VICTORIA STATION - NOTTINGHAM - Death of a Station - HD

[@katiecollison6629]

My maternal granddad worked on the railway's all his working life (he retired in 1967)and he worked at Victoria station in the account's(wages) department,he loved that place....he was moved to midland station in 65, he didn't like that place so much. One of my main memories of him when talking of that time is of swearing (he never did normally)about Mr Breeching and what he did to the railway system....now needed for today's needs

[@robtyman4281]

The Nottingham of the 70's was pitiful. The worst kind of architectural atrocities were committed in that decade.........and indeed the 60's too. Politicians and bureaucrats destroyed a significant proportion of our Victorian and Edwardian heritage. Such a lack of regard for the ingenuity and Victorian engineering excellence by people back then still makes me gawp in horror today. What were we thinking of?? ...Britain seemed to suffer a massive mid life (or century) crisis that made it do this.

[@stephenduncan3605]

Bit like Preston Bus Station, also a concrete monstrosity that now can't be pulled down as it's listed would you believe!

[@tcraigh1]

But was crime and inequality as high then as it is now.

[@SchindleList]

It’s shocking, happened all over the country every town. I live in Tamworth and they knocked down the old station to build a giant urinal

[@levelcrossing150]

What a wonderful building built to impress all visitors who traveled to and from Nottingham..........what a terrible waste!

[@ludwigvonsteampole1]

Look at that a fantastic train station that delivers you right into the middle of the city. So what do they do? Knock it down and replace it with a sterile concrete eyesore!!

[@martyndavid2094]

Unbelievable it was taken away, same in Lincolnshire, we used to have a great railway, Lincoln to Woodhall to the coast today would be hugely profitable

[@thoughtsonnarrowboatingwit3882]

Brilliant video. An absolute travesty that they destroyed a largely subterranean railway. I recently worked on the canopy restoration at Kettering Station. Nottingham is my birthplace, if Nottingham Victoria was still with us today, I could’ve been working here at some point. Sadly not to be!

[@JimTLonW6]

I changed trains at NV in 1963, it was fascinating, this huge station with very few passenger trains; there was, however, a pretty well continuous procession of heavy iron ore trains pulled by 9F's

[@robtyman4281]

If they'd kept Nottingham Victoria Station instead of hastily destroying it, it could have been used as the principle HS2 station for the East Midlands area. Who's going to use a new station between Nottingham and Derby (in the middle of nowhere) to travel north or south - it's bonkers they're even planning to build one not in any city in that region. Means people will HAVE to drive to reach it, and this kind of defeats the object of trying to get people out of cars and onto trains.

[@simonwolfe529]

well said Rob - 100% agree spot on......!!! it was a fantastic Edwardian station smack bang in city centre...god knows what they were thinking - love to meet the twat who decided it had to go -

[@andrewtaylor5984]

@@simonwolfe529 It was British Rail Management who decided that the station had to go, despite numerous and frequent objections. Just after the Marylebone to Manchester services was discontinued, at the beginning of 1960, and "replaced" by THREE "semi-fast" trains with a journey time of about three hours, often formed of non-corridor stock, especially in summer, there was a demonstration in Nottingham, objecting to the service cuts, and saying that this could lead to the closure of Victoria. Until then, the Great Central service to London, was faster than the Midland, although still below pre-war frequency. There would still have been a railway through the site, as there were vast amounts of freight passing through the station, so the line would have to remain open. About this time, the direct route to Colwick Yard was closed because of the poor state of Mapperley Tunnel. This closure brought even more freight traffic through Victoria Station. At the beginning of 1962, the Midland line from Rugby to Leicester was closed, and, for this reason, closure of the Great Central was refused. The East Midlands TUCC also made it clear that even if the Great Central was later closed, Victoria would remain open. Then came the Reshaping of British Railways the following year. There were numerous articles in both the National press and the Railway press, between 1963 and 1965 protesting against the closure, as Victoria was right in the centre of the city, with the Midland Station nearly a mile away. There were various proposals which showed that the Midland's traffic could be diverted to Victoria, but British Rail Management ignored everything. To add insult to injury, Nottingham Chamber of Commerce said that the city did not need a railway at all. The TUCC announced about this time that closure of Victoria would cause inconvenience, but not hardship. It is believed that British Rail sold the site for far less than its commercial value. Until early 1958, the Great Central was profitable; at this time, however, British Rail had the fixation that no town or city, except London, would be served by more than one region, so the Great Central was transferred from the Eastern to the London Midland Region, and this was why decline set in. The same is true of many other inter-regional transfers; the receiving region usually had no use for the acquired line. Incidentally, whatever people say, the Great Central was not a duplicate main line. For several towns, it was their only link to London. Two of these have a quadrupled population since closure of the line in 1966, and could easily do with a railway station. Another factor often overlooked is the vast amount of traffic the Great Central carried for sporting events at Wembley, as it was the nearest railway. Indeed, there were facilities for passengers to be picked up and set down next to the stadium. British Rail decided to ban all football specials to Wembley over the Great Central in 1965, another excuse for closing the line.

