The Abandoned GCR Station Remains

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Welcome to Part 3 of 'Ghosts of the Great Central Mainline 2'.
We've got a treat for you in this episode. We have a look around the abandoned and derelict Helmdon station in Northamptonshire. The station opened in 1899 and closed in 1963, before the Great Central Railway closed completely in 1966. Despite being a small village, it was seen fit to have a station on this mainline between London, Rugby, Leceister, Nottingham and Sheffield.
The platform of this disused Great Central station is pretty much in tact, but since it was abandoned in the 1960s, has been taken over by nature. Until recently becoming a jungle, with trees and undergrowth taking over. The station buildings are long gone, and until recently the lamp rooms under the road bridge were visible and accessible.
The owners of the land have done a fantastic job of clearing the worst of the overgrown landscape that was eating the former station site. It is now mostly clear.
Next door on (now private) land was the site of the goods shed and yard. Buildings are still visible, but in very poor condition. Just up the line a short distance is the impressive Helmdon Viaduct.
Great Central Mainline was built as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire railway. Opening in 1899, it was designed to be as straight as possible with as little gradient as possible. Speed was the aim and express trains travelled between London Marylebone, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester. It was the last UK mainline to be built before HS1 over a century later.
It thrived initially, however with a lack of upkeep, neglect and dwindling usage, it was mothballed during the great railway rationalisation of Dr Beeching in the 1960s - known as the Beeching Axe. Lost railway artefacts and relics are left scattered along the route.
Don't forget to check the other videos in this series, including the GCR history of Rugby.
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[@ceanothus_bluemoon]

What a great permission, thank you Jim! A real treat to see this platform uncovered, though the bridge infill is horrendous. Is this a part of Highways England's illegal campaign to ruin and block historic bridges behind the backs of local councils? The lamp room was a beauty. I can only hope the bridge can re-emerge one day. Thanks for going the extra mile to be able to film there!

[@WobblyRunner]

A pleasure!!! A real treat was this. I don't think the bridge was one of the Highways England infills. Though I could be wrong. I certainly didnt see it make the news with the others.

[@Carolb66]

Great to get permission Paul & Jim from a kind landowner! I would love to look around an disused station so much to see, owner has done a great job of clearing the land so you can see the platforms. It has great potential that site it could be a fab attraction for rail enthusiasts with a bit of money & imagination. Cheers Paul & Jim. 😊👍❤

[@WobblyRunner]

It's fascinating Isn't it. Like you say, so much potential. I'd love to know what the future plans are.

[@paulketchupwitheverything767]

I'm amazed that the platform is so intact. I wouldn't have been surprised if the decades of tree growth had pushed between the brickwork and dislodged coping stones.

[@WobblyRunner]

Yeah some bits survived better than others Paul. I wonder if there's any going spare from the other GCR stations that have seen the bulldozers recently.

[@stuarthall6631]

I always really, really enjoy your videos. Thank you so much! I live very close to Helmdon and last visited the station site in 2020. As Jim said, it was heavily overgrown with trees then and so I'm delighted to see it cleared. Perhaps the owners will relay a short section of track? This has happened elsewhere adjacent to closed station platforms. Stretching the point, some camping coaches in the station would be fantastic. I'd hire one! Looking forward to the viaduct video to come.....

[@WobblyRunner]

Thanks very much Stuart. I look forward to what happens next with the site. Some coaches would be very interesting. I certainly stay there too.

[@daystatesniper01]

Great video and Kudos to the owner for allowing access brilliant .

[@WobblyRunner]

Cheers. Yeah was a great treat to be given the access 🙂

[@maestromanification]

Great to see that has been cleared. I understand one of the reasons for the island platforms was to leave room for another pair of tracks either side of the ones that were built. Sadly it didn’t happen

[@WobblyRunner]

Future proofing 🙂

[@richardharris4452]

Great video again, Paul & Jim.....will be fascinating to see what the station looks like in the future

[@WobblyRunner]

Cheers Rich. Cant wait to see what happens.

