The Sheffield District Railway was a 3+1⁄2-mile (6 km) railway line in South Yorkshire, England. It was built to give the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway access to Sheffield, primarily for goods traffic, for which a large goods depot at Attercliffe, in Sheffield, was built. The construction was sponsored by the LD&ECR and the Great Eastern Railway together, with the support of the Midland Railway, which agreed running powers over sections of its own lines. The Sheffield District Railway opened in 1900. The LD&ECR operated the passenger service, although the Midland Railway later ran passenger trains too. The SDR did not have rolling stock and did not operate trains itself. The LD&ECR was absorbed by the Great Central Railway in 1907, and the GCR inherited the LD&ECR running powers.

Tinsley was a railway marshalling yard near Tinsley in Sheffield, England, used to separate railway wagons from incoming trains and add them to new trains. It was sited immediately west of the M1 motorway, about one mile north of the Catcliffe junction. It was opened in 1965, as a part of a major plan to rationalise all aspects of the rail services in the Sheffield area; it closed in stages from 1985, with the run-down of rail freight in Britain. It was also the site of Tinsley Traction Maintenance Depot (TMD), which was closed in 1998; at its peak, 200 locomotives were allocated to this depot.