BARNSLEY MUSEUMS and Historic England have announced a £25 million plan to revive the Elsecar Heritage Railway (EHR), together with a replica of the 1849 locomotive Fitzwilliam, which ran on Earl Fitzwilliam’s private railway that had its station at Elsecar Iron Works – now part of the Elsecar Heritage Centre.
The EHR first opened in April 1996 on the old mineral branch from Elsecar Junction near Wath, on the former Doncaster to Barnsley section of the South Yorkshire Railway (later part of the Great Central), to Elsecar via Cortonwood. The branch was originally built to serve several collieries and ironworks owned by the Rockingham family, headed by Earl Fitzwilliam, who had his own private station at Elsecar. Cortonwood Colliery closed in 1984/85 and the branch was mothballed, but owing to the many historic buildings and workshops at Elsecar, Barnsley Council decided to develop the area as a tourist attraction, known as the Elsecar Heritage Centre.
In 2006, the responsibility of operating the railway passed to the Elsecar Railway Preservation Group under a 50-year lease. The group, however, surrendered their lease in November 2020 and the whole railway was closed, with the locomotives and rolling stock moving to new homes.
That is all set to change. The revived heritage railway will be part of a larger masterplan for Elsecar, as revealed in a ‘Forging Ahead’ document published on November 6. The vision for the former Elsecar Iron Works includes a new rail college with places for 400 students each year and employment for 40 staff. The new buildings will be inspired by the original Victorian furnace sheds, and will replace the current station building, which was built in the 1990s. Alongside this will be an engineering workshop and revamped visi
