Coal Hole

Recently a trip to Chatsworth for the first time in roughly twenty years reacquainted myself with one of the more unusual 'railways' in the UK.

'The Coal Hole' was the starting point for a small narrow gauge track that would have been used to move said coal into the boiler room for the estate's Great Conservatory. A handy board does a much better job at describing the process than I can!

What was probably a coal office of some sort looks extremely modellable, even in this state with the very obvious window blockings.

The tunnel mouth is also interesting: Note how the rails would have run in a channel in the bottom of the hole. I can only assume that the wagon height would have been the same as floor level, allowing the coal to be simply pushed in rather than the slightly more labour intensive act of shovelling. This also means the wagons must have been in a fixed rake, there's no room for passing places either in the tunnel or at this end of the line.

Inside the tunnel it is, naturally, very dark. Interestingly though the tunnel has a never ending gentle curve to the left in the direction of the old boiler room. Whilst probably not much wider than the wagons that ran here, the tunnel is noticeably tall for the 1800s, certainly over 6ft as I could stand upright whilst walking through. Probably a good indication that a horse might have been the motive power rather than people.

Regrettably, the full route is not walkable, a new exit bringing visitors out at the bottom end of the estate's rockery, and given how well disguised all the workings of the boiler room were it's very hard to distinguish just where the line continued from the outside, let alone the location of somewhere to hide seven boilers! Taking a quick look on Google maps and assuming the line continued to curve all the way, I'm assuming the boiler room must have either been under one of the large banks that surround the present maze, or even underneath it itself. The surviving smoke exhaust pipes near the present maze seem to indicate it would be in that area.

Its an interesting prototype though, and with some modification could potentially make an interesting 'out and back' model.