Precedent Lincoln

Let’s be honest. If you were planning a town centre from scratch you wouldn’t plonk a railway level crossing straight over the High Street. That would especially be the case if you knew that road traffic volumes were going to rise, trains were going to run more frequently, and that one of the two stations would be earmarked for closure, thus funnelling even more trains than before over the road at the same point. In fact, Lincoln’s central area once had 5 level crossings, with two of them only 200 yards apart across High Street. It was certainly a recipe for getting things clogged up.

What was clearly needed was a mathematician, someone who could see the wood for the trees and realise that this just wasn’t going to add up. Luckily, Lincoln had such a man in George Boole FRS [1815-1864], whose recently erected statue outside Lincoln station recognises him as “the grandfather of the digital age”. Unluckily, Boole’s expertise came too late for the city’s railway builders. They’d already set their precedent by opting for level crossings from the off.

Lincoln’s response in recent times, additional to the closure of St Mark’s station and level crossing by British Rail in the 1980s, has been to pedestrianise the High Street and to build a footbridge across the railway so that people are not detained unnecessarily at the level crossing barriers. They have also added lifts to the bridge to ensure equal access for all. It’s difficult to make lift shafts that enhance the overall look of a place. As lift shafts go, these are probably above average in design terms.

Dipping in to online chat about Lincoln suggests that the High Street level crossing is still a topic of conversation, locally, with some even seeing it as a dividing point between “buzzing and cool” Lincoln to the north and “rather falling behind” Lincoln to the south. In the meantime, it remains a significant and characterful part of the city landscape, especially if you like trains and you’re not in a hurry.

George Boole was already an accomplished mathematician during the railway age, but it seems that it was not until 1937 that his work helped lay the foundations for modern computer and communications systems. From his present position, he can just about make out the High Street level crossing at the next corner. He’s probably muttering something like, “Mmm, not sure that’s going to work”. However, we idle passers-by have now got these two notable features of interest to attract our attention in this ever-changing part of the city landscape.

        

Halifax

Nathaniel knew he was a Priestley, but he didn’t know quite how that had happened. An 1890 document stated that “Nathaniel Priestley, brazier or tinker, born near Bradford or Halifax about 1742, died 1828. Wanted his father’s name”. Presumably he knew who his mum was, though that is not recorded anywhere, either. What is known is that he was my Dad’s Great, Great, Great Grandad. The West Yorkshire Archive Service in Halifax holds hand-written Priestley family notebooks from the late seventeenth century onwards, so off we went to Yorkshire to see what we could find out.

The 11.15 Azuma from Doncaster was busy and on time. The elegant thirty-something foursome at the next table were up from London for a two-hour pre-booked lunch date in Harrogate. The upper middle class “Yah” now seems to have become an abbreviated “Yer” [but certainly nowhere near to a commonplace “Yeh”]. After Leeds, our Northern Class 195 DMU to Halifax was heading for the seaside at Blackpool with an altogether different clientele. I wondered if the cost of a weekend at the Lancashire resort for our six cheery fellow travellers was comparable to lunch for four at a fashionable restaurant in Harrogate.  

Central Halifax is full of character. The modern library that contains the WYAS is welded onto the remains of the Square Congregational church, dating from 1857 and still including the spire. This attractive and imaginative scheme was completed in 2017. Behind the ensemble is the Piece Hall, a magnificent Grade I listed masterpiece, constructed for the trading of woollen cloth by the thirty yard “piece”, in the eighteenth century. There are numerous solid Yorkstone buildings still surviving, from public and commercial to old mills with new functions. Since we were last in the centre of town, many of the narrow central streets have been pedestrianised, making it a very leisurely and welcoming place to stroll around.

The grand, old Grade II listed station building at Halifax was opened in 1855. The steel and glass structure that took its place on the adjacent site was completed in 2010, becoming the station’s new entrance and concourse. The original building became part of the tourist attraction, Eureka! The National Childrens’ Museum.  

