philby

did someone mention the spitfire Mk XVIe? heres one i made about 2007-

blimey! in 2012 i was working at the house next door to leicester villa (above the D in road) history is indeed all around us.

That's interesting to read, and kind of ironic bearing in mind that me and my mates would be playing army all around that area which would be British versus Germans, so in a way the wermacht got to invade dobby bridge!

chulla, what were the anti invasion fortifications you mentioned on dobby bridge? i lived on the estate at the back of the standard of england (now gone) in the 70's and those abandoned railway cuttings and embankments were my playground, there was still a concrete pillbox on the wallis street side right up until the whole area was built over in the early 80's.

i have some film and pics of that train track laying machine from last year taken at basford crossings.

one day i intend to build a model railway based on the G.C.R. around basford/bulwell i do have space once i've sorted out my garage, but i've never really built a big layout, and i may be looking at something like 5-10 years to complete! i've made a start though,- this is a dapol evening star kit built as a workaday 9f. i can just remember the toy kiosk in central market, it was an absolute alladins cave of cars trains and aircraft, but i can only remember dinky stuff there.

from my watching of time team, a lead lined coffin is most likely roman!

if i remember rightly ash, the bridge round the bend that connected the GNR to the GCR was brooklyn bridge.

it would certainly ruin the view of that pyramid behind it!

my dad was a member of that gun club roundabouts 1980-82. aged 14-15 I myself have blazed away with both a 357 magnum (dirty harry) and a 9mm browning automatic pistol (definatly well supervised!) when he used to take me there.

steve naylor seems to ring a very faint faraway bell ash, but i can't put a name to the face. the arnold road bridges had all gone before i moved there, its the park lane bridge we called bottom bridge, which thinking about it must be the only bridge left today in the area.

two of them have ash! my mate bought what was the greengrocer/cooked meat shop (actually two shops knocked into one) in the middle of that block,and they were converted back to a pair of houses last year. i know because i did all the decorating on them both!

hello ash! it was actually about 1982 when they came back to level out all the embankments and sidings, it was where me and all my mates would hang out. they did indeed use the bridge under arnold road to get big dumper trucks from one side to the other, but the tunnel was not used, what they did was to cut a sloped ramp from what was the G.C.R. embankment towards the bridge, that ironically looked like a slanted railway cutting! there was no trace of the rathole as the bottom of this slope must have been over the demolished and filled in arnold road end of the tunnel. what was semi uncovered

i saw that whilst sat out in the dark corner of my garden, a VERY bright, silent light moving roughly west to east. thought it might have been the ISS, but i didn't realise it could get that bright, it was certainly the brightest thing in the sky at the time.

ash, what i'm thinking is that park lane is there first, then the GCR is built across it, but, by coincidence its right at the point where the ground is level with the track level, so i'm thinking it may have had a small possibly ungated level crossing there, basically one of those farm crossing that still exist out in the countryside, then later still st albans road comes along, joins with park lane, forming the kink, leaving the little bit of park lane from there to hucknall road to become nothing more that a shortcut footpath. i'm also assuming that this is around the same time as the estat

ash what i'm thinking is that park lane originally run straight on, crossing the GCR, then under marble arch, then when st albans road was built, and joined to the top of park lane the section running across the GCR became a footpath, while the park lane got its "kink" to turn and join st albans road. on cliff's first picture it really looks like thats whats happened. and i'm fairly sure that its at the kink where park lane becomes st albans road (or vice versa if you're coming from bulwell)

ahh..... the thing is on that site i can only view one little bit of the map, the facility to move around disappears when you click on the chose map part.

will do, thanks!

notty can you post a wider,version of that map? the reason i ask is because i used to live at the end of western boulevard roughly where the "St" is in St leo's (actually to prove i'm a proper local lad we were actually married in St leo's!) we were always told that there was an old filled in well, associated with a farm, later found out it was churchfields farm as shown on your map, in our front garden, where there was a big dip in the lawn, wondered if it would possibly be marked on your map

its always been my supposition, that marble arch bridge was an occupation bridge built because it looks like park lane ran straight across where the railway was built. especially visable in those photos is the kink in the road thats there today, where it seems st albans road was joined to park lane at some point in time, and the little bit that went across the GCR line simply became a footpath.

got this off google earth, not the best pic but it does show an old painted sign at the bottom of nottingham road i've been meaning to take a proper picture of this for about 2 years now! it seems that the green band has been painted over an earlier painted sign, if you look closely above the white circle you can just make out letters with their top parts lost under the green. if someone could get a proper picture maybe we could work out what the letters were.

i have a couple of the alan godfrey edition maps, and i can totally recommend them for anybody interested in the streets of nottingham in the past. i used one to help me track down where i used to live in st anns, and also the house where i was born that was somewhere on cathcart street.

picture the scene. its the late 70's and young phil is drooling at the window display in buyrites model/dinky/d.i.y. shop on lincoln street, the centrepeice of the airfix display there was the massive box with the 1/24 scale stuka, and was a model kit i could only dream of having even if i combined my birthdy and xmas pressies! fast forward to 2012, and after some 30 odd years i finally get my hands on one of these beasts for the first time, and its not turning out too bad, although i've been working on it on and off for a year now. another bit of luck was the fact that a few years ago i kno