Rapid Transit

Although we were in America for 10 days, the only train I saw all the time I was there was on the dedicated Dulles airport metro. Running parallel to the airport approach road, the Washington Metro Silver Line provides a direct link with the city centre. Though we travelled from and to the American international airport by car, at Heathrow we took the equivalent rapid transit system from Terminal 5 to London Paddington, which takes a mere 15 minutes to reach central London. The only other stop is the one serving terminals two and three. Once out of the tunnels and onto the GWR main line, the Heathrow Express certainly lives up to its name, whisking its passengers into town in comfortable EMU Class 387 stock with overhead transmission.

Its always a pleasure to arrive at Paddington, a vibrant and attractive station in so many ways, combining the old with the new. One of the original station approaches has had its cladding removed since we were there a year ago to reveal once again the entrance next to the former railway hotel - now the Hilton.

 

   

Annesley

Information display boards vary greatly. Overall, I think that they are much better than they used to be, in terms of design, clarity and durability - open as they often are to the elements. I found this one particularly useful. It takes a “then and now” approach, superimposing more recent developments over the former railway landscape and doing it very effectively.

We had made for Newstead and Annesley Country Park in search of a mealy redpoll that had been well-publicised on the Nottinghamshire Birdwatchers excellent website, but which had apparently left the area a day or two earlier. The feeders that had attracted it for the preceding weeks kept us entertained instead with bullfinch, siskin, reed bunting and lesser redpoll. A few pairs of black necked grebe were also busy on one of the lakes.

I have known about Annesley [16D] for as long as I can remember as an important shed on the old Great Central Railway. It was home to freight engines, in particular, and especially the Standard 9Fs used on mineral traffic in the Midlands. I never reached it, however, so it has remained just a mystical name from the past for me.

At this point, the Leen Valley was eventually host to three parallel, north to south, main line railways – the MR, GNR and GCR. Today, it only has a lone, single-track section of the Nottingham to Worksop, Robin Hood line. In the meantime, most of the railway lines were taken up, the pit waste tips were expanded in their place, then the collieries themselves were closed and a significantly despoiled landscape gradually began to return to nature with the help of the local authorities and a wide range of environmental groups.

For someone who had no way of visualising exactly what it used to be like - what was where and what the sequence of events was - an on-site map with concise explanations what was just what was required. I can’t be sure it will do the trick in this second-hand form, but I’ll give it a go, nevertheless.