There were no great revelations for us in the archive. Nathaniel’s dad did a very good job of concealing his son’s true identity - not only from his son but from the whole of his family thereafter. It was suspected, but never proved, that this was because he was a very wealthy man who was not married at the time - or, at least, not to the woman who bore this particular child. As a tinker and brazier whose own son married a 16-year-old gypsy girl, Nathaniel probably couldn’t ever afford a posh lunch in Harrogate, and maybe never made it to the seaside, either. However, the Priestleys can trace their ancestry back to that point 280 years ago and then beyond it over the many centuries that preceded the event. “Yeh”, we go right back - but then, of course, so does everyone else. 

     

Quick March

My train from Peterborough didn’t stop at March. This was a pity as March had intrigued me for years - from right back in the very early 1960s, in fact. The only reason I’d ever heard of March was because a string of Britannia Pacifics were shedded there, at 31B. There they were, listed as such in my locoshed book. But it was surely just the back of beyond? So, why there?

I certainly had no chance of getting to see them from where we were on the other side of the country. The Eastern Region Brits became the subject of train spotting folklore for us on the north west coast – distant, enigmatic and annoyingly out of reach. Why would a whole load of impressive and desirable named locomotives secret themselves away in an otherwise remote Eastern town named after a month of the year, that I didn’t even know existed, previously? I mean it obviously wasn’t exactly a massive hub and it hadn’t cropped up in geography lessons at school as being an industrial centre, holiday resort or even a famous, picturesque market town with a stunning array of old buildings.

I looked at the standard British Railways fold-out map that came at the end of the regional timetable books I bought frequently throughout that time, but they didn’t really offer any clues. Minor routes were spidery red lines, as opposed to the bolder main inter-city routes. I can’t remember for sure, but I bet there weren’t many thick red lines around March. l could see that it was a junction station, but it was just marooned out there on what looked like a boringly flat bit of Britain and some way from places that were more immediately recognisable.

In the long run, I more or less forgot about March. That was because instead of me having to go there to find the illusive Britannias, the Britannias finally came to us, as dieselisation drove them westwards after 1965. Their swan song in the north west of England would eventually leave them looking very forlorn and unloved as they eventually congregated at Carlisle Kingmoor sheds.

I never really did find out much about March. I read later about the formerly extensive Whitemoor marshalling yard, or what remained of it, though it is not visible from the Ely to Peterborough route that I took this week. The closed Wisbech branch that passed the site is still served by track leading from a triangular junction from a point just west of the station. Passing it at speed, March station, looks to be a shadow of its former self, with disused platforms, plenty of rusting sidings round about and lines of stored obsolete bulk carrier wagons. Nothing visible was moving apart from us, though the internet confirms that Network Rail still has an active materials recovery depot on part of the original Whitemoor site.

I don’t even remember seeing photos of Britannias doing their stuff around March, come to think of it. It remains a conundrum to this day. Why were the Brits not simply shedded at Norwich Thorpe or Cambridge? And what did they actually do with those missing Britannias for all that time, anyway?

   

Ely

The approach to Ely by train is very attractive. Waterside premises line the River Great Ouse and its marina, with the magnificent cathedral perched behind on its hill to provide the backdrop. Ely station was built by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1845 and modernised by British Rail in the 1990s. Today it remains a busy junction station, serving all points of the compass - west to Peterborough, north to King’s Lynn, east to Ipswich and south to Cambridge and London. All three platforms are bi-directional. Platform one has the main entrance and most passenger facilities, whereas two and three make up an island platform with a goods loop behind that. Regular EMU and DMU services are interrupted periodically by Class 66-hauled container trains passing through in both directions alongside platform two. Much of the freight traffic between east coast ports and the West Midlands can avoid the station altogether by taking the loop line to the north of the town. The nameplate from Brush Type 4 No. 47572 Ely Cathedral is mounted on a wooden plaque overlooking platform one. Formerly No. D1763, 47572 was cut up in 2000.