The Remains of the Oldham Loop: 15 Years of Disuse (Part 1)

[@keithalexander3386]

Before the trams were thought of we had a huge railway bridge taking the line past Setons. The railway was used mainly by Pacers which had no bogies and made the most dreadful screeching sound as the flanges worked around a very tight bend.

[@richard3004]

Still remember that screeching when onboard them, that and along with getting bounced out of your seat, how the things stayed on the lines is a miracle.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@richard3004 lots of new wheel flanges I assume!

[@lawrencecody4085]

I remember the railway, and Mumps station was in a terrible state, and I remember the railway passing over the road towards Derker..travelling from Derker, on your left at Rochdale you can see the original alignment of the railway, as the tram approaches Rochdale Railway Station, before descending down to the town centre section. A good video.. I travelled on the Oldham Loop many times,but only as far Shaw, or Derker..if I were going to Rochdale, I would get the faster train service from Victoria..memories of the wheels squealing round corners, towards Oldham especially on a 142 unit will be forever ingrained in my meory....

[@MartinBuckland]

Interesting video that brought back so many memories of when I was young and visited my Grandparents who live on Park Road close to Mumps. That bridge at time 20:14 was the bridge my grandfather and I used to watch the steam trains go through.

[@tramographyMCR]

This comment put a smile on my face immediately, glad you enjoyed it :)

[@radicaledwards3449]

Them back in the day ones there!

[@duncancurtis5108]

Wasn't Clegg St Terminus positioned above the High Street?

[@premraghvani]

Lovely video, and definitely appreciate the added touch of subtitles!

[@tramographyMCR]

I try to include them in every video, glad you enjoyed it

[@kaitlyn__L]

These are some of the best I’ve seen, let alone when compared against sub-count!

[@baseballfan99]

Great video showing the changes. I travelled on the very last train to run on the Oldham Loop back in 09.

[@careerprofessional]

Great video. The Oldham Clegg Street station linked Oldham with Ashton-Under-Lyne. The track ran from the Matalan car park area, past Alexandra Park, Park Bridge, and into the centre of Ashton. Folklore suggests that the railway viaduct across the valley at Park Bridge was ripped down without the necessary planning permission, although this is only allegedly, and I do not know if the viaduct was a listed construction. However, the trackbed exists as part of the national cycleway network and I believe it is the longest cycle route in England separate from the road system - i.e. cyclists don't cower in the gutter! Funding has been granted for a replacement bridge which is going through or has recently achieved planning permission. Nevertheless, there now remains no direct tram or train route between Oldham and Ashton.

[@matthewharding607]

I used to commute this route on my way from Milnrow to university in Manchester in between 1998 & 2002. During the day, the half-hourly service to Rochdale ran fast to Oldham and then stopped at the stations beyond. In between there was a stopper that ran as far as Shaw & Crompton before turning back. I'm not sure what the speed limit was down Werneth bank to Thorpes Bridge Junction, but a Class142 Pacer fully loaded to standing room from Oldham in the morning would often bottom out the suspension with a painful thud as we flew over a couple of the bridges just north of Failsworth station. Coming back up the incline later in the day was of course a much slower affair, especially coming up to where Freehold metrolink is, with a gradient of 1:50.

[@mikecunniffe5199]

South Chadderton Station was built lower than the original railway line. Back in the Oldham Loop days the line would have cross a subway roughly where level crossing is today. this was demolished at the time of the conversion and this has created the two steep inclines you have mentioned in your video. It is excellent video from another person that is intrested in local history and I hope this helps you with your quest of finding the lost relics of yester years.

[@tramographyMCR]

@@mikecunniffe5199 I thought so! The new housing developments around don't have Street View coverage pre-2009 so I couldn't say for certain (my knowledge of steam train capabilities is also not that great) It's weird to me that there are still so many things that you can't just look up on the internet, you actually have to go out and investigate for yourself, and I find doing that fun :)

[@mikecunniffe5199]

@@tramographyMCR This information which I have shared with you is partly local knowledge and information subtracted from online map library. Additional the new housing estate was built on former football pitches and rose cotton mill in the 2020's which saw the 3 entrance to the station open around that time.

[@A-Trainspotter-From-Berkshire]

Manchester Trams already runs under railway signalling in some areas, plus they plan to convert some lines to Tram-Trains to allow for extensions and increased frequency.

