Pelaw Main, New South Wales

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mid-winter photo of Pelaw Main Colliery and loading facilities; note boiler-house's chimney far left.

Pelaw Main is a hamlet a few miles south-west of Kurri Kurri, in New South Wales, Australia. It owes its origins entirely to the colliery there of the same name.

About 1900 the coal mining company of J. & A. Brown Ltd., purchased the leasehold of the proposed Stanford Greta No. 2 Colliery from the East Greta Coal Mining Company and immediately changed the name of the property to Pelaw Main. By 1901 they had driven two two tunnels into the 17 foot seam of coal there. They then constructed a railway extension westwards from the terminus of the South Maitland Railways branch line at Victoria Street, Stanford Merthyr, to Pelaw Main, a distance of about one mile, which opened for traffic on November 17, 1901.

A brick-faced passenger platform was built at Reception Road, Pelaw Main, but passenger traffic ceased in 1932 with the scaling down of the branch from Aberdare Junction on the South Maitland Railways coupled with the fact that from 1918 coal from the Stanford Merthyr Colliery was being transported via the Richmond Vale Railway. In addition, the SMR branch was abandoned altogether by 1940 following major subsidence beneath it, leaving the Richmond Vale Railway to service fully Stanford Merthyr and Pelaw Main.

Pelaw Main Colliery was a major concern and large employer. By 1902 there were four coal loading 'roads' which accommodated sufficient wagons to hold 4000 tons of coal at any one time. Richmond Vale Railway was extended to form a main link, past the South Maitland Cemetery, to the South Maitland Railways at Weston Exchange Sidings near the eastern end of Weston Railway Station, the link being completed in 1936. This meant that in the unlikely event that the Richmond Vale Railway was blocked an alternative route for coal trains was available.

Pelaw Main Colliery closed in 1962 owing to the major coal industry slump at that time.

[edit] References

Eardley, Gifford H., The Railways of the South Maitland Coalfields, Australian Railway Historical Society, NSW Division, Sydney, 1969, pps:24, 31, 138, 141.