Walking the old railway lines after closure.


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I also collected bags full of old wooden chocks that held the rails in the sleeper castings. They came from the down sidings at Toton Yard. Even nowadays I still find a few 20 years after track removal, as it is now a public footpath. They come in handy in our garden chiminea, and burn profusely.

I'd better get collecting more or nothing will remain if HS2 gets approval.

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Not specifically Nottingham, more northern; for people who like disused railway lines and the engineering works. At about 10mins there's some great footage of Bennerley Viaduct which can be seen for m

A guy at Lincoln St Crossings in the 1970/80's I knew used to take his guitar and amp in the box and practice most of his shift!

Not the most exciting photos you'll ever see, but an ex-railway line which hardly gets any mentions here. The MR which went out of Nottingham Midland, over Lady Bay Bridge, through West Bridgford and

Ashley. We tried to return them but someone had 'borrowed' the ruddy signal box. LOL.

​We often 'borrowed' artifacts from SBs. Usually the acid batteries in the basement had been tipped over by yobbos making them dangerous places to enter. The Bakelite labels on the levers were removable and described what the lever did. In Leen Valley Junction Box were brass labels above the set of levers referred to. Such as 'Up line from Basford' and 'Down line from Daybrook'. The little sign on the basement door which said, 'No unauthorised materials to be stored in here' was fastened to my shed door for years.

Fascinating places signal boxes were. The Goods Yard box at Low Level Yard was very interesting. By the time I started work on the railway, most of the levers were out of use.

I remember the train drivers strikes of 1984 and 1985 when all we had to do was clean the mess room and ops cabin as absolutely nothing was moving. It gave us the opportunity to explore the derelict parts of London Road Low Level station, then walk all the way up the bank to the bridge over Meadow Lane, and beyond to the GNR bridge over the Midland Line at Trent Lane. We even walked as far as where they were building the Colwick loop Road over the trackbed of the GNR line.

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Well there's a lot of borrowd, souvenired or preserved railwayana kicking about. I know someone who has a complete semaphore home signal in his garden. And he didn't buy it.

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The British Railways Board used to have an office and store in London called Collectors' Corner, where you could legally buy stuff. Everything from closed stations etc. was supposed to go there - but of course, that was all a big faff and not top priority for staff who were being moved on (or shunted off) so I guess there was a lot available to be borrowed, rescued, preserved or souvenired - rather than just left to the ravishes of time and the vandals. I do have in my garage a "Way Out ---->" sign in LM region maroon - legally purchased from a sale that took place in Derby in the late 60s I think. I also had a "Codnor Park and Ironville" totem, bought at the same time, but that went AWOL some years ago.

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One afternoon turn working at Derby station in the late 1980s, I was instructed by the staion chief to clear the old clothes out of the cloak room in the shunter's cabin at the north end of platform 6. It was full of really greasy jackets and sleeved waistcoats that shunters had used to keep warm in winter. There was about a hundred of them and I was instructed to pile them onto a porters barrow and take them to the skip at the west end of platform 1.

So! I went through all the pockets and rescued the following

  • one set of ticket clippers.
  • about 30 plastic acme thunderer whistles
  • about 10 metal acme thunderer whistles
  • 1 LMS acme thunderer whistle.

As well as loads of pennies, halfpennies and larger sized 10 and 5 pence pieces.

I also cut all the metal and plastic BR buttons off the garments. Quite a haul for one afternoon.

Also, in the same mess cabin was a wall clock of LMS vintage. When the cabin was closed the clock disappeared. Shame I didn't think to grab it while it was still there.

I also rescued lots of out of date posters from a cupboard on Platforn 1 including one advertising North Sea Ferries with a picture of the disaster boat - Herald of Free Enterprise.

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I rescued a damper handle from "Foremarke Hall" at Barry scrapyard in the mid-70s. Two years ago I returned it to the now operational loco via its owner. knew it would come iin useful one day!

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We often visited Toton in the 60s. While the diesel depot was almost impenetrable, the almost derelict round house with its decommissioned locos was easy to get into. I borrowed a few glasses and gauge plates from them - mostly black fives and 8 freights.

