The National Coal Mining Museum has been established at the old Capstone Colliery and adjacent Hope Shaft at Overton near Wakefield. One feature of this location is the abysmal standard of signage. Although money has been spent on displays, there are many large exhibits, including locomotives, sitting in the weather, mostly in an unkempt stockyard. There is a working 762mm gauge railway that hauls passengers between the two parts of the site, but it was not in use, and the working locomotives were locked away. There is an exhibition hall that contains some railway items, but it could only be viewed through glass panels. During the school holidays, it may be possible to return to see the train in action and to go inside the exhibition hall.
Standard gauge railways were associated with coal mining from the very beginning, and the National Coal Board operated a large fleet of industrial locomotives. Narrow gauge railways were used extensively on main roadways underground in British collieries, and were also sometimes a feature of surface stockyards for materials and equipment handling.
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| Hunslet 0-6-0DH of 1973 |
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| Robert Stevenson & Hawthorn inside cylindered 0-6-0ST of 1946 |
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| An underground GMT B-B DH unit on 2ft 6in gauge |
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| The passenger train stabled at the Hope Shaft station |
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| A Ruston & Hornsby stockyard shunter on display in a workshop |
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| A 1944 Atlas 4wBE on display in the exhibition hall |
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| A recently-arrived 2ft gauge Clayton 4wBE of 1974 |
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