[@watcherzero5256]

One of the primary reasons for rebuilding the entrances was to make the stations wheelchair accessible rather than long flights of steps with no lifts as under Rail.

[@leep5113]

The old system was great. I remember getting on a train at Failsworth that took me all the way to Blackpool without having to change trains anywhere. Can’t do that now :(

[@matthewc.419]

That's progress for ya comrad !!!

[@hi-viz]

There were through trains from the loop to Blackpool? I imagine that wasn't the case at the end

[@leep5113]

@ this was probably 1991-ish but yes. We got on at Failsworth and went right to Blackpool without changing trains, unlike the last time I was home….

[@ianmacfarlaine]

I worked and lived over the road at Mumps for a few months in 1998. The town centre section had an RSPCA Rehoming Centre, a big B&Q (which had been built on the site of the previous RSPCA Centre) and the printworks for the Oldham Chronicle. I used the train to Mumps to get to my job interview there, and as I was the last interview of the day, the interview panel chair ran over the road and stuck his head into the train carriage while it was about to get going back to Victoria, to tell me I'd got the job...

[@Merchello]

The way you can get into the bushes around where the old Oldham Mumps and Oldham Central used to be, there are a few fences, near that bridge you were on when you saw the site of Oldham Central, which have gaps in them to find yourself down on the track bed. I've only been down there once and it was a bit of a walk to reach the tunnel that would go over to Werneth. Not much is left over railway-wise except clearance signs, ballast and the tunnel. Not the best way you can explore the past railway since there isn't much down there (except a burnt trolley when I last went down), but it still makes for good footage I reckon.

[@tramographyMCR]

I'll try it :)

[@krisbarratt6413]

Think the tunnel goes under the block of flats at werneth

[@mikecunniffe5199]

Additional information - Oldham Werneth Railway Station main entrance used to be on Railway Street to the side of the Manchester bound platform in the 1950's with a footbridge or foot crossing to the Rochdale bound platform. - Westwood Metrolink Stop was built on the site of the former St Andrews Church which was demolished in the 1970's and Westwood Metrolink stop was actually built partly as well in the former Werneth Goods Station with Metrolink Manchester bound platform sitting roughly where one of the Goods Platform would have been situated. I hope theses notes are any help to you

[@tramographyMCR]

Wow, I just brushed off Westwood as a town centre line stop not involved with the railways at all, and didn't really look into it. I will probably make a Part 3 including all of the stuff that you mentioned. That's amazing, and yes, it does help a lot! When you look at the land around Westwood it does look like a church used to be there now that you say it

[@mikecunniffe5199]

@@tramographyMCR Not a problem at all, I'm glad I have helped you out with my local history knowledge and I will more than happily provide further information on stations featured in your part 2 video before you make the bonus part 3 video. Werneth Goods Station was bounded by Middleton Road, Featherstall Road to the corporation Yard on West Street and Winterbottom Street. If you continued on West Street you come to a bridge adjacent to a very tall stone wall. this stone wall is remainder the railway days as curves from West Street to the first tunnel (Werneth Tunnel) this where the goods train ran under the bridge into Werneth Goods Station, which part of the current metrolink runs through today. If you don't mind I can share your videos on my local history pages.

[@tramographyMCR]

@mikecunniffe5199 I don't mind at all. I encourage people to share my videos :)

[@jamespearson3345]

Enjoyed watching, cycled a bit around there before but want to check out the tunnels

[@dumhead7]

5:01 Bro went Dr. Seuss mode 💀

[@TalesOfWar]

I think your theory about South Chadderton might be right. If you look at the old maps you can see the line was on an embankment where the new station is and a foot path below it where the current crossing is. There was also a reservoir just behind it on the eastern side to supply the old mill that has since been demolished with water, likely for the boilers.

[@tramographyMCR]

@@TalesOfWar Found some old OS maps online yesterday. Took me a while to find the right one but it looks like I was right. I'll probably include that info about the mill in a future video

[@TalesOfWar]

@@tramographyMCR The National Library of Scotlands maps are a fantastic resource for that kind of thing. It shows you side by side with modern maps and you can choose from a number of maps that cover the last 200+ years.