[@christinaburton9297]

Nowadays the building would have been preserved. Disgusting replacement.

[@richardsnow]

Superb clear footage of Vic Station. thanks.

[@kali1607]

They destroyed the WRONG station. It was the Nottingham Midland Station that should have been pulled down. The Victoria Station was conveniently located in the heart of the city and had loads of history, class and great architectural features, unlike the Midland station which is bland, boring and too far out of the City centre..

[@simonwolfe529]

Spot on Kali 1607 -well said agreed - am told as never saw it, was beautiful to look at and critical central location smack bang in city cetre ??why build it there in the first place 67 years earlier FFS !!! the midland one is a flat crap bungalow of a station compared to the late Victoria one....

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

And bloody great bottleneck tunnels at either end.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

I wish you could get SteamlocoScrapper to agree this! You might be aware that there were several protests raised by Nottingham's citizens from c1960 onwards. Even in 1962, there were no plans to close the station, even if the Great Central Main Line closed. Once the Beeching Plan was announced, Nottingham's citizens complained that the wrong station was to be closed. Midland Line traffic could be switched to Victoria, though I have not worked out the finer points. One must also remember that in the late nineteenth century, the City magnates complained that their rail communications were hopelessly inadequate for a large city, so the City Council supported Victoria Station from the beginning, especially as it was built on the site of a slum, and there were major celebrations when the station was formally opened in 1900. It seems strange that their successors no longer wanted this station 60 years later. It is now pretty obvious that the citizens of Nottingham have no use for a railway in view of the sparseness of the train service they now have. Rail communications with the rest of Britain are mostly abysmal. Rather interestingly, Nottingham Chamber of Commerce in 1965 had no use for railways, and suggested that both Victoria and Midland should be closed. London Road would suffer the same fate, as it was only on a line to and from Victoria.

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

Except that you all speak bullshit. The Midland Station is Grade 2* listed and has great architectural features.

[@themondalorian9844]

@@andrewtaylor5984 Maybe it could srill be done, they have the technology and equipment to do it, as it used to run from Victoria to Marylebone. Better yet what these schmuks should have done it built the new shopping centre over Vic Centre and then had the train run Underground instead they fuck it up by demolishing it, what a waste of a once amazing station, there is a way to contact HS2 if you need the link let me know.

[@jasondyer811]

Great footage !😁😁👍👍

[@otakurailfan]

thats why us railfans hate people that would tear down a station, and replace it with modern concrete green eyesores! What a buetiful station, does the clock in the tower even work?

[@stephenhardy1190]

Seems to have been dreadfully hacked about. Such a loss though not just for Nottingham but for the whole GC route

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jamestheengine Ah, but the key word is RECOMMENDED - Beeching didn't have the power to actually close lines! The real villain was probably Ernest Marples - having a Minister of Transport who also happened to own a road building company was never going to be a good idea, in fact it wouldn't even be allowed today for obvious reasons!

[@MrMoggyman]

And when Marples had got the freight off the railways onto the roads, and his wife, who was a consultant civil engineer with her fingers in all the new road building projects, had made millions, he was had up for tax evasion, and fled to France to avoid jail. Pretty clear which side Marples was batting for, and it was not the UK. The destruction of Nottingham Victoria Railway Station and the ripping up of the GCR mainline remain the greatest acts of industrial vandalism ever perpetrated in the UK.

