Sometimes you can be lucky and some piece of ephemera has survived which can suggest what your ancestors might have been doing on a particular day in the past. In this case we have a couple to tickets recording the dispatch of coal to the Midland Railway Station - almost certainly for the engines - but possibly also for the fires in the waiting rooms and the station master's office!

Midland Railway M.f.133

From Shipley Collieries

To St Albans

For Midland Railway Co's

Locomotive Department

No 87410

Date 20 July 1900

Midland Railway G.F. 155

Date July 18th 1900

From Wellingboro

To St Albans M Railway

Order and No. of Wagon: 70316

Consignee: Mr Garratt