[@youngmurphy7556]

I thought South Chadderton was a brand new stop on a new alignment. It replaced nothing as it diverged from the route through Werneth tunnel.

[@TrainsAndBusesAroundNELondon25]

Adding to the Oldham Mumps station one, you can still see some tramlink rails in the road from when it was a temporary tram stop just at the intersection

[@tramographyMCR]

@@TrainsAndBusesAroundNELondon25 That is in the video

[@paddy9021]

The Oldham loop line was planned for closure when I was at school. I dragged my girlfriend on a trip to Royton Junction and walked the disused railway to Royton and return. The loop line survived, however not being a railway enthusiast my girlfriend closed our relationship soon after!

[@leep5113]

A book called “Manchester in the Days of Steam” by Paul Shackcloth might be of interest. There was also a thin book about the Metrolink-I have no idea of the title and can’t find it my bookcase-that had an interesting history and maps of the system. I think I picked both of these up at the Ian Allen store at Piccadilly.

[@nablicman]

Very interesting and informative video well shot to. Love that tune you used who is it please.

[@tramographyMCR]

The music? It's from KZbin Audio Library, Parasail by Silent Partner

[@nablicman]

@@tramographyMCR cheers for that

[@mohammedfaiisal]

I wish there was some way to bring this route back. From this Oldham Mumps to Freehold, the journey is 3 minutes. Now it takes an extra 5 or 6 minutes to get there. Very inconvenient. There was no need to demolish this. They could have just used this as a second route. For the people that didn't want to go through the town centre to get to their destination. They could have easily kept this as an express tram, for a quicker journey to Manchester or to Rochdale. I always think about this route and miss it everyday and I wish there was some way for it to come back. But I don't think that's even possible. Especially because of the fact that they've got a HGV thing going on, right after the second tunnel towards Freehold. Where the old Werneth train station used to be. I just wish they kept it. It would have been so convenient for everyone to get to their destination, 5-6 minutes faster. Especially considering the fact that this Oldham Mumps platform was closer to my home too

[@tramographyMCR]

@@mohammedfaiisal I thought so too, but I guess maintaining all of that track and the tunnels would have been too much of a hassle.

[@mohammedfaiisal]

@ I don't think it's a hassle at all. Think about what they had to go through, just to make the tram go through the town centre and westwood and then back towards Freehold. It was a lot of hard work for them and it cost them millions of quid. The new mumps to freehold takes upto 10 minutes on a normal day and 8 minutes on a good day. It goes very slowly with a lot of bends. When there's heavy traffic, it takes much longer than 10 minutes. The original one was smooth even after almost 2 centuries of use and it was direct to freehold. No traffic. You're guaranteed to get there in time. I was told by the metrolink team that this all happened because one of the members of the metrolink team was from Westwood and wanted a stop, right on Westwood and it was a huge hassle to make that happen. Demolishing a few buildings just to get to Westwood from King Street. The oldham mumps to freehold was only 3 minutes and it was one basically straight line. That track had basically been there since 1847, when Oldham mumps railway station initially opened. If it can last that long, then there was no need to demolish the original mumps metrolink, in favour of the new one. They could have had two separate routes. One for people that want to get to Manchester or Rochdale 5-6 minutes quicker and the other for people that want to go to Westwood or the town centre. Another thing thats odd is the fact that they got rid of the bridge that went towards Shaw from Mumps. They could have kept that or modernise it by rebuilding it. That way, it didn't have to go through the traffic to get to the original mumps from Derker. I've always thought the new mumps didn't need to be there and it should have gone from Derker to Oldham Central and then another tram goes from Derker to original oldham mumps and vice versa. The fact that they have 3 metrolink stations on the same road that's like three quarters of a mile is insane. 3 stops, so close together. It would have been perfectly fine to have a stop from the new mumps, straight to King street. They've just added far too many stops there and that's a hassle on it's own, if you ask me I just wish there was some way to bring it back. If it needs a petition or for someone to speak to the head of the transport greater Manchester or bee network or the metrolink team. I just want some miracle to happen, where they decide to reopen the original mumps. It currently takes me 40 minutes to get to work, once I leave the house. The old route, would have taken me half an hour exactly. It's just way more convenient to have the other route as an option. I originally always thought the new route was just a secondary option. Had no idea they were going to close the original route. I was fuming when I found out 11 years ago and it's a decision I still think about today