[@thehoneyeffect]

They should've at least kept the facade of the station instead of the hideousness of Victoria centre

[@MrMoggyman]

It was a travesty. Nottingham Victoria Station was a beautiful station. And when they decided to knock it down, and replace it with that glass and plastic monstrosity called the Victoria Centre, people in their droves complained. But such was the feeling in the UK at that time, to take the great legacy of the railways the Victorians had left us, and to systematically destroy it in favour of cars, trucks, and motorways, and thus the wishes of the people were ignored. In this day of choked up roads, and the very high costs of motorway maintenance, fuel, and bus fares, not to mention the exhorbitant costs of construction of the roads initially, we now see what stupidity this was. And Beeching....how much did his cuts save? £25 million. Not enough to build six miles of three lane motorway. And for that, the government who employed him, frittered away the countries legacy. Stupidity on stupidity. Ernest Marples and his crowd were well up the asses of the road hauliers, and considered that destroying the railways was the only way they could advance their own view that the railways were finished, and force transport onto the roads. Yeah, plenty of money to be made there, right? Short sighted idiots. Beeching was just a tool. And yes, the railways needed reforming, but this? This was lunacy on a monumental scale, and only now does it so clearly tell. I recall many in Worksop simply lost their jobs, for when Beeching axed the rail service to Nottingham they could no longer commute. Barbara Castle, as Transport Minister, closed the S&D Joint Railway. Public transport in the region this railway served is today an utter and complete nightmare. Bloody fools. It was the same with steam locomotives. Can you believe it was sane? Let's take all steam locomotives out of service, locomotives that run on a natural resource the country has 300 years reserves of, and replace them with diesels that run on oil, a resource the country does not have. Result? The OPEC oil crisis of 1970 where the price of diesel skyrocketed. Both my grandfathers, retired vetran steam locomotive drivers, laughed their heads off. It was a judgement on the fools, but it was the country that paid the price for their stupidity.

[@lewis72]

The UK was very short cited in the '60s. So much great infrastructure and wonderful architecture was swept away for concrete. Even looking at this station, it would have made a great conversion into shops and bars had the line stayed open or closed.

[@tobysummers471]

Lewis72 Sadly the case at the time. I’m afraid. At least it didn’t succumb to the fate of Euston station. It was seen as not modern at the time and the government wanted a modern britain.

[@gillianlawlor868]

sighted even?

[@lewis72]

@@gillianlawlor868 Yes, sighted. My bad.

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

Victoria Station was totally unsuitable for conversion into shops. It needed to be completely demolished.

[@gcfcos]

Please tell me they didn't demolish that beautiful old station for the concrete monstrosity

[@thehoneyeffect]

British-mechanic yep they flipping well did

[@madheadmadDAZ]

Yes Victoria flats are fucking horrible!

[@trainmaniacstudios8216]

I dont understand it!!! Why not convert the old station building into flats or a hotel??!

[@clivebaldwin3809]

A travesty indeed! My parents moved into one of the flats in 1972, so bitter sweet memories of that - I got to live on the site of the wonderful old station but only because it was gone. In later years many pointed out that the line running underneath Nottingham and out north and south was perfect for a rapid-transit system - now, of course, the new tram line uses part of that old route - but little forward thinking back then. Knock it down, stick up flats to make money...

[@simonwolfe529]

yes they did....bloody joke !!!! can't believe it...

[@gazzab3224]

What a terrible waste of a beautiful useful station.

[@Phaaschh]

Had Edward Watkin's vision of a Channel Tunnel ever been built, then the true raison d'etre of the GCR would have been realised, and this magnificent building could have still been with us today. Or had Ernest Marples father been a jaffa...😠

[@robtyman4281]

At least it didn't suffer a long lingering death like the original Birmingham Snow Hill station, or worse still, Broad Street Station in London. Which began to be run down in the late 1960's but wasn't closed until 1986, by which time it was in a shocking state.

