(no subject)

[morwen]

Bit of a boring today. Various mud things done, including one tiny bit more of Dove mission written (in Dove mission you have to disrupt a peace conference between the Americans and the French).

alexa_robinson should be coming to the party next weekend, so that's all ok.

Tomorrow I shall be exploring the disused railway track near the village. It used to lead from the east to Thurnby and Scraptoft station. There was no actual interconnection with any of the mainlines running through Leicester - so rather unsurprisingly didn't last long. It's clearly shown on OS maps, and at least one of the railway bridges is still standing, so am rather curious to find out what is left. There should possibly be a viaduct, and the map seems to indicate a tunnel!

Comments

[riak.livejournal.com]

If it's the line I'm thinking of there is a railway bridge near the Pump & Tap pub, near DMU. If you follow the line of that to the back of Tudor road (the raleigh?) you'll find a station platform.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Different line - this one is in open countryside east of the city.

This map (http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?client=public&X=467000&Y=304000&width=500&height=300&gride=&gridn=&srec=0&coordsys=gb&db=&addr1=&addr2=&addr3=&pc=&advanced=&local=&localinfosel=&kw=&inmap=&table=&ovtype=&zm=0&scale=25000&left.x=2&left.y=97) shows a bit of it. The yellow road running north from the red road (the A47) is called "Station Lane" still. The actual station site has all been built on though.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Quite a succesful little visit. Photos here (http://cryosphere.net/~morwen/gnr/).

We discovered a bridle-way (not marked as a public right of way but obviously well used) running along the line of the railway in one point, near Ingarsby (seen in ridge and exbridge). Just down the road from this, also in Ingarsby, is a preserved railway bridge. (seen in bridge and bridge2)

North of Tilton we had an even better result, with a bridge over a pretty well preserved railway cutting near a the junction of the branch to the former main line. In cutting.jpg you can just about see another road bridge in the distance behind the twigs (we couldn't figure out how to get there). cutting2, 3 and 4 we see the arch of the roadbridge from the side of the railway cutting.

It's a Small World, part 34

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I googled for "Scraptoft Station" and the first link is you!

I'd been walking with ewtikins along a nice country walk north of Hendon, which turns out to be an abandoned railway line and now I'm googling for the ones I know... Which are almost entirely undocumented on the web. The one I played on as a boy, the 'Rally' from Tudor Road to Ratby, had huge thickets of wild rasberries on the old Glenfield station, now built over and far, far less interesting. But Stephenson's tunnel is still there if you know how to find it.

The Belgrave Road line you explored was the line that took a generation of Leicester children to Skegness and near-fatal exposure to the North Sea; very little of it remains visible in Leicester today. I have an old OS map (1960) which allowed me to retrace the route, out from Sainsbury's, Gypsy Lane, then North, south, and north again of the A47 as far as Scraptoft.

I have walked along stretches of it, East of Scraptoft, with my father: one of the tunnels is used by hibernating peacock butterflies and it is an astonishing sight in January.

Hopefully I will see you in B-Movie on Friday.

Re: It's a Small World, part 34

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Hehe. :)

I made a little stub article about Leicester Belgrave Road (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester_Belgrave_Road_railway_station) on Wikipedia. One thing I tried to find recently was the Humberstone Road station on the Northern (my mother reports there was also a Humberstone Road station on the MML, at what is now just a bridge, I'm unsure what they were called). Whilst we were unable to find any ruins as such, the alignment of the line and the station is still quite visible in the nearby buildings and structures - and indeed a new affordable homes project being built nearby keeps to that same alignment.

Re: It's a Small World, part 34

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Oh, and do you have any pictures online / do you want to contact me offline with details (mine are here (http://abigailb.livejournal.com/8653.html#cutid1))? I've had a sudden fear I will arrive at B-Movie and not actually recognise anyone in real life (not entirely realistic since fluffymormegil should be there, but nontheless).

Re: It's a Small World, part 34

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I look like this: (http://pics.livejournal.com/hairyears/pic/0008766k/g25)
..and can be contacted thus (http://hairyears.livejournal.com/51371.html).

Prod Alexa, see if she can be persuaded to come too.

I will probably leave at or before midnight, as there is an Aikido seminar that weekend in Paris, and I'll need to be on the Eurostar at a dismaying hour in the morning.