Most days, there are coal trains on the Settle-Carlisle railway.

From my home, I watch the rakes of empty wagons going north to Clydeside, where coal-boats from South America dock. Trains going southbound are taking that coal to power stations that still rely on fossil fuel.

Before the Settle-Carlisle enabled dalesfolk to obtain deep-mined coal from South Yorkshire, men worked the thin veins of brittle coal occurring in the Yoredale series of rocks. The coal, which was poor stuff, sizzled and spat in local hearths or was used at the many field kilns. Black smoke once poured across some of the finest tracts of limestone country.

Fountains Fell, one of the big flat-tops of the Dales, and a feature on the celebrated Pennine Way, is named after Fountains Abbey, in the valley of the Skell near Ripon. The monks had about a million acres of sheep-grazing land on the Pennines.

The hill produced other things but mutton and wool. From it were taken several king's ransoms in coal. The well-worn track on the western side of Fountains Fell was formerly a Coal Road. That old stone building with the tiny entrance, seen by numerous walkers, was not intended to house stormbound sheep. It was, believe it or not, a coke oven.

On Fountains, which today is National Trust property, the haunt of red grouse and the nesting place in spring of the golden plover, a bird with a mournful whistle, were a number of bellpits. Those who went after Dales coal tapped a vein at intervals from above, each deep pit taking on the shape of a bell as workings were extended.

A "coal road" served the bellpits on the high fell between what are now Dent and Garsdale railway stations. The road, once rough and rutted, was metalled after the last war.

Garsdale Colliery flourished from the 17th century until the 1870s (when the railway was opened). Next time you drive over the Coal Road, do not attempt to find the pits for some of them remain open, a trap for the unwary.

Think instead of the conditions borne - not cheerfully, but through economic necessity - by the dalesfolk who mined the coal at an elevation of 1,500 feet above sea level at a time when snow might lie on the high fells, and on the backs of the hill sheep, for weeks on end.

In the case of a shaft, a two-handled windlass was used to lower men to a depth of up to 120 feet. A miner, when being lowered, sat on a clutch-iron, which was a metal bar. Ugh! No pumps were available. The workings were always more or less wet.

A Dales miner would be lucky to have a wage of 15s (75p) a week and that money had to cover the cost of his clothing and equipment, the last-named including implements, blasting powder and candles. It was a job where a man "dressed down". Fustian trousers with straps around the lower leg were in favour because in confined spaces they reduced "drag".

Dales coal was variable in appearance and quality. At Tan Hill, above Swaledale, where "crow coal" once armed the ageing limbs of Lady Anne Clifford at her Edenvale castles, there was a brown variety of coal that had a particular value for blacksmiths. It did not "cake" in the forge.

Gurt Bill, whose Sunday name was William Alderson, was a native of upper Swaledale with a photographic memory of t'auld days. He remembered entering one of the small pits on the Hill. Bill clambered into a tub that was drawn underground by a sturdy pony.

The illumination was a candle attached to a piece of clay. The timbering was in places quite mouldy. The candle he carried was blown out by a draught. "I was going on in the dark, frightened to death, keeping my head down in case I struck the top of the passage."

Bill heard a hissing sound. It was Joe Birkbeck. He always hissed as he worked with a pick. The miners had to work hard to keep up a supply of coal that was picked up by local farmers, who arrived with horses and carts, buying their coal direct at the back-end of the year to keep their families warm through the long Dales winter.

At peak-times, coal was tipped directly into a cart and the charge was for seven cwt. No one worried about the precise weight. They knew roughly how much a wagon could take. This contrasted with the situation when deep-mined coal arrived on the Little North Western line at Clapham in North Craven. A coal merchant was so precise in the quantity he supplied that he kept and assortment of cobs of coal of various sizes. If anyone asked for five cwt, that was exactly what they received.

When there was a General Strike in 1926, and the nation's main pits were closed, an enterprising man took coal from outcrops in the valley of the Greta near Burton-in-Lonsdale to Dent, where there was a coal famine. When he arrived, he did not supply the coal immediately but basked in the local fame that consignment caused.

It was a mistake. Word came that the strike was over. Soon coal trains would be rumbling along the Settle-Carlisle. The entrepreneur could scarcely give his cart load of coal away.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.