A heritage railway is importing coal from Borat’s Kazakhstan - because British coal is now BANNED and its last mine is set to close.

Bodmin and Wenford Railway has for years been using coal from Ffos-y-fran - an opencast coal mine in South Wales.

The Welsh mine is now the last source of British mined coal but is due to close within the next few months.

It is shutting because coal has now officially been banned by the Government and the EU as not being eco-friendly.

Bodmin and Wenford Railway has now been forced to import less quality coal from Kazakhstan – some 3,100 miles away from Cornwall.

The heritage railway uses two tonnes of coal a day when fully operational.

Spokesman Jimmy James said that the Heritage Railway Association has recently secured dispensation from the Government for heritage railways to continue to use imported coal to stay in business, even though plenty of British coal remains in the ground.

He said: “At Bodmin we have just switched to coal from Kazakhstan, which is imported through the port of Immingham after a couple of thousand miles of travel across Europe.

“It then reaches Bodmin by road, through yet more eco-unfriendly travel, and vastly increasing the cost.

"The Bodmin and Wenford Railway was once part of the Great Western Railway (GWR), which used high quality, less polluting Welsh steam coal to power its fleet of steam locos.

"At Bodmin the majority of our locos are ex GWR, thus purpose-built for the traditional Welsh variety.

“We do not know how reliable the Kazakh source may prove to be, nor as yet how much we will be forced to raise our prices.

"These are very testing times for our industry, and we have to roll with the punches.

“Ffos-y-fran was primarily there to supply the steel works at Port Talbot and Aberthaw power station, and supplies to steam railways was just a small part of their business.

"The logic of the steel industry having to import huge supplies of coal from around the world, and not using home resources, appears to be lost on the green lobby.”