Worked quite hard to get this, the sun was quite high in the sky and at an inconvenient angle, which also resulted in the sky becoming burnt out. I used a 24mm lens to get what I could in of the diesel loco, as well as the colliery headstock, not easy as it’s quite a small structure.

The photo was taken at the National Coal Mining Museum for England in Yorkshire, somewhere I’ve seen signposted regularly on my business travels, but never got round to going in. My primary motivator to visit though was to see the ‘Northern Soul’ exhibition of John Bulmers photos of Northern England (see next blog post), but it would have been rude not to have stopped on for a while to see the museum. The highlight was going underground 450 feet to the pit, but I’ve no photos to show as cameras (or anything else with a battery) are not allowed down. And as this is a national museum, it is free to visit, thus allowing more money to spend in the excellent bookshop they have!

This was probably the pick of the photos, as the place has been stripped back to the key structures and buildings. As such it feels more like a museum than a real colliery, but you only have to look at the state of Chatterly Whitfield Colliery to realise that if you keep too much infrastructure in place, it ends up deteriorating quicker than the budget can be spent for it’s upkeep.

Still, it’s highly recommended and well worth a visit!