened shortly afterwards. Milton, also drawn by Jan Kral was built in 1960.

At the time of its completion in mid-1959, Graceville Station featured in a number of local newspaper articles where it was described as one of the most modern in Australia. The Commissioner also chose to feature a photograph of it in his annual report. Architect John Egan published an article on the new station designs in the Architecture in Australia journal in June 1961.

All the new station buildings constructed in the 1950s and early 1960s for the quadruplication and electrification projects employed a Modernist idiom, but only the platform stations at Graceville (1959) and Chelmer (1959) on the Corinda line, and at Nundah (1960) and Eagle Junction (1963) on the northern line, were designed with butterfly roofs. Similarly designed, but with flat roof profiles were Sherwood (1960), Indooroopilly (late 1950s), Toowong (1960) and Milton (1960). Taringa (mid-1950s), Toombul (1960) and Wooloowin (1960) were butterfly-roofed overhead stations; Corinda (1960) was a flat-roofed overhead station; and Auchenflower (1960) was a skillion-roofed overhead station. A standard plan was drawn up for Nundah and Graceville in 1955, but only Graceville and Chelmer were later constructed with the same pitch to their butterfly roofs. Nundah was given a flatter roof made with steel framing rather than reinforced concrete.

In September 1960, the quadruplication project was suspended on the northern line. Work continued between Roma Street and Corinda as the signalling contract had been already let. The northern line stations of Nundah and Toombul were constructed within this time frame, and Eagle Junction shortly after. The quadruplicated Corinda to Roma Street line opened on the 1st of December 1963, providing greater flexibility in the provision of peak hour suburban services and allowing the passage of long distance goods and livestock trains which travelled through these suburban networks to the main western line.

During the 1960s a number of rail lines were decommissioned as government funds were geared towards the provision of better roads, but by the end of that decade, it was clear that public transport also needed to be upgraded. A report delivered in 1970 recommended the electrification of the suburban railway network, the construction of the Merivale Street Bridge and a range of operational improvements, including the creation of a separate public transport authority. By the 8th of May 1979 the overhead lines between Corinda and Roma Street were switched on as part of the electrification project between Darra and Ferny Grove, which was the first section of the suburban network to be completed.

Alterations to the various elements of Graceville railway station have been minimal since its completion in 1959. Changes to the building include carpeting of the office floor, the addition of safety screens to the openings above the stairway and further enclosure of what was the telephone booth at the southern end. The steel-framed awnings originally had ribbed panels dividing the two sides of the timber seating, which have now been removed, as have those panels which divided the various seating bays. Graceville, Chelmer, and Sherwood stations were repainted in 1998 with only the former being painted the corporate Queensland Rail colours of maroon and grey. Various ticket machines, a telephone, and other signs have been added.

Of the thirteen stations designed and built in the 1950s and early 1960s as part of the original Queensland Railways electrification and quadruplication projects, Graceville, which remains substantially intact, best exemplifies the Modernist-influenced design concepts employed. It is the most intact of the four butterfly-roofed platform stations, with Chelmer having been altered somewhat, and Eagle Junction and Nundah altered substantially. Of the four flat-roofed platform stations Sherwood has been altered partially, Milton has been altered substantially, and Indooroopilly and Toowong have been rebuilt. Of the five over-head stations, Auchenflower and Taringa remain the more intact, Corinda and Wooloowin have been altered substantially, and Toombul has been rebuilt.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.