[@tramographyMCR]

@@mohammedfaiisal I meant maintaining the tunnels that were 2 centuries old. Yes, it must have been harder to build the town centre section, but now, less maintenance! You know, the railway tracks aren't just constructed and then left like that. The 1847 track was 100% completely replaced over the years. No railway track can last that long. The original Oldham Mumps Metrolink had light rail tracks that were renewed from the heavy rail tracks. The tunnels would have also required maintenance during the railway days. Okay... you're saying that the entire town centre line was built because one person wanted a stop near Westwood where they lived... that's absurd. I don't know who from the 'Metrolink team' told you that, but it was _actually_ built because Oldham town centre was poorly served by fast modes of transport (Oldham Mumps is quite a walk away from, say, Oldham bus station or the spindles shopping centre, and Oldham Werneth barely even served Oldham town centre), so they built a line that directly passed through the town centre to get rid of that problem. No chance it was built because of that ridiculous reason. They demolished the bridge so that they could 1. not spend unnecessary money on maintaining it or rebuilding it entirely, and 2. because the town centre section needed to rise back up to the original trackbed, and the bridge would have blocked the way for the trams to do that. There isn't enough room for the trams to rise up and join the bridge after Oldham Mumps without obstructing the bus gate road. It's a town centre. Of course they will build more stops to control overcrowding, and overcrowding of tram stops in Oldham of all places, which is a known hotspot for antisocial activity, is bound to be a nightmare.

[@mohammedfaiisal]

@@tramographyMCR I see your light on the two tunnels that would have needed maintaining. But I'm certain that spending the money to maintain the two tunnels would have cost way less than what they actually went through, to make the king street to Westwood happen. I heard it from a few people from metrolink. I'm not sure it was just one person but that Westwood stop was not exactly necessary. Because from kingstreet, they could have chosen to link the tram back to the old route, where the second tunnel appears. If you look at the maps. You can see how close the tunnel is to king street. But ok, let's forget that idea for a second. If they wanted a station that's closer to the town centre. Then, where the oldham central from the 60s used to be, could have been a stop, right after the original mumps. From there to Sainsburys is like a 3-4 minutes walk. But I'm fine with the new route, I just think metrolink definitely could have made it work with the old route. They have the funds to do it, but just took the easy way out I also stand by what I said about too many stops on one street. Union street is less than a mile long. You do not need a stop right outside Sainsburys and then another, right outside the sixth form college. They should have just picked Oldham Central or Oldham King street as a location to add one stop and then just go to Westwood from there. You can get to many parts of the town centre from either location. Bus station is close from king street and central. You don't need another stop that's 2 minutes walk from the previous stop. I also understand that it's a town centre and you need many stops. But in the whole metrolink system, there's no 3 tram stops, that are as close together as mumps, central and king street. Would have been a whole lot smoother if it just went from mumps to king street to Westwood. Or, Derker to king street to Westwood and also, Derker to mumps to freehold. As you mentioned before. The tunnels have been there for two centuries. It may be decaying but there's ways to fund it to make it last another century. You can't tell me it would have cost more money to maintain the two tunnels, than what they did to make the king street to Westwood stop happen. The hassle it took to make that happen was big. A lot of metrolink staff mentioned it. There were even a couple that admitted to the mistake they made in demolishing the old Oldham mumps and the short route to freehold. That route was a game changer for thousands of passengers. Being able to get to your destination 5-6 minutes faster is valuable time saved. But I have already been told that maintaining both tunnels would have been cheaper than the work they did to make the new town centre line. So they could have pulled it off. They could have even made more money with more customers using the metrolink, because it's more convenient I used to be able to get out the house at for example 9am. Get to mumps and sit on the tram by 9:08 and then get to freehold by 9:11. With the new mumps further away from my home and with the traffic I have to get across to get to the new mumps. By the time I have gotten to the new mumps, which would be 9:12, the old tram route would have already been on its way to south chadderton. Or even Hollinwood, if there's traffic that I'm waiting for to get past. Then once I'm on that tram, by the time I have gotten to freehold with the new route, my old route would have been on its way to Monsall. It just shows you how much time was being saved and I just wish it comes back but because of the logistics company occupying the spot after the second tunnel. The Werneth station spot. I think it's gone from highly unlikely to make a return to impossible I also see so much empty spots in Manchester that needs a metrolink service but they don't have one and yet they spent millions for a short Oldham town centre loop. There's spots like Levenshulme and Longsight that would greatly benefit from the metrolink and the closest metrolink to them is all the way in St Peters Square or East Didsbury. It would be so convenient for the residents in south Manchester, to have a tram that gets them from St Peters Square to long sight and then that same tram connects to either the railway that takes you to east didsbury from picadilly. Or, they should just use the route that goes from picadilly to east didsbury the railway station and have a couple of metrolink stops there. Either from picadilly to ardwick to long sight to kingsway. I don't know. But I'm sure they can work something out. I think the next likeliest new station will be Stockport. As the line stops at east didsbury, but you can see a tunnel that would lead to Stockport I remember a long time ago, I saw an old concept of old railway lines and how the future metrolink could have an Oldham Ashton Stockport loop. Where it goes from Oldham through park bridge to Ashton like in the past I believe and then from Ashton to Denton to Stockport and then have the Stockport and didsbury line link up. That would be something very convenient. I also saw the same thing with bury and Rochdale link. As you would have to travel from Rochdale to Manchester to get to bury. Same with Ashton. You need to get to Manchester from Oldham and Rochdale, just to get to Ashton. They need to do something there. There was a proposal on an Oldham Ashton loop back in the early 2010s but idk what happened there