[@stephenduncan3605]

At least Birmingham Snow Hill reopened, Nottingham Victoria never did did it?

[@funguyfarage3615]

walked through the tunnel in the mid 70's to carrington ....and that one too, spooky....all done by 4 of us with no lights!!

[@jonrishworth7276]

The thing that really annoys me is that the Government had a purpose-built high speed north-south route in the the Great Central, which they chose to shut down and destroy, selling off most of its land quickly and cheaply to farmers and the like. Wind the clock forward 50 years and take a look at the compulsory purchase costs for the land needed to build 'HS2'. Surely the sensible thing to do would have been to close the GC, but retain the wayleave. I'd love to be able to do a cost-benefit analysis on how much this would have amounted to as opposed to the £billions being spent on 'HS2' today !

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

A waste of time doing an analysis as the GC is on the wrong alignment and does not serve Birmingham.

[@tonysummers3704]

What a shame they demolished the beautiful station to be replaced with that brutalist monstrosity

[@steamgent4592]

What a waste of such a beautiful station. Dr Beeching and the other anti railwaymen should burn for what they did to the railways. So many lines lost which would be so useful and nice to have today!

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

Not really. It was a duplicate line and not needed. Passenger numbers were pitiful and that would be even truer today. Beeching was not anti railways but he was asked to show which lines were inefficient. It was just part of his brief. Don't blame the messenger. If you want to blame someone, blame all the people who decided they would prefer to travel by car.

[@funguyfarage3615]

please research first .Beeching had no power

[@bobtudbury8505]

labour closed the lines , 1965 1970 then gave beeching an award

[@mark_zuck]

Really great footage of the old station.

[@volpeverde6441]

the new shopping centre/flats could have been built on top of a refurbished/more modern train station.... the station had just been closed when I was a little kid....trains were out - everyone wanted a car....

[@chrisevans2339]

They were just knocking it down when i was a boy,and it is sad,that they did so.It was part of Nottingham's history.And from what i have seen in pictures of it since,they took the wrong station away,Midland station is shit,it's crap,no history at all.Victoria is where all the solders came and went from in the war.I am a Nottingham resident born and bread here and they should of left it as it was.

[@simonwolfe529]

agreed and good central location - such a shame what were they on ?? to keep the midland one which is out of the way and shite....

[@stephenduncan3605]

Not only that but Midland station is a fair walk from the main shopping area! Victoria would be perfect!

[@andrewtaylor5984]

Beeching made numerous false premises, the main one being that he considered only receipts from stations, and never considered that people might book return tickets. His other premise was that rolling stock had to be in use all the time, and could not be kept for, say, excursions. His duplicate main lines was an overstatement. There may be more than one line linking A and B, but they will serve different intermediate points. Germany, for instance, has main lines south from Cologne on both sides of the Rhine. To show the crassness of politicians and civil servants, almost the entire motorway network is a duplicate of an existing main road, but, even when Marples was around, the whole country was road-connected somehow.

[@bobtudbury8505]

no one was using it, it cost a fortune. the biggest disaster was allowing buildings to be put on the lines that were . they should have been mothballed ( the routes not the infrastructure) anyway it was not beechings doing. it was the labour party that slashed the lines , also all the 100's of pits closed in the 60's and saved none in the 90's . Careful who you vote for

[@TheLozzer56]

They pulled down the wrong station! Victoria was much better than Midland!!

[@MrBryansseals]

I used to travel regularly from Boston, Grantham to Nottingham Victoria on trainspotting trips in the early 60's Nottingham Midland had more glamerous locos but Victoria had far more atmosphere

[@simonwolfe529]

agree

[@davidlee601]

effing fantastic editing!

[@geoffreyking4515]

Insane vandalism

[@Dezzasheep]

Audio. The death of the left ear.

[@4beatlefans]

OMG, just a look at al that hideous 'modern' stuff violating the beauty of the classic clock tower. Nice vid though - well done.