[@Michael43713]

Great effort to get this fantastic footage!

[@WobblyRunner]

Thanks Michael

[@swipewrite]

They did intend having trains running but there was a lot of complaints on the idea which was surprising considering the sparseness of this area. I think it was on the idea of what came about at Finmere and surprised that group didn't consider Helmdon when they lost that site. Perhaps they had learned something from the failure and strength of negativity experienced at that time. It's fantastic to see the platform so clear again but with the amount of grass, bushes and trees that took hold it will quickly return if they can't keep it up. It would require a team with suitable equipment to keep this clear. It will be interesting seeing how far this goes or if it has a future of some kind. As with Brackley that also had two lines and stations I found it incredible at the strength of opposition against any railway reopening in these two places. Soon, Brackley will have trains running past at around 200mph with them still with none.

[@SimonPerry-cz4ke]

What a Crime closing the GCR was one of Beachings accomplices worked for a Motorway Civils co.

[@daveattrill2712]

Fantastic explore lads and an impressive piece of platform - the condition of the brick face and platform edging pretty well reminds me of those at the Derby Friargate site which I had more than one explore of while ago added fencing made it inaccessible. This fella is of a nice substantial length (at least that of the new rebuild at Dore and Totley) so I'm guessing it took a few slightly longer trains in its day.

[@WobblyRunner]

Good point you raise there Dave. I wonder how many full length services called in at Helmdon

[@swipewrite]

Another great video. I have visited this station many times since the closure and seen it in various stages of destruction. A group tried to reopen it a few years back but that all fell through. The blue bricks were quite expensive and think they just saved that on the GCR stationmaster houses.

[@WobblyRunner]

Excellent. I wonder what they were trying to reopen it as.

[@stephencope7178]

Victorians must be turning in their graves at what beeching and co did to this railway!!

[@WobblyRunner]

Massive waste isnt it.

[@railwaychristina3192]

What will happen to the viaduct? Hope it is preserved

[@WobblyRunner]

Fingers crossed. Though you can no longer walk along the path from the station. We spoke to (well Jim chatted) to a few locals on the viaduct who were saying about the sudden closure of pathways on the railway track and access to the viaduct.

[@smithyhouses100]

If you`d like to see what Jim described of how it looked the other time that he went there, Middy posted a good video of Helmdon Station a couple of years ago.He was suffering real pain and anguish as he moaned about" what lengths he goes to for the sake of this channel" !!!

[@WobblyRunner]

😄ah yes I remember watching that some time ago.

[@smithyhouses100]

@@WobblyRunner Thanks for the reply,also as a matter of interest,have you heard anything about Middy lately? I`ve not seen anything of his video`s for ages,I really miss his explores,hopefully he`s OK.

[@WobblyRunner]

Yeah he's still active on Facebook :) Jim said he ran into him yesterday at Leicester North station.

[@smithyhouses100]

@@WobblyRunner Thanks for that,Paul.

[@neilfranklin5644]

That's a long old platform for the middle of nowhere station.

[@daveb.814]

MCJ3 Engineers Line Reference

[@PrinceJohn84]

Don't forget Finmere as well, now sadly lost to HS2.

[@WobblyRunner]

👍

[@nigelbarker4135]

What knobhead decided to bury the magnificent Lamp room🤔🤬 I suppose it hasn’t been demolished so can be dug out later on. Good stuff boys👍👏👏👏

[@WobblyRunner]

Yeah hopefully it's still intact. I still don't know what happened with the infilling.

[@WobblyRunner]

NB. Ahhh it looks like it was filled in due to structural damage to the bridge in around 2012. Hopefully just earth and no set in concrete.

[@nigelbarker4135]

@@WobblyRunner let’s hope so 🤞🙏 Thanks for the reply 👌😉🫡