Hardwick Grange 4mm OO
Hardwick Grange is a town on the edge of the “Dukeries” in East Nottinghamshire. The Great Northern railway built the branch from Tuxford in about 1860, mainly to serve Hardwick Main Colliery, which you can see in the background.
The period depicted is 1957-58 when BR steam and diesel locomotives handled a variety of rolling stock. The timetable starts at 7.00am and runs through to mid-evening, embracing the varying types of traffic at different periods of the day.
Apart from passenger traffic there is a small amount of local goods traffic, which the viewer can see entering and leaving the little yard, but one of the main features of interest is the private colliery line connecting the pit-head with the railway company’s sidings.
Regular trains of empty wagons for the mine will be seen arriving from the main line, while assembled trains of coal have a big loco coupled and mostly find their way to the great yards at Doncaster.
