European Railroad Discussion > An even colder morning at Cwmbargoed

Last weekend we had another covering of snow, especially at higher elevations. This was the scene on Monday morning up at the Cwmbargoed coal washery as 6C93 prepared to depart after the arrival of 4V01.

More snow is forecast tomorrow.

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Can't beat snow and sun. Good to see this operation is still happening, now that Aberthaw shut down.  chris uk

Excellent winter scenes made better by the Class 66's.
Thanks for your photo posting.
ALLEN

55002 Wrote:
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> Good to see this
> operation is still happening, now that Aberthaw
> shut down.  chris uk

Port Talbot steelworks and Hope Cement are the main customers, with occasional shipments to the CPL smokeless fuel plant at Immingham and British Steel, Scunthorpe.

Thanks Nick.

Interesting to see that the British government gave the OK to a new coal mine near Whitehaven in Cumbria. 

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> Interesting to see that the British government
> gave the OK to a new coal mine near Whitehaven in
> Cumbria. 

They did - but it's creating ructions! It is set to produce coking coal for steel making.

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> Interesting to see that the British government
> gave the OK to a new coal mine near Whitehaven in
> Cumbria. 

To be completely accurate it was Cumbria County Council which approved the mine, not the government. The government has declined to over-ride Cumbria's decision. Sadly the environmental lobby cannot differentiate between coal used in an industrial process, such as steel making and that burnt to generate electricity. Currently there is no alternative to coke for steel making so it's a question of mining it ourselves or importing it with all the carbon footprint that entails.

I wonder if the plan is to transport the produce by rail out of Cumbria...

That's the plan.

Coal trains on the Cumbrian coast line - that can't have happened much before... or at least not for a long time!

Not since Haig colliery closed in the mid 1980s.