Two Trains of Pleasure (1859)

'Two Trains of Pleasure' is a sketch in All the Year Round, the weekly conducted by Charles Dickens, for 17 September 1859. It describes an excursion of about 400 coal merchants, literary men and others from King's Cross that July, who chose the Yorkshire coalfield over Paris and went down Lundhill Colliery, where 189 men and boys had died in 1857, and then Edmund's Main and the Oaks. Dickens Journals Online credits it to John Hollingshead; local histories since 1957 have said Dickens himself went down the pit.

The mining history in this record

The Lundhill explosion of 19 February 1857 killed 189 men and boys, and two years later its pit was a stop on a railway excursion arranged by Samuel Plimsoll, then deeply involved in the South Yorkshire coal trade. The special train left King's Cross on a July morning in 1859, was shunted at Doncaster, and called at Lundhill, Edmund's Main at Worsbrough and the Oaks Colliery, where the party went underground. They then washed in tubs, butts and horse troughs at the King's Head in Barnsley, nineteen men to a bedroom, before a 'substantial and profuse' banquet in the Corn Exchange chaired by Plimsoll, at which William Stewart, one of Lundhill's owners, answered the toast to 'Yorkshire and the Collieries' and the Great Northern Railway agreed to sell each colliery's coal under its own name. Each visitor received a lithographed plan of the pits' workings. The Barnsley Record reported the day on 9 July 1859 as 'Free Trade in Coal; Great demonstration at Barnsley'.

The sketch appeared in All the Year Round on 17 September 1859, in No. 21 of its first volume, under the heading 'Two Trains of Pleasure'; it set the Barnsley trip against the alternative excursion to Paris, and it found Barnsley, contrary to its reputation, 'excessively neat, clean and respectable'.

People

John Hollingshead (1827-1904), writer of the sketch according to Dickens Journals Online; Charles Dickens, who conducted All the Year Round and is said by local histories to have gone down the pit; Samuel Plimsoll, who arranged the excursion; William Stewart, a Lundhill owner.

Legacy today

In January 1957, for the disaster's centenary, the South Yorkshire Times presented Dickens's visit as a 'new discovery', resting on the Barnsley librarian's find and the sketch's appearance in his magazine; that account is now reproduced on Dearne Valley local-history sites. Dickens Journals Online attributes the sketch to John Hollingshead, which leaves it unconfirmed whether Dickens himself was in the party. The sketch remains a rare literary view of a disaster pit in the years after its explosion.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• 'Two Trains of Pleasure' was printed in All the Year Round, vol. I no. 21, on 17 September 1859. (documented fact) ^1,2
• Dickens Journals Online attributes the sketch to John Hollingshead. (documented fact) ¹
• The South Yorkshire Times (1957) said Charles Dickens came with the party of 400 and went down Lundhill colliery in July 1859. (later recollection, uncertain) ^2,3
• The party chose the Yorkshire coalfield over Paris, visited Lundhill, Edmund's Main and the Oaks, and dined at the Barnsley Corn Exchange; Samuel Plimsoll arranged it. (later recollection) ²
• The sketch, as quoted in 1957, gives 192 dead at Lundhill in 1857; the archive's disaster record gives 189. (later recollection, disputed) ²

Mines

• Lundhill Colliery — South Yorkshire
  The 1859 excursion described in 'Two Trains of Pleasure' went down Lundhill two years after its 1857 explosion.
• Oaks Colliery — South Yorkshire
  The excursion also went down the Oaks Colliery.

Disasters

• Lundhill Colliery explosion — 19 February 1857
  The sketch's party visited the pit two years after the 1857 explosion.

People

• John Hollingshead (1827–1904) · author, 1859 — Credited by Dickens Journals Online with writing 'Two Trains of Pleasure'.
• Samuel Plimsoll · witness, 1859 — Arranged the 1859 excursion and chaired the Barnsley banquet.

Regions

South Yorkshire

Sources

1. (secondary) Two Trains of Pleasure — Dickens Journals Online (University of Buckingham)
2. (secondary) Lundhill Disaster - Article 3 - Charles Dickens Visited the Stricken Pit (South Yorkshire Times, 19 January 1957) — Conisbrough and Denaby Main Local History
3. (secondary) Lundhill Disaster - Article 3 - Charles Dickens Visits — Wath and West Melton (Dearne Valley History)

Record created: 18 September 2026 · Last researched: 18 September 2026