It was the lads’ train day on the ELR on Saturday. The event was the Legends of Steam weekend with 45690 Leander, 70000 Britannia and 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley. It was certainly well attended and Bolton Street station, particularly, was heaving during the middle part of the day. This was also my first opportunity to ride on the Heywood to Bury section “over the hump” that crosses the tram lines. The spacious car park at Heywood was easily accessible from the motorway.
The frontage of Bolton Street station is uninspiring. I
thought back for rivals in the least attractive station façade competition and
could only come up with Burton on Trent, at short notice. It resembles a 1960s garage
premises, possibly offering services at the cheaper end of the scale. Once you
are at platform level, however, the scene has changed completely and there is the
flourishing and well renovated station in LMR colours that you would expect to
see.
It was Saturday lunchtime in Bury, and going out to make the most of it is apparently a very popular thing to do. The first place we tried was bulging and we couldn’t get a table. This sent us round the corner to Wetherspoons, formerly the Art Picture House. Busy as well, we nevertheless managed to collect 6 chairs together round a table for 4 and elbowed our way through a substantial lunch in most interesting surroundings. The Art Picture House was designed by Albert Winstanley and completed in 1922. It is described as an example of post-Edwardian Baroque. Opening as a cinema, it then became a bingo hall before acquiring its current function, and it is now a Grade II listed building.
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