Erewash Canal - Shipley Wharf

Shipley Wharf

At the turn of the twentieth century Shipley Wharf directly above Shipley Lock was very busy with the transhipment of coal from railway wagons which had descended an incline from the Shipley Collieries to narrowboats on the Erewash Canal. There was also a much earlier wagonway which connected the Shipley collieries to Shipley wharf between the completion of the Erewash Canal in 1779 and the completion of the Nutbrook Canal in 1796, from which point in time the Nutbrook Canal took this traffic. The incline in use at the end of the nineteenth century was originally built to connect the Shipley Collieries, then owned by the Miller-Mundy family with the Midland Railway's Erewash Valley railway line and was operated for this purpose between 1848 and 1870. Problems with the Nutbrook Canal's water supply instigated the re-laying of rails on the incline and its extension under the Midland Railway's Erewash Valley line and under the Midland Railway's Eastwood Colliery branch line, to Shipley Wharf. Coal was loaded into narrowboats here from 1895 until 1942. The sidings at the wharf were laid in a triangle. The coal wagons descended the incline under braking relying on gravity and accumulated momentum to carry them to the sidings where they were connected to an endless rope kept in motion by a stationary steam engine in the centre of the triangle. The endless rope went around three wheels at the corners of the triangle. One was sited on the Erewash Canal's aqueduct which spanned the Erewash River, a second was under the bridge which carried the Eastwood Colliery's branch line over the Shipley line and the third was alongside Eastwood Lock. Using this mechanism the colliery wagons were brought alongside the wharf and could be emptied directly into waiting narrowboats.