Paddy mail

Paddy mails were workmen's trains operated by companies in Britain to transport workers from their "shanty villages" to their place of work or between the work sites.

[1] Originally they were operated by railway contractors on temporary tracks laid to remove spoil from their workings.

[3] In a time before the provision of pit-head baths it was illegal to travel in a normal service train in working clothes, so special trains were provided, usually of the railway company's most ancient coaches.

[5] Most of the services were terminated due to competition from motor buses in the 1930s.

Since their main-line demise, the name has been applied to the underground man-riding trains which operate between the pit bottom and the working coal face.