Petanque Way

Tracing the former Midland Railway route between Southwell and Mansfield is fairly straightforward throughout its course. Going west out of Farnsfield, it runs parallel to the road before crossing a farm access track on the outskirts of Rainworth by way of this substantial and well-preserved stone bridge with its brick-lined archway.

Here the formation disappears under a field and the route is lost to view in more recent housing development after running beneath the Blidworth colliery branch. However, the railway builders had to cut through the ridge at Python Hill and I picked it up again behind the houses occupying a deep cutting through the higher land on either side. At the foot of Kirklington Road in the centre of Rainworth, the line used to cross the road on an overbridge having passed through Blidworth and Rainworth station, of which there are no obvious remains.

The entrance to the former Rufford colliery is marked at this point with one of the winding wheels from the pit and a plaque remembering those who had lost their lives there during the time that the pit was operational between 1911 and 1994. The side road has acquired the name Petanque Way, marking a successful transformation of part of the former pit site by Rainworth Petanque Club.

On yer bike [again]

Continuing an exploration of local former colliery branch lines, my next visit was to Calverton. The seven-mile route connected the pit [1952-1999] to the rest of the rail system at Broomhill Junction near Hucknall. There has been talk of making a cycling and walking trail on the former track bed but it is currently undeveloped and heavily overgrown with vegetation, though the ballast is still in place. The bridge shown, looking north, carries the formation across the main A614 Nottingham to Doncaster road.

Another week, another colliery branch line

Bilsthorpe colliery was well served by railways. My bike ride took me up the former track bed from Farnsfield Junction and beneath the A617. This had provided a direct link out to the south for the Midland Railway. Through the settlement, past the former colliery site and over the branch to the concentration sidings, I was in search of the continuation of the LMS/LNER Joint route to Ollerton. The road bridge over the formation between Bilsthorpe and Eakring still stands, but the land below it on either side is just a tangle of vegetation.

The Blidworth Colliery Branch

The Blidworth branch was 4 miles and 45 chains long, connecting Blidworth colliery to both the former GCR, south of Mansfield concentration sidings, and to the MR Mansfield to Southwell line at Blidworth Colliery Junction. It was subsequently served by both the LNER and the LMS - and later by BR - to move the coal out. Blidworth colliery was active between 1926 and 1989.

The route is now a leisure trail and cycleway, which can be accessed from the Farnsfield to Rainworth road at the girder bridge shown in the photographs. At the former entrance to the colliery in Blidworth, there is a modest display outside the modern leisure centre, which incorporates the old pit winding gear wheels, a plaque devoted to the men who worked there and a rather tired looking mosaic remembering the pit.

Farnsfield

These two lovely old pictures taken in the village during the late 50s or very early 60s are very evocative of the country railway as it once was. Many small country stations had their own goods yards and goods sheds. Pick up goods trains would take out agricultural produce and bring in coal and manufactured items.

By the time these pictures were taken, Farnsfield had long lost its passenger services, so the train shown here would have been a summer seaside special from the industrial towns further west and heading for the east coast. The locomotive is an ex-LMS 0-6-0 No. 44415, which had already been withdrawn for scrapping by 1962.

Farnsfield signalbox covered the passing loop into the second platform on what was otherwise essentially a single-track route, theoretically allowing trains to pass each other here. It also controlled access to the sidings, the goods yard and shed and the junction with the line from Bilsthorpe colliery, which joined the Mansfield to Southwell line at this point. There was also a siding further east from Farnsfield that served the Victorian water supply pumping station adjacent to what has since become the Southwell trail. The signalbox diagram can be viewed on the internet but without the necessary permission to reproduce it.

I am indebted to Gill Sarre for allowing me access to these splendid photographs.

The Bridge

The bridge crosses the track bed of the former Mansfield to Southwell line at the site of Kirklington and Edingley station. This is now part of the Southwell trail which provides a very convenient, local off-road cycling route. The platform edge and the station house are still in place and the ramp at the end of the platform is clearly visible in the photo.

It’s gradually downhill all the way to the Trent valley, as the Midland Railway engineers smoothed out the grade with a series of cuttings and embankments. The route closed to passengers in 1929 and for goods and summer specials bound for the east coast, in 1964.

Intervening Opportunities

Missing the sea means valuing frequent trips to the river. There are broad vistas, ever-changing skies, swirling or calm waters - and kingfisher, goosander, grey wagtail, common sandpiper, redshank and goldeneye, this week alone.

Getting to the river at its nearest point to home means crossing the railway at Fiskerton station. Unlike most road users, I love it when the level crossing lights flash and the barriers fall ahead of us. Will it be something interesting or just another bug cart?

Yesterday, it was Class 60 No. 60040 The Territorial Army Centenary returning oil wagons to Lyndsey terminal from Kingsbury. Simple pleasures.

Arts and Crafts

Our day out took us to Stoneywell, an Arts and Crafts house from the late nineteenth century, built away from the road and deep in the woods. It was not an advertised running day on the GCR but we stopped on the way at Quorn and Woodhouse station. The café is always open and there was what I thought was likely to be a photographers’ charter train in the down platform. 4953 Pitchford Hall then backed down through the up platform and I just managed to get a shot of her, as well as some intervening foliage.

Stoneywell is carefully tended by the National Trust and it turned out to be a delightful venue with a very welcoming staff. We had a tour of the house and garden. Waiting for the guide to arrive, I half expected a fictional character from the grand-childrens’ books to open the front door - would it be Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, or the Three Bears?

No, it was Doug the guide. He told us about how the Gimson family had first created the house as a summer retreat from their engineering business in Leicester. By the time they had made it their permanent home, down the road at Quorn there was always a chance of a Hall Class locomotive straying onto LNER lines via the connection with the GWR at Banbury. They may even have been able to hear its whistle from afar as they sat in their garden on a pleasant summer’s day.     

Alderley Edge

This is the best picture I could get which would include the two essential items of the story, so sorry about all the trees. This is Alderley Edge, where I stayed with my Mum and Dad as a toddler in the early 1950s, at the home of my grandmother in Trafford Road. My Dad pushed me in my pushchair to the park next to the main line from Manchester to London Euston via Crewe. It provided me with my first memories of the steam railway.

Dad told me later that from the swing park - then not hidden so completely from the line by that row of trees and foliage - I watched named trains like The Mancunian, The Comet and The Pines Express speed past. In fact, he told me about it so many times as I was growing up that in the end I don’t know if its my memory or his telling of the story that I can see in my mind’s eye. I imagine myself at the top of the slide as an un-rebuilt Patriot powers into view under the bridge from where the picture is taken. Fact or imagination, it doesn’t matter. I’m just grateful that he took me at all and that it kick started my lifelong interest in the railway.