[@tramographyMCR]

​@@mohammedfaiisal It would have cost more than £10m OVER TIME. Money adds up when you have to do the same thing over and over and over again!! Again, building an entire line for the sake of one person or two people is absurd, and that is not the reason it happened. I already explained what the reason was. Ah, yes, the trams could have merged onto King Street with a very tight curve that would require less than 5mph speeds and extremely long waits for cars and other road vehicles, then it would have had to get past King Street Roundabout, which already has a footbridge running through it. That would have had to be demolished and rebuilt. Also, the roundabout is on the A62. Any construction there would cause large amounts of disruption for what benefit? How much would this change speed up the journey? Approximately 75 seconds by my calculations. But you said forget that idea, so I'll keep reading your comment and forget you ever said that. Again, they don't have the funds (they are dealing with major improvement works right now also), and even if they did, it would be a waste of money because of the reasons I have already stated. Why would they not take the "easy way out" if there are benefits to passengers? Don't you think that making sure passengers have access to public transport is more important than making sure they have a slightly faster journey at the cost of making other like journeys worse due to lack of money? Because the stops were moved into the town centre, local businesses get more customers, passengers have slower walks to places where they actually need to go, and people to the north and south of the town centre can access the trams, not just the south. Why do you stand by what you said about the stop placement? Surely if you read what I said about overcrowding and high probability of antisocial behaviour you would have reconsidered that decision. You would really sacrifice safety of passengers for making journeys 30 seconds faster?? Every stop is necessary. They can't hold infinite amounts of people. Tracks and tunnels and bridges and rail platforms and anything like that needs maintenance regularly! Not every few decades or so like you're making it sound! Works take place overnight, sometimes during the day when they can't be done overnight, disrupting services. The tunnels would need to constantly be maintained all the time for however long the Metrolink used them. Levenshulme has a railway station for goodness' sake. It has very frequent connections to the city as well. Longsight has surprisingly fast buses, too. Bringing trams to those areas would fail a cost vs. benefit test every single time (at least in 2024 it would). Buses would be as fast or around as fast as trams every single time, plus other things which I really don't have time to type everything. Yes, Stockport extension is most likely to happen, and should happen by all means. Yes, they do need to fix things about how the Metrolink is structured. You cant get between two major towns without going into the city (except for Oldham and Rochdale of course). Oldham - Ashton is a good idea and so is Ashton- Stockport, but the bigger problems need to be solved first. 1. The Metrolink has 147 vehicles. It needs more to support further extensions. 2. Cornbrook and Deansgate-Castlefield handle about 70-80 trams an hour during peak times (majority of operational times). Something needs to be constructed to reduce the burden on this section. etc.

