A set of pics from the turn of the century but I can't remember exactly which year. It was certainly before I'd heard of the term 'urbex' and probably before I had internet access. I doubt there's any information on this place on the interwebz, in fact it's difficult to find any trace of it at all.
I have an interest in railways, especially narrow gauge and industrial ones and I'd seen a sales leaflet for a mine manriding car made by a company called Ingham. I'd never heard of this one before and was told, by another railway nut, that it used to be in Thornhill Road, Middlestown, West Yorkshire and they produced narrow gauge wagons (tubs) for mines and other such uses but it had closed long ago and there would probably be nothing left to see now. The sales leaflet did date from the 1950s after all...
Anyway, I drove up to see what I could find and saw a ramshackle collection of industrial buildings built onto what looked like a stone-built stable block. They were clad in corrugated iron and asbestos with brick extensions here and there. The yard was very overgrown but I knew I'd found the right place as I could see a mine tub with weeds growing out of it. I walked down one side but there was no way of getting in to the yard and the fence was too high to climb easily and in view of houses on the other side of the road so I headed back to the motor. For some reason I decided to try the front door and it wasn't locked!
I closed the door after me and headed down a dark corridor that had an old clocking-on machine on the wall and came out in this workshop.
As you can see, narrow gauge tracks, set into concrete, went everywhere and with turnplates too!
One of the wagons that had been used to carry materials about the works. Probably made from a V-skip tipping wagon chassis.
Another wagon chassis, probably originally a U-shape bodied mine tipper wagon.
As I later found out, the works had been a general engineers in recent times and had not built mining or light railway equipment for many years. About a month after these pics were taken the works was demolished and the site cleared. It's now posh houses and you'd never know that an engineering works had ever been there.
Oh and the thread title? Middlestown was formerly known as Middle Shitlington but the Victorians, not wanting their village associated with the vulgar word for excrement, changed it.![]()