Wath marshalling yard

It was set at the heart of the South Yorkshire Coalfield, at Wath-upon-Dearne, approximately halfway between Barnsley and Doncaster, in the United Kingdom.

The purpose of the yard was to make this traffic more efficient by concentrating the marshalling of the wagons of coal from the local collieries in a central position.

The temporary nationalisation of the coal industry during the hostilities of the Second World War, leading to full nationalisation in 1947, led to an end to the system of individual collieries selling direct to individual end customers, however different collieries produced different grades of coal, and domestic and industrial customers were still dotted at many locations throughout the country, and so Wath Yard was still needed to efficiently manage the coal traffic flows from the area.

Wath Yard was busy with coal trains for a few more years, but the impending closure of many of the remaining local collieries after the 1984-85 miners' strike resulted in a sudden decline.

The whole site of the yard was cleared in stages in the mid-1990s and is now an area of office, light industry and residential developments set around a lake which forms the Old Moor Wetland Centre RSPB reserve.

It was built on the 'hump' principle, where trains were uncoupled and then propelled over a hump, allowing the wagons to run by gravity into sidings to await collection.

Instead the yard employed human runners who chased the rolling wagons to pin down their hand brakes and control their movement through the sidings.

With the coming of the electrification a two-road engine shed was built to the North of the yard adjacent to the Moor Lane Bridge to stable the new electric locomotives.

After closure of the depot and yard, the locomotive shed was for a few years the home of a toxic waste processing company, which resulted in a local protest movement being formed.