[@harrygardner1525]

The M60 Motorway bridge & the neighbouring one for Hollinwood Avenue date back to January 1996. I worked on the project as railway engineering staff. Not much of the true 'original' Hollinwood railway station remains, indeed the M60 & the dual carriageway of Hollinwood Avenue pass through a sizable chunk of where the original station once was That particular area in & around Hollinwood station was heavily altered & modified around that time in connection with the engineering works for the M60 (Manchester Orbital Motorway) & other road improvements. The signal box & a large section of the station platforms at Hollinwood were directly in the way of where the M60 & a new dual carriageway would be routed, so to make way for the new bridge spans the alterations were like this.. Part of Hollinwood's station platforms would be slightly extended at the Manchester end (to compensate for the loss of the platforms at the Oldham end). The platforms at the Oldham end would then be removed. The signal box at Hollinwood would be closed & removed. Bower Lane would cease to exist & the bridge that carried the railway over Bower Lane would also disappear & be removed as part of these works. The area occupied by Bower Lane bridge, the signal box & the platforms at the Oldham end of Hollinwood station would be cleared, the embankment & Bower Lane bridge would be demolished, removed & excavated to allow several new bridge spans/abutments/piers to be constructed that would carry the railway (now the Metrolink tramway) over the clockwise/anticlockwise carriageways of the M60 & it's associated slip roads as well as the new dual carriageway of Hollinwood Avenue. At 7:03 that is a surviving part of the 'new' (1996 platform extensions). At 8:54 are the 1996 bridges. At 11:31 its always been a steep gradient in that location, between Hollinwood & Oldham Mumps the gradient varied from .. 1 in 80 1 in 52 1 in 44 1 in 79 There was a much steeper section of railway nearby (but not featured in this video) that was on the line that ran from Middleton Junction to Oldham Werneth (the old Middleton Junction & Oldham Branch Railway). I understand that had a much steeper gradient at 1 in 27.

[@tramographyMCR]

Didn't know all of that about Hollinwood. Thanks for confirming when those 1996 platform extensions were actually constructed (I wasn't too sure because they looked newer than I expected). I'm including all of the comments with information that I didn't feature in a Part 3 after I release Part 2 potentially, so thanks for all of this. Good to hear from someone who actually worked on the project and ought to know about how Hollinwood changed.

[@harrygardner1525]

@@tramographyMCR My background was signalling (ex signalman) but around that time I was working in the rail industry as an engineering inspector/engineering liaison supervisor I was one of a small team tasked with basically safely blocking the lines to rail traffic to allow the engineering works to safely go ahead etc. It's been some 28 years or so, but I vaguely remember that around that time there were other railway worksites on the route of the M60 Motorway, these were advance works to create motorway bridges over/under the railways at.. Moston.. Ashton Moss.. Audenshaw.. As for Hollinwood, the signal box was slap bang right in the middle of where the motorway bridge was to be, so the signal box had to go!. it was only really open for a couple of hours in the morning & a couple of hours in the evening to break up the absolute block sections between Thorpes Bridge Junction & Oldham Mumps to cater for the "rush hour" peaks in traffic. One of the first jobs at Hollinwood was the closure, abolition removal of the signal box, that closed on Sunday 26th June 1994.

[@NikW77]

I believe that the steeper section that you refer to was (at the time) the steepest railway in the country - so steep that they had to have two engines attached to the carriages to provide the necessary power to get up the hill.

[@harrygardner1525]

@@NikW77 An old timer some years ago told me that the only one that beat it as part of the national BR network, was the Hopton incline on the old Cromford & High Peak railway, that had a staggering gradient of 1in14 in places (although the 1in14 stretch only had a distance of just over 200 yards) or so I was told. On the modern day Merseyrail northern line between Sandhills & Moorfields stations, there's a particularly steep gradient that was made back in the 1970s when BR built the new 'link' line under the city by way of utilising & bringing back into use the disused Great Howard Street viaduct to access an area where the new tunnel portals & headings could be made. Travelling into Liverpool after leaving Sandhills station the line travels high above the streets on Great Howard Street Viaduct, but shortly after passing over the Waterloo arch the railway slopes steeply down at what is now known as Leeds Street Bank to then run beneath the city in a mixture of new & repurposed tunnels, so in a very short distance of less than quarter of a mile you go from being high on a viaduct to enter the tunnel portals as your train dives beneath the city into a tunnel network. I understand that on Leeds Street Bank the gradient varies between 1in25/1in30 for around 390 yards or so. That was the only place where they could facilitate & "shoe horn" the transition from viaduct into tunnels was because the railway had to pass over the Kingsway Tunnel & the Waterloo (Hawkshaw) arch. The new link line tunnels then passed beneath part of Liverpool Exchange station (that closed) to reach the station that replaced it at Moorfields.

