Phil

This is a place where I intend to discuss the moving of coal in South Staffordshire, with an emphasis on the NCB operations in the 1950s and 1960s. Not sure what will come of this blog but it is borne from a realiseation that there is very little written and recorded about my chosen area. 

I moved from Wales at age 18 to work at Bescot marshalling yard in the area freight office. Several promotions and I was a Train Crew Supervisor in 1995, but privatisation of the national freight operations saw very little in the ay of job satisfaction for me and I left freight in 2001 for the passenger railway, but in that time I realised just how much I didn't know about the local freight railway in my chosen era. Born in 1962, I seem to unconsciously settle at the period from the very very late 1950s until the start of TOPS numbering in the early 1970s, and hitherto I was always into British Railways stuff.  In the last few years though I have become a lot more focused on the local operations of the National Coal Board in South Staffordshire. 

My wife's friend's husband Norman was the son and grandson of NCB employees based on the Hollybank railway, and this has been some of the inspiration for my research, so this place is where I can tell you a little about Hollybank and it's railways.