Hi good morning just to let you know the swing bridge over the river, soar is that the heritage centre in Woodlane in Quorn to Rothey now have it had rebuilt it from the Coalville snipton heritage centre, which is now closed some fantastic photos on Google and the KZbin channel. I hope this helps great video. Many thanks Colin.

Hi good morning just to let you know the swing bridge over the river, soar is that the heritage centre in Woodlane in Quorn to Rothey now have it had rebuilt it from the Coalville snipton heritage centre, which is now closed some fantastic photos on Google and the KZbin channel. I hope this helps great video. Many thanks Colin.

Anyone know if the workman service from Leicester Belgrave Rd to John O Gaunt which ran up to 1957 was for the creamery at John O Gaunt?

Very slight error, at 2:26 this is Debdale Wharf between Kibworth & Foxton.

I can only feel sad and bitter, the railways have nearly disappeared and so have the English, extinguished by a British governments socialist and capitalist that hate Britons.

Great video I love the history about the from when the line opened up on til closure I live in Loughborough the only thing evidence left to say there was a 2 bridges on Thorp hill and one near round hill drive and the loco shed was demolished in 2018 to make way for Aldi supermarket

If you look back on the "Beeching" cuts, the main baddies were the tories, who never supported nationalisation since it started, so the blame must go, in ascending order, to Beeching, Marples and McMillan

The photos at the end made me want to cry.Really heartbreaking what they did to the railway infrastructure and how it is much needed now.Instead we have stupid buses and houses built on a once great network.What stupidity and shortsightedness.Could carry on but its too much to bear............

Hi Matt, thanks for directing me to this, great graphics. I grew up in Harlaxton in the 60's and went to Colsterworth school where my mum taught in the early 70's so I remember seeing quite a lot of this still in operation it was quite exciting to see it all, the locos and the enormous walking drag lines. There was still steam quite late and as a very small boy my grandfather used to take us for a walk up to a level crossing with a hut next door to it where we would sit with the man whose job was to open and close the gate (I think) and one time a little steam loco appeared and I was briefly lifted up onto the footplate for a look. I remember the fire in the firebox mostly. Can you imagine that happening today!

I think you missed a tiny bit of ironstone line up at the top of the county. It came over from Lincolnshire in at Belvoir across the Grantham canal up past Stenwith and Muston where it crossed the A52 to join the libe to Nottingham....

Wow, what a lovely breakdown of the rise and fall of those lines. Really interesting, thank you.

Excellent. Very well put together. What is the rather grand looking station front one minute in? Thanks David.

Stamford East closed to passengers in 1957, the Stamford and Essendine railway closed altogether in 1959, Stamford East closed to goods in 1963 and the sidings at Blackstone's closed in 1967. The line was taken up after it closed in 1959 apart from a section that ran to the sidings at Blackstones and the Stamford East station yard which continued to be used for goods until 1963. This was taken up and the sidings left in use until 1967 when they fell out of use but I don't know when they were taken up.

Thanks for another of your informative videos. The graphics make things much easier to understand! In my younger days I remember well the approach through the tunnel from Stamford East to Stamford Town, which was a bit of a nightmare for drivers trying to spot the home signal which used to be hung below a wooden beam that spanned the line right at the tunnel exit. With steam and smoke often filling the tunnel it was a really bad spot to try to stop at and if you knew it was "on" you'd have to go very slowly through the tunnel to stand any chance of stopping near to the exit and still being able to breathe! The signal was a lower quadrant Midland Railway one, which lasted well into the 1960s. No problem today with colour lights and no steam getting in the way but Stamford is still quite a busy station.

Nice one Matt. Plenty of food for thought here for myself. I recently brought an Eric Tonks book, on part of Northamptonshire, because I wanted to read up on a place I’d been to.

