After receiving planning permission to load opencast coal, mined in the Crook area, alterations and arrangements were made to the Weardale Railway Depot at Wolsingham, to receive and transship the coal from road to rail. The first loaded coal train left Wolsingham on 16 June 2011 bound for steel works in Scunthorpe. Later, services were extended to include the power station at Ratcliffe On Soar, near Nottingham. This became a five-train-a-week operation that operated until 2 October 2013, and halted as a result of the financial collapse of UK Coal, following the spoil tip landslip that destroyed the connecting railway at Hatfield Colliery in February 2013, preventing coal shipments, and the underground fire at Daw Mill Colliery the following month which plunged UK Coal into financial crisis.