[@MK55A]

they should blow up that shopping centre and put the GC back, then we'll get some of the big lorries of the road, now thats being 'green' isn't it....by the way perfect footage and a excellent film..... 55A

[@themondalorian9844]

Maybe you could pass that forward you know to someone whos crazy enough - hint

[@neonskyline1]

The whole of Britain is falling to bits, it's hard to work out why the People in authority are doing it, aren't they harming themselves as well ? the whole place is a neglected stealth taxed dump. Half of Newcastle was going to be destroyed, one Guy got all the buildings listed and stopped it, a hero

[@Albanwinter]

"Oh, what's this big beautiful building doing here?! We must tear it down and do something modern and uninteresting in it's place!"

[@simonwolfe529]

loving that !!! ;-00))

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jamestheengine While the Great Central Main Line was far-sighted in being built to the Continental loading gauge with no level crossings, it was also built a bit too late - when all the other main lines were already well-established. The Great Central found it very difficult to compete with its better established rivals which was why the traffic never developed. Had it been built 20 or 30 years earlier, before the other lines had established themselves, it might possibly have done better.

[@ninfilms]

I still believe it was a big mistake to scarp the railway lines. Ok people relied on cars, but now as more people more cars. Also congestion zone at certain parts of the uk. People rely on the trains.

[@kendodd5090]

Shame about the editing glitches. And a shame about what Nottingham City Council have done time and time again to the city.

[@wideyxyz2271]

Sad that such a magnificent station has gone. I love the continental style (chalet) single box. Also a visit by Mr L Trotsky 3:38 lol......

[@jonrishworth7276]

Good spot at 3.38, but think he's more Comrade Kalinin than Trotsky ??

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jackiejayetv To be fair, the railways were losing an awful lot of money which we simply couldn't afford to be losing, and something needed to be done - otherwise the whole system could've collapsed! Anyway, Beeching was only part of the story - the real villain was possibly Ernest Marples. He was Minister of Transport but he also owned a road building company - that wouldn't be allowed today for obvious reasons! Beeching didn't have the power to close lines, only to RECOMMEND closures.

[@bobtudbury8505]

what rubbish 1st of all all the roads gave me . working class, the biggest freedoms we ever had, the road and the car. the wholesale railway closure was the labour party , 1965 to 1970 and than gave beeching an award

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@@bobtudbury8505 *then

[@bobtudbury8505]

say it , go on @@Inkyminkyzizwoz

[@bobtudbury8505]

just say it @@Inkyminkyzizwoz

[@tgpok4r]

sad in England it's a throw away culture, including our past, lost beautiful buildings, for what? , re build plastic looking tomorrows slums, has nobody got any taste anymore? the Victorians new what and how to build things to last,

[@simonharris1575]

Beeching in the pockets if road builders and now look total gridlock .How sad closing a station that would be of great benefit now.

[@robertwbeams9929]

The Victoria Centre - A tragic memorial to a magnificent Station, recklessly bulldozed. Shame on BR for favouring the Midland Station and intentionally destroying the Great Central. Shame on Nottingham City Council for facilitating the shopping centre. So sad.

[@Dilenger]

@DANST92 the entrance is (was) opposite shakespeare street, near the YMCA and the old juvenile court called sandfield house. halfords used to have a shop there. i used to play in that old abandoned station before it was made into the bus station, also the station at the bottom of sherwood rise, gregory boulevard junction. it's now the home of the open university. good days, good memories. (i re-posted this due to an inaccuracy)

[@zhaozheming4405]

what is the music name of the BGM?

[@None-zc5vg]

People keep calling for the reconstruction of the old Great Central main line, but if you consider that many important structures on the route, like the Brackley, Rugby and Leicester viaducts are long-gone, and that the trackbed/route is built-over and otherwise obstructed in many places, then you're talking about a HS2-level of expenditure for what amounts to building a new railway from scratch. There'd be similar problems with resurrecting other 'dead' main lines and/or reopening closed stations in city-centre locations. A lot of money would have been made by those asset-stripping interests that were ready and waiting for the Beeching cuts to take effect, and buying-back what became "prime" land long ago would be unaffordable today.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

A few years ago I visited a place in France. The station was closed to passengers, but the ticket office was open for part of the day, anyway, and all the track and infrastructure was still there, being used for freight traffic, which seemed to be quite substantial. This meant that passenger trains could be reinstated without too much trouble if demand arose. (I assume that SNCF ran a bus to the nearesr railhead.) I will keep the location secret.

