Worksop has historically always been a ‘coal’ railway town, primarily for the plethora of local coal mines in North Nottinghamshire and the power stations along ‘Megawatt Valley’ following the nearby River Trent. In the recent past the yards at Worksop were used by EWS, later DB, for staging coal trains to and from Cottam and West Burton power stations.
The trains arrived with domestic coal from open cast mines in Scotland, as well as imported coal through the likes of Hunterston, Immingham and Hull. Trains would be held at Worksop awaiting a slot at the power station, and the empty trains would often return ‘via’ Worksop depending on their ultimate destination.
All very similar to how Milford operated for the Aire Valley power stations. There was also a wagon maintenance depot for the coal hopper fleet at Worksop. This coal traffic dwindled during the mid 2010s to the point today where there are no rail-bourne flows of power station coal.
Fast forward to the late 2010s into the early 2020s and the derelict DB yards at Worksop were leased by rolling stock hire and maintenance company HNRC (of Barrow Hill fame) to allow them to expand their operations.
A niche in the market was tapped by upgrading the sidings with high security, building a covered maintenance shed, and allowing leasing companies to store either redundant, or not-yet-delivered rolling stock in a secure environment (for a cost, of course…)
As old stock begins to be scrapped and newer stock is beginning to enter traffic, the number of vehicles stored at Worksop has fallen dramatically. HNRC has recently been bought by Austrian infrastructure company SB, and I can’t help but think this is to get hold of the Worksop site as a strategic base in the centre of the country, with good access all around.
Hope that gives you a general idea
TLDR : originally coal, after that it was a handy place to store both old and new trains, and now it’s a little bit of the latter but far less than a year or two ago…
Tom
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