Orgreave Colliery platform was a workman's halt built to serve the miners working at

Orgreave Colliery Orgreave Colliery was a coal mine situated adjacent to the main line of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway about east of Sheffield and south west of Rotherham. The colliery is within the parish of Orgreave, from which it takes ...

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. These workmen's trains or "

Paddy Mails Paddy mails, generally considered as being workmen's trains, were operated by, or for many companies to transport their workers to their place of work or between their sites of work. Originally they were operated by railway contractors, on temp ...

" were operated between Sheffield Victoria and

Treeton Colliery Treeton Colliery was a coal mine situated in the village of Treeton, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. Work on the sinking of Treeton Colliery commenced, with all due ceremony, in October 1875. Trade, at the time, was in a poor state and ...

at shift change times being hauled along the main line to Orgreaves Colliery Sidings (the extra 's' being added by the railway in error but never corrected) where the main line locomotive was exchanged for one belonging to the colliery company, usually "Rothervale No.6" which was fitted with vacuum brakes. The platform was situated almost at the bottom of an incline with a gradient of approx. 1 in 27 to be climbed to reach the main line with the return trains. It was often the case that the train was reversed a short distance to more level track to give it a run at the gradient and a banking locomotive provided, sometimes on damp days too. The "Paddy Mails" ceased running in May 1932 due to parts of the bridges between Orgreave and Treeton being washed away when the River Rother flooded. The line was repaired but the "Paddy Mails" were not re-introduced, being replaced by "Pit Buses" operated by Sheffield Corporation along the main routes from the city centre and the local area. One of the "Paddy Mails" was involved in an

accident An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researcher ...

on 13 December 1926.

References

Sources

"The Orgreave Paddy Mail Accident", published in ''Forward'', the journal of the Great Central Railway Society. . Various issues of "Steel News", the newspaper of British Steel (owners of the coke ovens complex in nationalisation) and "Coal News" the in house newspaper of British Coal. Disused railway stations in Rotherham {{Yorkshire-Humber-railstation-stub