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

@@andrewtaylor5984 The Grest Central line and all the viaducts and stations have been *smashed* to pieces and the rubble crushed to make hardcore base for roads and other buildings. The GCR will *never* be reopened. Good riddance to a useless duplicate railway with no passengers!

[@andrewtaylor5984]

@@PreservationEnthusiast It was not entirely a duplicate main line. You try to go to places like Rugby, Brackley, and Aylesbury by train from Nottingham. You cannot. I bet you would not be so anti-Great Central if the Channel Tunnel had been built, as part of a link from Manchester to Paris, presumably with links to London. For some reason you want the Great Central infrastructure to make roads which can only be duplicates of existing ones. The Great Central was profitable whilst administered by the Eastern Region. (Until the beginning of 1958.) During the Grouping era, the Great Central was not single-minded; there were plenty of joint workings with the Great Western and the Southern. Also the Victoria Centre must have duplicated Nottingham's existing shopping facilities, and the Broad Marsh Centre was already there. If you look at railway photographs of the city, you will find that photos of Victoria far and away outnumber those of Midland, even before Beeching. It is pretty obvious which station is missed. Victoria is not significantly east of the central area. I have seen maps of the City Centre, showing Victoria at the centre top. At least one map does not even show the Midland Station, just a pointer to it down Carrington Street. London Road Low Level is also not shown but the High Level is. (just). Victoria was built to give the city a central railway station which it lacked in the late nineteenth century. The city's magnates complained at the time of their inadequate rail facilities, compared to other cities at the time, and their remoteness from the Centre. If the Midland Station was badly sited then, it still is today.

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

@@andrewtaylor5984 The Midland Station is excellently sited. It is Grade 2* listed. It has been recently refurbished. It serves Nottingham well. Victoria station was an eyesore. It was little used. It was smashed to dust with a wrecking ball. Good riddance! If you like the GCR so much, go to Loughborough where you can trundle up and down few miles to the outskirts of Leicester and back. Go from nowhere to nowhere with a small number of travellers. Thats what the GCR is all about. Get a day ticket you will love it while the rest of us get on with high speed rail travel on modern stock with National and International connections.

[@themondalorian9844]

@@PreservationEnthusiast LMAO

[@marilynneedham86]

My GGrandparents the Parr-Morleys( I am told) had pubs and were also licensed victuallers in the early 1900's in Nottingham. One or two of them were in or near Victoria train station, would anyone have any info on this please? I would be very greatful for any news of this. They also ran the cricketers near the ice stadium.

[@TomnookHD]

Search google for Nottstalgia it is a great forum for all things Notts with some very knowledgable members.

[@GeordieGroundwater]

The shots of 70013 from about 2' 35" are surely at Derby, platform 1, heading north. Well, Derby, of course, was and is more important as a railway centre than Nottingham. :)

[@stephenduncan3605]

and will still have its model railway shop in the city centre after the new year (Gee Dee models is closing in Nottingham before Christmas)!

[@moogdome2562]

Can anyone please tell me he theme tune, wasn't miss world?

[@garfstiglz3981]

Anyone have an idea of the music theme. I remember it from an old tv programme but the title evaded me?

[@doogleslaundrywashdryandfo7487]

i love the tune, very regimental

[@taxidude]

Nice to see Oliver Cromwell 70013. She pulled me on the Scarbourgh Spa Express a few years back.

[@gazzab3224]

What a waste of a wonderful station .

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jackiejayetv If you need any proof of the Great Central being surplus to requirements, look at Marylebone Station. It was planned to have up to 10 platforms, but the cost of building the line was so great that it started with just four, with the anticipation that the rest would be built later. They never were - for the simple reason that the traffic just never developed!

[@stephenduncan3605]

Well it has done now, hence why Chiltern Railways have added 2 extra platforms to a station that in the 80s was going to close altogether would you believe!

[@Twistedviolets]

Me watching this now, crazy how much its changed even in the last 10 years🥲

[@JintySteam1]

Do you have any footage of Nottingham Midland?

