The Redhead Coal Mining Company
In 1881, the Redhead Coal Mining Company Limited obtained rights over 4,123 acres (16.69 km2) of coal bearing lands lying near the headland of that name, and by 1883 had expended some £25,000 in sinking a shaft, installing machinery, and other improvements. In order to transport the coal to Newcastle, the Company was desirous of constructing a railway 6¼ miles long, junctioning with the Government line, then under construction, at Adamstown. The necessary act was passed on 14 April 1885, and five years was allowed for the completion of the line. However, trouble developed in that it was found that the population reserve adjoining Newcastle encroached on the Company's property, and that several other portions had been taken up by different persons. This led to court proceedings and it was not until 1887 that the position had become sufficiently stabilised to warrant the Company proceeding with the construction of the line. As by this time the Company's five-year period prescribed by the act had nearly expired, an amending act was obtained on 5 June 1888, granting a further five year. On 21 December of that year, another amending act was passed authorising, amongst other things, deviations in the route, a branch to the South Burwood Coal Company's colliery, and an extension of the rights of construction to the northern shores of Lake Macquarie, through or near the village of Belmont.
The railway, as authorised in the amended act, was to leave the Great Northern Railway at Adamstown and continue in a southerly direction, passing under Charlestown by a tunnel, continue through the Company’s Burwood Estate (where a coal mine was being opened up) and terminate in the Company's Redhead Estate, a distance of 6 miles 31 chains, also for a branch line to be constructed leaving the abovementioned railway at a point 2¾ miles from Adamstown, known later as Dudley Junction, and running in a south-east direction to the South Burwood Coal Company's Estate, a distance of 1 mile 58 chains from the Junction.
Read more about this topic: Belmont Railway Line
Famous quotes containing the words redhead, coal, mining and/or company:
“It was dreadful. They tried to put the little redhead in a cage.”
—Sarah Ferguson (b. 1959)
“Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“More company increases happiness, but does not lighten or diminish misery.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)