The LD&ECR’s Last Stand

When William Arkwright of Sutton Scarsdale Hall near Chesterfield was looking for suitable rail links to take out the coal that lay beneath his country pile, he was unable to come to a convenient arrangement with the existing railway companies, so he decided to go it alone. Edward Watkin of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, and who presumably, therefore, had his own axe to grind, called the bill setting up the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, “as mad a scheme as was ever presented to parliament.”

Arkwright’s brain child did get off the ground but it never looked like matching up to its cross-country plans. Up and running, it only existed as a separate entity for ten years before being taken over in 1907 by the Great Central Railway. The line west from Shirebrook to Chesterfield and the track east from High Marnham Power Station to Pyewipe Junction on the western edge of Lincoln, closed to passengers in stages during the 1950’s, though summer weekend holiday traffic continued up until 1964.

The only LD&ECR branch line on the system, to Sheffield via Clowne, was often referred to as the Beighton branch because it joined the Midland Railway and the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway [later the Great Central Railway] at that point. It closed to passengers in 1939, though some collieries along the line continued to be served after that date.
A further one hundred and eight years down the line, the remaining section of the LD&ECR extends from Shirebrook to High Marnham. In recent times it has been used to take coal from Thoresby Colliery to power stations at West Burton, Cottam and Ratcliffe-on-Soar, and, given the intentions of the original set-up, that seemed wholly appropriate.

Class 66 No. 66613 pulls forward past Thoresby Colliery signalbox on 18/6/15, having brought empty MGR wagons into the sidings. The spur to the colliery itself is to the right.

From this point, east of Edwinstowe, the West Burton-bound MGR trains headed west to join the ex-Midland Railway, now known as the Robin Hood line, at Shirebrook. They turned north onto those metals to Shireoaks East Junction and then east on the former Great Central Railway through Worksop. In 2014, UK Coal announced that Thoresby Colliery, up to that time the sole remaining deep level coal mine in Nottinghamshire, was to close in July of the following year.

The large Dukeries Hotel at Edwinstowe was built in 1897, the year that the railway opened. The girder bridge that carries the line over High Street is behind the camera. The hotel car park entrance is directly opposite the former station’s approach road.

Although coal traffic was the mainstay of the railway, it had been hoped in the early days that the hotel at Edwinstowe would help to attract large numbers of visitors to the surrounding area, which is still referred to today as the Dukeries. There was a concentration of stately homes in this part of north Nottinghamshire, including Thoresby Park [Earl Manvers], Rufford Abbey [Lord Savile], Clumber House - demolished in 1938 though the extensive parkland now belongs to the National Trust [Duke of Newcastle] and Welbeck Abbey [Duke of Portland].

Although well-to-do visitors were able to reach the aristocratic families themselves more easily - including the occasions when King Edward VII fancied a day at Doncaster races - the hoped-for tourist boom amongst the population at large never really materialised. The hotel was rebuilt after a serious fire in 1929, and it survives today as a bistro pub and inn called the Dukeries Lodge, although at least one booking agency mistakenly claims it to be of eighteenth, rather than late nineteenth, century origin. It also survived a temporary loss of dignity when it was re-branded for a time as “Ma Hubbard’s,” which was maybe not quite in keeping with its earlier incarnation as a rather grand railway hotel.

A well-maintained permanent way curves past the former station building at Edwinstowe, in this view looking west, taken in June 2015. A mixture of semaphore and colour light signals was in service along this stretch of line. Edwinstowe station originally had three platforms for through trains, plus a bay at the Lincoln end and a refreshment room.

The occupants in the old station building in 2015, a private ambulance company called First4care, described their working environment as “bright and airy,” on their website [www.first4care.org.uk]. The former platform edging stones have been taken up and deposited further back from the running line, as a safety precaution against encroachment from any detached slabs and the platform surfaces are very overgrown in parts including the sprouting of some now well-established pine trees.

It is not all bad news for the old LD&ECR, however. It was handed a lifeline east of Edwinstowe in 2009 in the form of the High Marnham Test Track, based at Lodge Lane, Tuxford. Network Rail uses the 10.5 mile stretch from Thoresby Colliery Junction for testing engineering vehicles, equipment, machinery and other plant, as explained on their website [www.networkrail.co.uk]. Speeds of up to 75mph are permissible. Though not energised, sections have been equipped with overhead catenaries and a third rail to simulate conditions on electrified lines elsewhere. The four-mile former British Railways branch from Boughton, which formerly served Bevercotes colliery, comes under the same jurisdiction.

The future for the old LD&ECR now looks better still, in spite of a study in the year 2000 [www.railwatch.org.uk] which concluded that it would be uneconomic to reinstate passenger services on the line. By 2009, Nottinghamshire County Council had picked up the issue again and commissioned a further appraisal to investigate the possibilities of inaugurating an hourly train service to Ollerton [www.worksopguardian.co.uk, 21/7/09].

After the colliery closed in July 2015 and with the cessation of coal traffic on the line that would inevitably have followed once coal stocks had been removed, circumstances might now further encourage the reinstatement of passenger services. Not only are the freight trains literally “out of the way” but any new passenger service would have a well-maintained railway already in place to make use of. The plans for an extension to Ollerton, via the junction at Shirebrook, are very much on the table again.

The scheme appears to have some local political, business and community support, and the government has nodded its approval too, from time to time, saying that a bid to their growth fund could make it happen if local councils also supported it [www.newarkadvertiser.co.uk - 16/6/15]. The Prime Minister made positive comments about it on 8/6/16, in answer to a question in parliament from the local MP. Sherwood Energy Village at Ollerton has been mentioned as a possible new station site. Intermediate stations at Warsop and Edwinstowe would also be reopened.

At the time of writing, the proposal remains just that, however – a proposal. Time will tell if there is to be a further renaissance on the old LD&ECR, a truncated railway that was built to main line standards and received plaudits at the time for the quality of its construction. However, it was a big idea that soon ran out of money, hitting the buffers at Chesterfield and Lincoln well over a century ago. So, will the cash be found today for its latest last stand tomorrow? Much as I would like to see it happen, I will not be holding my breath.
 
[This article is published in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]