[@Jimyjames73]

How things change over Time 🤔🚂🚂🚂

[@michaelsandford1015]

Trains will return via the trams

[@themondalorian9844]

Hopefully eventually, what would you predict would happen in future?

[@williampercival7662]

The Percival families should take charge , for everyone in Nottingham. William Percival Gardenia Band New Zealand Kia Orana.

[@tango6nf477]

The destruction of this station is not the real tragedy, it was the destruction of the Great Central line that was the most stupid and destructive decision which of course caused the destruction of many stations not only Nottingham Victoria. Its hard to understand today how such decisions could have been made, hindsight I suppose.

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jackiejayetv Might I point out that Beeching left in 1965, whereas the Great Central was closed in 1966! Many actually reckoned it should never have been built in the first place, because the network was already quite well developed by then and there was really no need for another main line - that's what happens when you have so many different railway companies competing with each other!

[@bluevan12]

The trouble with the GCR there were very few large areas of Population south of Leicester which may explain why passenger numbers were low especially in the final years.

[@mowbray99]

1967 not a good year for mainline stations ,Leeds Central closed in this year.

[@phaasch]

Whoever edited this must have used a machette. You could at least have let the poor narrator finish a sentence! And the music is pants. I'd like to see an unmutilated version of this very much

[@tomnook111]

If you read the description of the video you'll see that these are clips from a video that you can purchase. Cheers!

[@phaasch]

Ta for that. I'll look it out.

[@jeanhodgson8623]

I usually turn the sound off for videos. They almost invariably have bad music. I wonder where they find it.

[@RDChoirgirl]

This video keeps jumping!

[@aaronwilson2421]

you could of not put it any better :| look up to you brother

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jamestheengine Look at the way the network developed - it was very haphazard when you think about it. We had all sorts of different companies building lines to compete with each other rather than because they were following any structured plan, with the result that it took until about 1850 onwards for them to merge and the network to really take shape! Because of all this competition, we had a lot more lines than we needed and something needed to be done.

[@MyTeespoon]

How can someone say Nottingham is a shit hole, its not Nottingham its the ppl in it, Nottingham has some wonderful history, if u dont love Nottingham get the fuck out

[@claricemorecroft8971]

MyTeespoon nottinham the best

[@greevooo]

Nottingham was and still is a beautiful city. Not too big not too small. Just right. The people that inhabit it these days is a different story

[@simonjharrisson]

Haha who can remember this voice on Radio Trent???

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@MiLLwallpaul231258 To be fair, the way the network grew up with so many companies competing with each other meant that there was a lot of over-provision and many cities had two or three main stations when they weren't really needed. At one time I used to think Beeching was a demon too, but I've since come to realise that he was trying to rationalise the system. After all, it was making huge losses that we simply couldn't afford - especially in the aftermath of WWII.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

The Great Central main line was in a relatively healthy financial position until it was transferred from the Eastern Region to the London Midland Region early in 1958. It was BR thinking at the time that no town or city, with the obvious exception of London, should be served by more than one region. There were several other regional transfers over the years where one of the regions did its best to get rid of a line it inherited from another. When the line did survive, it more often than not had reduced facilities.

[@djburland]

Another railway disaster thanks to you know who Dr ...... dont say his name!

[@johnwebster4977]

I Used to train spot there also I was a DJ at the clock tower (golden egg ) just the clock left then :)) above the night club :)

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jamestheengine You have to admit, a significant portion of the Great Central was effectively a duplicate of the Midland Main Line. Sometimes duplication of lines can be useful, but at others it can be little more than overkill. Even at the time the Great Central was built many people reckoned it wasn't necessary because there were already enough main lines into London, but the company wanted their own rather than agree any sort of joint working with another company.

[@andrewtaylor5984]

The biggest loss is the Woodford Halse to Banbury link, and that link lost its trains because the different Regions could not get their heads together, and work out a regular network of cross-country trains. There was no other way of avoiding London. Woodford Halse and Quainton Road were less than 30 miles apart, so most of the line would have been worthwhile. One must also remember that the line was conceived as a direct route from Manchester to Paris, via a Channel Tunnel. The tunnel was probably abandoned with the threar of war. Incidentally, the line is not strictly built to Continental Loading Gauge, as those dimensions were not agreed until some ten years after the line was built.