I worked with number 17 pit locos Jupiter and Juno in the late 1960's. Jupiter was number 60 a Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns 0-6-0ST of the raised fire ox type known as "Uglies" (62 was preserved). Juno was a 1958 built Austerity 0-6-0ST and was offered to me to purchase on its retirement from service but sadly I had nowhere to keep it. It was eventually preserved and is a Isle of Wight Railway loco which is currently on loan to the NRM at Shildon. Several Andrew Barclay locos worked at S&L quarries at Harlaxton, Stainby and Colsterworth. The 15 Inch Barclay 0-6-0ST Ajax being now also at IoWRly. was last worked at Harlaxton in 1968. For a short time after its closure in 1959 part of the M&GNR line between South Witham and Thisleton was leased by S&L to work ore traffic out of the Thisleton Mine over to High Dyke firstly with steam locos and later with ex-BR class 14 diesels. It was an interesting experience working 16ton mineral wagons, up to 10 at a time over the ex-M&GNR line! I had often been over the line on passenger trains when going on holiday to Great Yarmouth Great memories of days long past. The O2 2-8-0 locos that worked the High Dyke Branch used to cross the A1 dual carriageway by a big steel plate bridge and there was a very steep gradient down to the sidings at High Dyke. They used to detach the brakevan and after the loco and about 6 wagons went down the bank and reversed into the sidings they ran the van down by gravity into a short headshunt that was arranged to go uphill in the opposite direction so that it could be attached to the rear of the empty train going back up to the quarries at Stainby. A very explosive run had to be taken at the bank to get back up onto the branch. An exciting move to watch!

Thanks for this video which fills in one or two gaps in my knowledge of these quarries. My grandfather worked at Holwell Works for much of his life and I remember riding on Holwell number 2 which I think may have been a Barclay 0-4-0ST. It worked at the time in and around the works and was a fairly new looking loco. I think its main job was taking the slag wagons upto Welby tip, which was a very large tip that could be seen from much of the county. The tip has now been long removed and levelled. Holwell manufactured many cast iron products including bullhead chairs for the railways under the Stanton name. I believe that these chairs carried the name Stanton followed by an H to show they were cast at Holwell.

Another very interesting video! I lived in E. Leicestershire in the 1950s and 60s and visited the Pilton Quarries quite a bit. It was a rather quaint establishment unlike the bigger E. Leics. and Rutland quarries. There was still a disc and crossbar signal which controlled access to the sidings from the quarry. It is a place I have not even thought about for a long time. I must look for the slides I took to see which locos were active at the time. Thanks for reminding me of those days of my youth!

Another magnificent video!

Brings back a lot of memories. Last time I travelled from Wroxham to Leicester we went via Peterborough to Market Harborough it was not long before the GN&LNW joint line closed I think. The only thing I recall about the trip was just before getting to Harborough we passed a goods train waiting on the joint line for us to pass and the loco was B17 4-6-0 61660 Hull City. It was minus its nameplates but in fairly clean green livery. It was withdrawn a few weeks later. At the time we lived in Leicester and our house backed onto the GNR Belgrave Road Branch, so it felt like sacrilege to be going to London Road Station! A memory I had almost forgotten revived some 60 years later thanks to the video. I can also recall cycling to Seaton to watch the push and pull service to Uppingham before it ended. My last memory of Seaton was seeing an 84xxx standard 2-6-2Tank loco in the platform.

Did you mention the Malybone Rugby Lutterworth Ashby Magna Leicester (Great central stn ) Nottingham Sheffield . I believe that it was the last railway to be built in this country . Good video .

Great video Matt

Thank you for the video. I used to work for USC at Colsterworth. One of the photos is of Stainby Glebe. Many people thing that it was Exton Park. It was a high intesity pit with two production faces. The pit nearer Stainby was shallower and this was operated by two diesel draglines, the other was deeper and nearer Colsterworth North, there was a 5W employed here stripping the overburdon.

It is interesting to see how many railways there were in Leicester. It showed what Beeching talked about with duplication of routes. 2 railways to London from Leicester, just because railway companies wanted the profitable traffic. You can see why 95% of traffic was on 50% of the lines. The one calculation Beeching struggled with, as everything was calculated by people, not computers, was how the 95% would be affected when the 5% was removed, which fed the 95%. To try and ensure that traffic wasn't lost, he planned that little used lines would be replaced by buses for passengers and lorries for freight. The government ignored this important part of the feeding of the railways to make them work. This led to a loss of traffic. There were also lines that Beeching said should stay but the government removed. The varsity line was one, which is now being reinstated. The other major mistake of the government was not safeguarding land that the lines occupied, in case of future need. A number were swalled up by roads like the A38 in Devon. This stopped the heritage line, the South Devon Railway continuing to serve Ashburton. Which was actually reopened by Beeching, as he stated he never closed this station, so was happy to reopen it. The station did close again after the A38 was built.