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Sometime in the mid 60s a friend and I decided to visit the derelict Edwalton Station. Very interesting, but the contents of the loft had been chucked all over the old waiting room. It consisted of boxes full of internal railway circulars bearing the name MIDLAND RAILWAY and dated from 1880 onwards and were about all the detritus of rule book changes and stuff that high management wanted to tell the rank and file. I sent loads to heritage railways as at the time I had no room for them.

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I once had reason to visit the Station Master's office in Cochin, India. His wall-to-ceiling shelves were packed solid with files that must have dated back to the stone age! There were thousannds of them in various states of dedcay :)

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Another interesting piece. About twenty years ago, an old man in the locality died. As no relatives could be found, it was left to the local vicar to clear his house out. It was full of rubbish (like Mr Trebus on life of Grime). A lot of the stuff was skipped but the vicar, who was a friend of mine, brought me some GNR circulars from the 1880s. Apparently the old gent had been a box lad on the GNR Leen Valley line between the wars and must have scavenged around for old railway interest items (they would only have been forty odd years old) and had kept them. One circular referred to the use of petrol (yes! petrol!) lamps. I was gobsmacked. There were also a full set of the LNER propaganda newsletters sent to employees during the General Strike. All very interesting stuff. I still have them somewhere.

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Have decided for my own use, interest etc to put together all the railway photo's I can find that are of interest to me, namely local stations and track features around such, an example being say New Basford, the station itself, the tunnel one end and the bridge carriage works etc the other, anyway whilst looking around I came across a site with chat and found one guy asking where the rat hole etc was, and if it was true (as he had been told) that it was still intact (post was in 2012) seemed to have the idea that if he knew where it was he could dig a hole down to it!

And you know what? I don't know if it is still there! or the actual route if under the new housing or if still there the BT depot or whatever,

Around 1980 maybe earlier maybe later used to go up "the banks", the name some local bikers we met called the area behind that BT depot where sidings and a line to a turntable had formally been after the pubs shut and kipped out some weekends around a bonfire, the land there had already been made safe, bridges over Arnold Rd removed, embankments gently sloped and the dive down to the tunnel filled, ditto the exit plus either side of the bridge under Arnold Rd.

Some time later they started to level the land properly and remove the GCR embankments and Valley Rd Bridge, know at that time the contractors dug down and reopened the bridge under Arnold Rd so tipper lorries could use that to get up to onto the GCR rail bed, know that as I did it myself! but can't for life of me remember 1) if the rathole had been opened up and was part of the route or 2) it had been dug "up" or "out" or 3) left buried and is still thus?

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Sometime in the mid 60s a friend and I decided to visit the derelict Edwalton Station. Very interesting, but the contents of the loft had been chucked all over the old waiting room. It consisted of boxes full of internal railway circulars bearing the name MIDLAND RAILWAY and dated from 1880 onwards and were about all the detritus of rule book changes and stuff that high management wanted to tell the rank and file. I sent loads to heritage railways as at the time I had no room for them.

I can remember that in those days when a station closed, they simply locked the doors and that was it, they weren't boarded up or barricaded off or secured at all. I remember going into the old Midland Station at Kirkby after it had closed and I was amazed to see it had simply been abandoned. Of course people had been in and ransacked the place but there was still plenty of stuff around which would be worth a fair bit today.

But because I was only a young lad, I daren't take anything in case the signalman in the box saw me!

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Theres a few bridge modification pictures on that site, Wilford Rd, Ilkeston Rd, Derby Rd, Moor Bridge on the former MR, Valley Rd on the GC, Edwards Lane and Hucknall Rd on the GN spring to mind bet there were loads more altered? plus totally new bridges replacing level crossings on the MR routes, most of those probably too early for photos though?

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I have large scale maps(1881) of Nottingham featuring the Midland Railway fron Mansfield Junction to Bulwell Market

And it is surprising how many level crossings there were.

The first out of Nottingham was at Lenton Station another was at Bulwell Station.

I can't get to my maps at the moment but I could go through them later if people are interested.

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