Astley and Tyldesley Collieries

The Coal Measures lie above a bed of Millstone Grit and are interspersed with sandstones, mudstones, shales, and fireclays.

[7] Gin Pit's name suggests it, or its predecessor, had horse driven winding gear and was on the site of even older coal workings.

[8] The colliery site was isolated from roads resulting in Darlington building a narrow gauge tramway worked by horses to transport coal from his pit to a basin on the Bridgewater Canal at Marsland Green.

In 1851 Darlington attempted to sell his colliery, tramroad, cranes and tipplers on the canal to the Bridgewater Trustees but the operation was eventually sold to Samuel Jackson, a salt merchant and owner of Bedford Colliery or Milner's Pit which he had bought from W. E. Milner around the same time.

[5] Jackson's lease was for coal from the Worsley Four Foot mine and he was required to sink two shafts 14 feet in diameter with no workings under Astley Hall.

The company also sank a pit at Cross Hillock south of the Leigh to Manchester road in near Higher Green Lane but flooding caused it to close by 1887.

[15] Jackson's Sidings were built by the LNWR and extended to Gin and Nook Pits and, on the early tramroad, a locomotive replaced the horses.

The company built its own standard gauge mineral railway which exchanged traffic with the LNWR at Jackson's Sidings southwest of Tyldesley Station.

Coal for Tyldesley was sold from the landsale yard at St George's and there were smaller yards at Nook and Gin Pit but considerable quantities of coal were sent elsewhere by rail from Jackson's Sidings and by barge from Marsland Green to Partington on the Manchester Ship Canal.

[10] The earliest locomotives that worked on the colliery railway system were a narrow gauge engine that worked the tramway to the Bridgewater Canal possibly named "Gordon" and "Tyldesley", a 6-coupled Manning Wardle saddle tank locomotive, bought in 1868 and renamed "Jackson" in 1872.

A 2-2-0 tender locomotive "Lady Cornwall" was sold to George Peace in 1874 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway's works at Miles Platting at a cost of £150 and was later rebuilt as tank engine.

[18] Two unique 0-8-0 side tank locomotives, "Maden" in 1910 and "Emanuell Clegg" in 1924 were built by Naysmith Wilson at Patricroft.