X-Nico

8 unusual facts about National Coal Board


1966–67 Port Vale F.C. season

The pre-season saw general manager Stanley Matthews injured in a car accident with a National Coal Board lorry on 29 July, Jackie Mudie was also in the car but remained relatively unharmed.

Alf Sherwood

After leaving Newport in 1961 he had a short-lived spell as player-manager of Barry Town before fully retiring from football and working for the National Coal Board as a security officer.

Backworth Colliery Band

The band was definitely formed out of the workforce from the surrounding pits, and sponsorship was won from the National Union of Mineworkers before the nationalisation of the coal companies in 1947.

Chichester Metro station

Part of this line had been transferred into National Coal Board ownership, and to the south of the station was a single-track electrified NCB freight line, part of the Harton Colliery system.

Eastern United Colliery

The colliery was nationalized in 1947 and became part of the National Coal Board South Western Division.

Freeminer

Some large colliery gales were subsequently compulsorily purchased by the National Coal Board (NCB), but these remained under the Freemining system, with a royalty paid to the Freeminers, by the NCB, as a share of the minerals extracted.

Jackie Dewar

Dewar left part-time professional football in 1952 to take up a full-time career as a mining surveyor and planner with the National Coal Board.

South Shields, Marsden, and Whitburn Colliery Railway

On 1 January 1947 the coal company was vested in the National Coal Board so the railway became the first nationalised passenger line in Britain.


Bill Etherington

He became a fitter for Beal & Co in Sunderland in 1962, before joining the National Coal Board in 1963 and for the following twenty years worked as a fitter at the Dawdon Colliery in County Durham.

Llanelly and Mynydd Mawr Railway

In 1965 0-6-0 PT 1607 of Llanelli shed 87F was purchased by the National Coal Board and worked at Cynheidre Colliery until 1969 when it was condemned with a cracked frame, and was subsequently scrapped on site.

NER Class P3

There then followed restoration to full working order, initially at Tyne Dock where the locomotive was stored after withdrawal, then professionally at the then still functioning National Coal Board workshops at Philadelphia, Tyne and Wear, and then at Thornaby Depot.

Selby Coalfield

In 1974 the Labour Government and National Coal Board (NCB), backed by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) initiated a decade long ambitious expansion of coal production, named the Plan for Coal; the plan was based on maximising income from indigenous coal reserves at a time when oil prices had risen (1973 oil crisis) to above that of coal.

Thetford Forest

By 1950, demand from the National Coal Board for the timber decreased and the commission had to find new outlets, these included many of the smaller poles being cut up and converted into wallboard and some 60 tons of pine transported each week to a wood wool factory in Manchester.


see also

Edwards v National Coal Board

Edwards v. National Coal Board was an important case in English case law.