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Above:
Phil Earsnhaw is one of the club's most accomplished negotiators,
and in April 2011 he led a walk in the Penkridge and Stafford area
which took in the former branch line to Littleton Colliery. The
branch left the Wolverhampton to Stafford main line at a junction
just south of Penkridge, and then ran 5 miles east to the colliery,
the last deep mine in Staffordshire which closed on 10th December
1993. In the photograph above, the old colliery line can be seen
crossing bridge 80A on the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal
(grid reference SJ 932120). To judge by the number of ramblers sitting
below the railings, this was their lunch stop. 9th April 2011. (Chris
Parker) |
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Above:
Here's a rare sight on an old railway – a set of in
situ level crossing gates. (In situ they may be, but
they could hardly be described as 'intact'!) They are located at SJ
935119, where the branch crossed Micklewood Lane, which links Penkridge
with Cannock. 9th April 2011. (Chris Parker) |
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Above:
A mile and a half east of the level crossing in the picture
above, the branch passed beneath Mansty Lane via this bridge. It looks
as if the trackbed here is being used as some kind of haul road. The
bridge itself not a thing of beauty, but the brickwork visible on
the right suggests that an older structure lies at its heart, modified
perhaps as part of a local road improvement scheme, as suggested by
the concrete span above. 9th April 2011. (Chris Parker) |
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Above:
The site of Littleton Colliery, where the National Coal Board
once employed 800 miners and support staff, is now just an empty space
which betrays, via the saplings in the foreground, the first signs
of landscaping. The miners here breated a sigh of relief in 1992 when
the then Conservative government designated their pit a 'core mine',
i.e. one that was to be retained. However, by the end of the following
year, all of them had lost their jobs. Is it any wonder that coal-mining
communities reacted badly to such treatment? 9th April 2011. (Chris
Parker) |
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Above:
The Manchester & Milford Railway became the former GWR
branch line from Aberystwyth to Carmarthen via Strata Florida and
Pencader. Between Abertystwyth and Tregaron, parts of the line have
been opened up as the multi-use Ystwyth Trail, but it is not continuous
along the old trackbed. You can take your choice as to the reasons:
some say that EC funding ran out before all the necessary land agreements
and purchases could be concluded, while others (including this article
in Wikipedia)
claim that the problem was lobbying against the trail by councillors
on Ceredigion County Council. Whatever the cause, the end result is
some unsatisfactory road diversions which have caused many trail users
to regard it as needing further work to improve safety. This is the
bridge at grid reference SN 683706 where the trail leaves the old
railway for a diversion via Penlan Farm. The lack of height under
the arch reveals that some infilling has gone on here. 15th April
2011. (Bob Morgan) |
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Left:
Viewed from a nearby public footpath, this is the
short tunnel at SN 692694 (near Tynygraig or Carradog Falls
Halt) on a section of the line that was not used in the trail.
15th April 2011. (Bob Morgan) |
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Above:
A road-over-rail bridge at SN 709672 on the Ystwyth Trail
near the site of Strata Florida station, viewed from the Aberystwyth
(i.e. north) side. 15th April 2011. (Bob Morgan) |
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Above:
The Ystwyth Trail leaves the railway trackbed at this point,
about one mile north of Tregaron. The trail looks rather stark and
sterile here, but a few seasons will green the edges and soften the
appearance generally. What is obvious is that Ceredigion CC has installed
a first rate multi use trail where it was able to; the pity is the
gaps in it, as remarked above. Other pictures of the Ystwyth Trail
can be found in Photo Gallery 31 and on
the 2008 News page. 15th April 2011.
(Bob Morgan) |