As a previous resident of Desford I found this incredibly interesting. Thank you.

Nice representation. Not much about the line onto Burton from Ashby though and the Wooden Box loop, or the Ashby Burton Light Railway. Or the Ticknall Tramway.

I live in this area with all 3 parts surrounding where I live i've enjoyed your video's well done :)

Loved it. Great photos and music and the end too.

Rutlander here. I understand the need for Beeching's rationalisation, but the reason why he is viewed - rightly - as an "axeman" is that he did not provide for the future viability of the network. I have spent my professional career creating telecommunications networks and it is essential to provide for so-called "redundancy" in order to reroute traffics in the case of line closures. The minimal measures required are the planning-safeguarding of trajectory ("mothballing"), the maximum measures are the retention of the line in full working order. Maybe all this wasn't in his brief, but if the politics of the day had refused on (Beeching's) request to write it into the brief retrospectively, there was always the option of an "obiter dicta", where Beeching could have added such recommendations on his own initiative. Both ECML and WCML need side routes. As an Eastmidlander it irks me that not only has BR (in fairness, not Mr. Beeching) closed the March - Spalding line, they have now even built a prison on the trackbed to ensure that any recovery of the line will be really expensive.

Hi Matt. That was a fantastic bit of history brought to life. My own opinion about Beeching is were it not for his 'axe' then we wouldn't have many if not any of the amazing Heritage Railways that we have today. He wasn't wrong though when he said that he'd be the scapegoat for many years to come! Thanks again for this

Just brilliant! To see the map drawn on a timeline is genius and really puts things in perspective, especially when you consider that early passengers at Leicester would be nearly 60 by the time the GCR was open! Out of interest do you know when the first trains to London ran (presumably through Rugby?). Thank you so much.

Superb. Thank you. My cycling around Leicestershire and Rutland in the 1950s/60s enabled exploration of much of this and a continuing interest in railways. Very useful.

Very interesting Matt. I love these iron stone lines. Very interesting about the four gauge sizes. Thanks for the mention to, and yes, I’ll be checking these tunnels out haha!

Fab!

Matt is back!

Very many thanks for all the detail - fascinating

A pleasure to view. Thank you

Great vid Matt, as others have said you went into amazing detail. I've been building a Train Simulator Classic route from Wansford to Nassington mine and this has given me a great understanding of how the mines worked. Looking forward to part two!

Great video Matt - the timeline makes the quite complex ‘big picture’ very consumable. Just one thing to mention- you mention Yarwell Junction station right at the end…..it’s important to understand that this was once the point where the line to Nassington/Seaton diverged from another line that went south t Oundle, Barnwell, Thrapston and beyond (I think to Northampton) Given that your primary focus was on Stamford this omission is understandable, but this part of the picture adds yet more traffic through Sibson and shows its importance to be even greater.

Battlefield line, only ran to Bosworth originally, then a V small band of volunteers extended to Shenton

Enjoyable, I can tell you are not a native of the county, some of those pronunciations made me chuckle, I was born and raised in the county and lived close to the old Great Central near to Whetstone station. I have fond memories of travelling all over the county by train mostly by steam power. There was a mineral line that ran to Croft Quarry that ran into the 21st century I think.

My great grandad was a signalman on the Leicester to Swannington railway at Fosse road, he & my family lived backing onto the “ rally” my family then went to live near the Glenfield tunnel , Kirby Muxloe,Ellistown & Coalville. Finally worked as a planner & senior PICOP on the railway myself. Where would we be without the train. My son is now in charge of WCML southern possession team

I was a fireman at Market Harborough till it closed.

Nice one Matt. I enjoyed that, and it’s explained a few things to me since I did my last exploration around there.

Fab! Amazing how much detail in this. Huge amount of research. Thanks.

Glad this popped up … terrific post .. thank you …

Kist another gov.pawn GIT ! destroyed our once proud railway system

Nice article but one branch line has not been discussed I.e. the branch which served Groby granite. This however may have been a private venture! This extended from the Groby quarry (Groby Pool is near the works entrance) to a junction adjacent to the Glenfield brick works I.e. between Ratby and Glenfield adjacent to the current M1. Also here during the First World War was an ammunition works known commonly as the Dumps. A second set of sidings also existed at the Western side of Ratby (again known as the Dumps) which latterly served the Alexander Stone Co.