Cliff Ton

That bridge has a double catch which has probably caught a few people out. It's low, but it's also on an incline. So coming in from the Arnold Lane end you appproach a low bridge, but as go you under it, it gets even lower so even if you drive under one end there's no guarantee you'll get out at the other end. (Look at the line of the bricks under the bridge to see what I mean)

When I was a kid my grandparents lived in Lenton and we went past the Sherwin Road bridge on the bus. Always used to fascinate me. Even with horse-drawn carriages when it was built, I reckon the horses would've had to keep their heads down. And there are two more very low bridges near that on the Midland mainline in Dunkirk. You can see them both on Streetview; Dunkirk Road/Gibbons Street (which you could just get a car under - but not a lorry) and Montpelier Road/Cavendish Street which you can hardly walk under without bending down. Maybe everybody was a midget around 1860s

If time machines existed now they'd solve a lot of problems on this forum. Nobody would need to ask any question about anything - you'd just go there and have a look for yourself. No need to worry about your memory getting bad as you get older, it would all be happening today as you speak. All those things you half remember as a kid would be sorted out straight away. And the people who work on Picture the Past would all be out of a job

I don't know Arnold very well, but with nothing better to do today, I've been having a look around. This original photo above is on Picture the Past, bigger and in colour. They say it's Front Street..... Looking at other Front Street photos brings up this Front Street1 which could be the same view from the other way (look at the three dormer windows on the right, and the first floor windows, they match the ones in the original) And this one Front Street 2 I reckon the white building sticking out fourth along is the Blankley building (you can just see the three dormers again beyond

Here's the same place from the 1950s. It's now obviously an embankment going over the roads - totally the opposite to what they were showing 20 years earlier. And there's no actual line marked - must've been lifted by then. Only the Midland still has tracks shown.

True. And I've just looked at maps of other dates on the Old Maps site. Every one shows the railway going over Hempshill Lane (like you'd expect). I'll post one of them later. The one I posted earlier (1930s) is the only one which shows the line under the roads; which goes to show that even OS maps can be wrong.

I've dived into Old Maps again, and found this from the 1930s. I've kept this detailed enough to show the line appears to go under Hempshill Lane and Bradford Street. I don't know the area very well so maybe today you can still see that the line was in some kind of cutting

So it was basically a staff canteen? That's what you were paying for when you bought Co-op bread and cakes

Is this the kind of thing you were thinking of? It's late 50s/early 60s I assume the school you are referring to is the one very close to China Street

Depends what you might be looking for. Don't go expecting to see any balloons.......in fact you'll hardly see any woods either. Just a few trees left over from the original woods. And quite a bit of fairly recent housing, which was built after the disaster which was the infamous Balloon Woods Flats You won't find these........ which were know as the Balloon Houses and were at the end of Nottingham Road looking west towards Trowell You can see them marked on this map from the 1920s The road layout back then is surprisingly similar to the way it is today

On Meadow Lane, just about opposite the Cattle Market, there's a building which looks like an average warehouse/industrial unit. A bit grubby and run-down. Like this..... It backs on to the river, and if you look at it from the other side (i.e. City Ground side) it looks like this...... A bit extravagant for a warehouse. Anybody know why is has such an exotic feature facing the river? Cinema? Restaurant?

You've probably looked at Picture the Past on this subject - if not, in the "Search" box put "Valley Road". You'll get quite a few irrelevant pictures, but a lot which show the old and new bridges at various stages of history. This Two bridges is a good example of the old and new at the same time (they seem to have built the new one on top of the old one, as some of the other photos also demonstrate)

Is that on the old Colwick road which comes to a stop at a dead end? For a while it runs parallel to the current Colwick Loop Road. I have a vague memory as a kid going along there and when the road used to continue, it went up over the (now non-existent) railway line This is as far as you can get now Bridge Weirdly spooky shot for me. On a totally different subject, I worked at Central TV on Lenton Lane for most of its existence, and I'm gobsmacked to see that old Central trailer parked here

I know where you mean, and that would fit Picture the Past's description. In other words, about here Colwick But wasn't that on the old Great Northern line? so they were wrong to say the photo is the suburban line

Another couple of cases which I can remember and I never knew the outcome of........ One was the murder of a lady called Joan Maschek (maybe not the exact spelling) around mid 1970s Circumstances were something like, she owned a flat at the top end of Derby Road near the Park, and the theory was that she was murdered by a disgruntled tenant who had an argument with her Also, the case of Sheila Egner, shop assistant at Yeoman's Army Stores on Mansfield Road in 1991. She was working in the shop, someone came in to try and rob the till, and she was killed in the process. The theory on that on

That's a blast from the past! I haven't heard it since the early 1960s. Completely forgotten it; I'd hear it from my parents and grandparents I suppose back then boys were likely to be wearing short trousers, so sleeping socks were more noticeable

Agreed. In my earlier post I mentioned it was the end of local commercial radio but that doesn't mean I'll miss it. I stopped liking it around 30 years ago. It was good when it started as Radio Trent because it was slightly different and unusual compared to what we'd known before. Unfortunately that didn't last long. It soon became identikit SmoothBlandCorporate FM

So that's the end of local broadcasting in commercial radio. If you want local news from a local newsroom you'll have to listen to the BBC. Just like they've done in television with ITV, you now only get local stuff from BBC Midlands. On ITV, Central News used to be local (when it came from Lenton Lane) but now it's Birmingham based with just a nod to this area. It's a business and they don't make any money from operating at a small local level, so they just turn it into a national organisation and get rid of all the local staff and premises. Cheap is the word. Interesting to see the bos

So I bet you're aware of the effect with glare and flare that all the street lighting gives off. If you normally live in a built up area and find yourself in the middle of open countryside at night, it's surprising how much blacker the night sky is and how much brighter the stars seem to be, because there's no glare from any artificial lighting. But when you're in the middle of nowhere and look across in the distance to the nearest town you'll see a big orange flare in the sky from all the lights, and no black sky and no stars.

I can see both sides of the argument as well. If you drive along any motorway or major road at night you see all those retail parks and industrial areas fully lit up, like a football stadium with its floodlights on. And probably nobody anywhere near them. But the lights were turned off, the burglars would think it was christmas every day Obviously the answer is half on/half off

Don't remember the Steak House you mentioned (probably I wasn't old enough to be eating out in those days) but I do remember Brownie's Toy Shop up West End Arcade. Once you were inside it kind of went uphill; thinking about it now, it was probably several shop units joined together as one Was Brownies its real name? I've always assumed that was what my parents told me it was called. Wasn't it actually connected to Skills in some way?

It was me who started the question about pubs in Vic Centre, and this thread has jumped sideways into the "80s Nottingham" category under the heading "Pub name wanted" Seems the question came up a few years ago and there are quite alot of answers

Thanks for that one. Reading the thread all the way back there was obviously more than one pub in that area; I didn't expect the answer to the question might get so complicated. Don't think I've ever had a drink in any of them. So is there still a ghost pub behind those panels in the upper corridor over the bridge? Or have John Lewis's expanded to fill the space?

Not a pub I miss, because I never went in it - but a pub which isn't there any longer and I'm curious about it. It was in Vic Centre when the Centre was first built. There is a pedestrian bridge which goes over Parliament Street (near Boots) from Clinton Street area into Vic Centre. When you've crossed the bridge from Clinton Street you go through an area which just has wall panels all the way along, until you come into the main Vic Centre area with John Lewis on your left. I think I remember there used to be a pub along that "corridor" where the panels are now. I never went in it because

Is it an early version of a meet-up from few years ago?