[@paulgreaves-i3y]

Where you was stood on clegg street that was the old station if you look just on the left of the access road you can see bricks built up on top of the old station walls

[@flightsimfails261]

Belting vid, cant wait for pt2, Subscribed

[@railwaychristina3192]

What happened to the fab Werneth tunnel?

[@tramographyMCR]

@@railwaychristina3192 Not gone or filled in, just disused.

[@mohammedfaiisal]

They've got logistics hgv company there now. It blocks the tunnel. Which makes me think that if they were to bring that line back, which they won't. Then the logistics company would need to move. Sadly, I don't see that shorter and more convenient route opening again

[@tramographyMCR]

@@mohammedfaiisal Probably won't open to trams, no. Possibly railway services in the future, just not for passenger services, I don't know. The Metrolink doesn't have the budget to maintain those tunnels, and even if they did it'd be a waste of money compared to the benefit of passengers having only 5 min faster journeys.

[@mohammedfaiisal]

@@tramographyMCR I think the benefits would be welcome to thousands of the residents in Oldham. I've already heard hundreds of passengers complain over the years about how they should have kept it as a second route

[@tramographyMCR]

@mohammedfaiisal Because they haven't investigated why they disused it in the first place.

[@jkex388]

I never knew that the Trams followed the route of the old line until the new Oldham Mumps stop opened

[@bennuttall1589]

yeah you can walk along the trackbed through oldham mumps(?) and through the tunnels and into the cutting beyond going towards manchester, it would be worth doing that if youre interested in the old railway theyre good tunnels

[@tramographyMCR]

You can't anymore, the site is under construction. The entrance is gated off. Is there an entrance I don't know about?

[@bennuttall1589]

@tramographyMCR I don't know I was last there probably 2 years ago tbf. Have you got rail map on your phone? Use that on satellite mode and it will show you the whole abandoned track bed.

[@bennuttall1589]

@tramographyMCR maps.app.goo.gl/2kgCBLJteHRmzzCS7 I used to get into the trackbed over this bridge wall end & down the embankment, the tunnel should still be OK I imagine

[@tramographyMCR]

@@bennuttall1589 It _was_ about 2 years ago it was blocked off

[@PsychicLord]

Great work, very informative.

[@tramographyMCR]

Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@andrewnelson4057]

The Oldham section on the previous Rail Alignment should have been kept for emergencies.

[@tramographyMCR]

The town centre section is slow, so keeping the route in normal service as a faster way of bypassing Oldham would have been nice, but I guess maintaining all of that track and the tunnels would have been too much of a hassle.

[@watcherzero5256]

Would have had to refurbish the life expired brick tunnels to extend their life (probably line the decaying brick walls with spray concrete then excavate the track bed deeper to maintain the same vertical clearance) which would have been extremely expensive.

[@nightw4tchman]

Yeah, just not worth the expense for an infrequent emergency. ​@@watcherzero5256

[@mohammedfaiisal]

I think it should have been kept for more than just emergencies. But it should have been used as a second route for those that didn't want to go to Westwood and the town centre. Would have made commuting much quicker, easier and more convenient for every single passenger. Just a reminder that they spent £10m just to make the route from king street to Westwood. So they definitely could have figured out a way to continue making the old route work

[@tramographyMCR]

@@mohammedfaiisal The old route would have required much more maintenance. Look at the reply above yours

[@TheHoveHeretic]

Oh generation brought up on Google ..... Larger local libraries (those with a reference section) often keep hard copies of historic Ordnance Survey maps, issued every 10 years, which detail a locality's development over time. The OS have extensive online archives also .... but as a fully paid up old git, where's the fun in making it that easy?

[@tramographyMCR]

I am aware of local libraries that have OS maps, but I didn't really have much time to research as much as I wanted to in this video. As I mentioned in the description it was kind of a rush since I wanted to publish it at the start of October.

[@tramographyMCR]

Also just for your information most of the things I said are core knowledge. Some is online research, but I grew up around this part of GM