mined from the Crumbouke and Six Foot mines. There were 629 underground workers and 137 surface workers at St Georges colliery producing gas coal, household and steam coal from the Brassey, Crumbouke, Six Feet, Seven Feet and Trencherbone mines. The surface workers included women who sorted coal on the screens at the pit brow. In 1900 the company became the Astley and Tyldesley Collieries Company, and in 1914 Nook No 4 Pit was sunk. Nook became the largest colliery on the Manchester Coalfield. Jackson's Sidings were built by the LNWR and extended to Gin and Nook Pits and, on the early tramroad, a locomotive replaced the horses. The company built its own standard gauge mineral railway which exchanged traffic with the LNWR at Jackson's Sidings southwest of Tyldesley Station. Coal was wound to the surface at St George's Colliery, Nook and Gin Pit. Coal for Tyldesley was sold from the landsale yard at St George's and there were smaller yards at Nook and Gin Pit but considerable quantities of coal were sent elsewhere by rail from Jackson's Sidings and by barge from Marsland Green to Partington on the Manchester Ship Canal. There was a brickworks at Nook Colliery and sheds and facilities for servicing the industrial locomotives at Gin Pit. Gin Pit had a sawmill and supplied pit props to neighbouring collieries. As a result of poor economic conditions, Astley and Tyldesley Collieries merged with other local colliery companies in 1929, becoming part of Manchester Collieries, whose Western Division consisted of John Speakman's Bedford Colliery, Fletcher, Burrows and Company of Atherton and Astley and Tyldesley Collieries. On nationalisation in 1947 the coal pits belonging to Manchester Collieries became part of the No 1 Manchester Area of the National Coal Board's (NCB) North Western Division. In 1961, the area became the NCB's East Lancashire Area. Gin Pit closed in 1955 and Nook Pit closed in August 1965. Locomotives The earliest locomotives that worked on the colliery railway system were a narrow gauge engine that worked the tramway to the Bridgewater Canal possibly named "Gordon" and "Tyldesley", a 6-coupled Manning Wardle saddle tank locomotive, bought in 1868 and renamed "Jackson" in 1872. A 2-2-0 tender locomotive "Lady Cornwall" was sold to George Peace in 1874 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway's works at Miles Platting at a cost of £150 and was later rebuilt as tank engine. In 1875 Manning Wardle supplied