Sad relics of a bygone age

These little narrow-guage rail trucks sit on a roundabout on the B6010 road between Ilkeston and Kimberley.
They were used for carrying coal, i believe underground in the mines, where they would have been drawn by pit ponies or perhaps young men and boys?
They stand forlornly now - symbols of a time before coal-mining communities were devastated and torn apart by the Major government in the 80's; when fathers were set against sons, brother against brother, and families divided by bitter, conflicting loyalties to the D.U.M and Scargill's N.U.M.
Those were hard and unhappy times across all of the almost forgotten coalfields of England, Wales and Scotland.