[@Ducks-are-cool1]

But Nottingham still have a train station?

[@andrewtaylor5984]

Yes, but it is a long way from the City Centre, and has very few trains.

[@philnoyce5129]

Whoever edited this video needs to have lessons in how to do it properly! The poor narrator isn't allowed to finish a sentence and the film jumps about!

[@madmax200769]

Shots of 70013 appear to be at Derby

[@gahtsno1]

Still now, there rules the policy of pulling down and then think! So far to the competences of politicians...

[@TomnookHD]

You can get further information about the film by contacting : Nottingham Audio Visual (NAV) Tel: [phone] Cheers!

[@xenon53827]

Happy and triumphant music to the destruction of a beautiful station. Weird...

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

I enjoyed the music, I think it was fitting as it was a triumph to smash up a redundant duplicate station and replace it with a useful shopping centre.

[@Inkyminkyzizwoz]

@jackiejayetv Interestingly, Beeching refused to close Manea Station in Cambridgeshire because of 'the acute social hardship it would cause' - ironically, it only has two trains a day in each direction now, so it probably wouldn't be missed much if it WAS closed!

[@GeordieGroundwater]

I believe that is incorrect. Beeching did recommend the closure of Manea. I would need to check, but I believe it was Barbara Castle who refused the closure of Manea. Strange, as she allowed the closure of many other stations (including some around Manea) and routes, including Cambridge - Bletchley and Bletchley - Oxford. I think it was 2015 that Manea saw a much enhanced timetable (roughly every two hours a train each way) and passenger usage has shot up. SEE orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/station-usage-estimates Third line.

[@xenon53827]

Very nice video but spoilt by editing problems? Why only sound on one channel? why the awful music? And there is a longer version of jumpy movie? is sound on both channels please? What is VHS? "During" what... at 2:35

[@jamestheengine]

@Inkyminkyzizwoz Yes But No But Yes! What a Great Freight Diversonary Route It Would Have Made(Built To The Berne Gauge) And Yes Beeching Actually Reccomended Lines That The Other Mid-Sixites Basterd H Wilson Did.

[@bbcisrubbish]

Why, Oh why do the UK population insist upon having guitars or pianos twanging away on every visual presentation?

[@Ropponmatsu2]

...Because although it is annoying, remember that most of this footage was shot by dirt poor schoolboy enthusiasts on 16 and 8mm film, where there isn't a soundtrack. We'd just be sat in silence.

[@bbcisrubbish]

Ropponmatsu2 What is wrong with silence? I was always taught it was golden.

[@jcpadmore]

Yours would be.

[@karlwilliams4864]

You're just a miserable git. Go back to your corner.

[@xenon53827]

Choo-choo noises, that'll do!

[@timothysmith8300]

i would have barred electrics south of crewe and had steam only south .

[@michealthomas9823]

I jus want to reconect with victoria. And the hebos.

[@pufango4059]

If and what if ! Rose tinted glasses

[@tomhiggins4124]

Monstrosity at the highest level !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

[@vinceiswatchingyou]

Poor but got used to it.

[@GenaFrog]

Sadly jumps about too much

[@TomnookHD]

These are clips taken from a longer film - read the description for details- thanks

[@tobythesuperfasttram]

damn you beeching

[@MsEdy09]

Stop closing station

[@PreservationEnthusiast]

Nooby Gamer Demolish the stations and rip the steam locomotives apart with cutting torches. Melt down the scrap and recycle it for cans and cars.

[@iangrice329]

Nothing but shortsighted vandalism

[@jacksugden8190]

Bad editing and annoying music made me wonder what was missing?,

[@mrmagicroundcircle]

used to get pissed up yates wine lodge

[@sparkyindahouse]

another one of nottinghams very poor ideas to close down...

[@paulcowell7588]

Arse

[@trevorrobinson8577]

Lousy one sided sound....

[@thezebrafromheaven7568]

Narrator is embarrassing.