And it wasn't nostalgia by 19th century Geordie coal miners involved to name Wallsend or bring other "old country" names to the Hunter like Hexham, Jesmond and Morpeth.

Our Wallsend's name was originally adopted by hard-headed businessmen for pure commercial gain, to curry favour among NSW people with power and influence to finance or expedite mining ventures.

For the name derives from an iconic North England coal township with links to the once great Roman empire. A suburb of Britain's Newcastle upon Tyne, Wallsend was at one end of Emperor Hadrian's long defensive stone wall marking the northern border of his far-flung empire.

Stretching coast-to coast, from east to west, the impressive ruins of the wall still run for 73 modern miles (117.5kms) and are the best preserved and most formidable of Rome's frontiers.

But today, it's not the eastern "walls end" in Britain we're concerned about, but our Wallsend, which, in its own way, was once a bush barrier far distant from Newcastle harbour in colonial days.

As late as the 1960s, Newcastle people still joked about having to travel all the way out by bus to remote "World's End".

This early Hunter Valley mining township came into prominence after the Newcastle Wallsend Coal Company (NWCC) was established in 1858.

Mining actually began on the original Wallsend lease area in 1861 and the company's seal, saying "Walls End Coal Company", was approved a year earlier.

The logo was in use for more than a century, showing a locomotive hauling coal wagons, although it initially, but briefly, featured a horse on the design instead of ship masts.

The NWCC prospered on land south of Wallsend township. By 1901 it held almost 9000 acres of land.

The lucrative trade in its high-quality coal was chiefly to places such as California, India and South America to fuel the furnaces of the steam age. Some sailing ships waited for months for their special coal cargoes.

Finally, in 1990, the NWCC claimed to be NSW's oldest coal mining company.

To succeed, the company had its own railway line that joined the public, or Great Northern Railway (GNR), near Waratah, before spearing inland to become crucial in a number of ways, including to later help build Stockton's breakwater.

This now lost Wallsend railway though is a relatively unknown part of the history of Newcastle's local railways.

Largely a private coal mine railway, for a while the line also carried passengers, according to a spokesman for the Wallsend Heritage Group, which recently hosted a history talk on the subject.

Guest speaker was local coal/rail historian and author Ed Tonks. He said that the Newcastle Wallsend Coal Company announced in July 1953 it was closing its familiar railway, ending a 93-year-old local track link after all the rails were lifted and recycled.

Tonks also revealed the significance of the now permanently closed white railway gates, circa 1860, at the junction of Nelson and Cowper streets, the traditional entry point to Wallsend village itself.

When all mines were once working, the path through here crossed the main rail line with the gates, when not in use for coal haulage, always being closed across this main road.

Tonks told the audience that the track was eventually seven kilometres long.

Branching off the GNR at Hanbury Junction, the line went into Wallsend to the Wallsend 'A', 'B' and 'C' pits, all virtually in a line going south west.

(The former 'A' pit surface buildings and poppet head are believed to be near the present Wallsend McDonald's).

Interestingly, the area was once a district divided with two competing townships. Originally, Plattsburg was the area north of the rail line and Wallsend the land south of the railway.

Tonks said a brick railway station was erected in the present Kemp Street car park parallel to today's Cowper Street in 1877. This station was then removed brick by brick in 1985 and re-erected on Minmi Road inside the grounds of the former Wallsend High (now the Wallsend campus of Callaghan College) as a lasting reminder of the suburb's forgotten past.

Near Wallsend's now closed rail gates is the "marvellous" brick goods shed (pictured with loco). The historic structure, replacing a once unknown earlier timber one, circa 1868, was threatened by road widening in 1989 before an interim conservation order was placed on the shed.

After various uses, it now serves as TPI House.

Another nearby reminder of the suburb's lost rail history is now a lone static exhibit. It's a large, old-style coal hopper painted rust-red.

Marked with the initials NWCC, the display represents thousands of similar timber coal wagons used from the 1860s until the 1970s.

Tonks said another nearby coal venture, Jesmond Colliery, closed in 1930, then the site was leased out to become Elermore Tunnel. Much of the land was later developed to become Stockland Mall and Jesmond Centre in the 1960s.

Meanwhile, places like Gretley Colliery on the old Wallsend mining site (closed in 1935) continued to operate. The site, off Bousfield Street, later gained notoriety with a major mining disaster there in November 1996 taking four lives.

"But why chose the mining name of Gretley? It represents two coal seams, the Greta seam at Pelton, near Cessnock and the Dudley seam," Tonks said.

Then there's the surviving 1871 Racecourse Hotel on Minmi Road, which once had a racecourse opposite. On busy race days, up to four race trains were stabled on sidings nearby to cater for the huge crowds.

One of the more versatile uses for the NWCC private line then came in 1896 when the Public Works Department wanted to build a quarry siding off the company's railway.

It did and this branch line went into a rock quarry on the western side of Braye Park, Waratah. Here, mammoth rocks were excavated to be carted by rail to the harbour channel, then carried by barge across to Stockton's ballast ground. They were then taken on a temporary rail line down King Street and dumped offshore to build Stockton's giant ocean break wall.

The NWCC was also an innovator in the early coal trade. Three of its coal-loading steam cranes installed in late 1860 at Newcastle waterfront's original Queens Wharf (near today's pilot station) caused much controversy.

The company had vision, being in the forefront of coal loading technology, but it refused access to the cranes for rival coal companies. Complaints finally forced the NSW Government to take over the cranes and share them from June 1863.

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