The Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast railway.

As some may be aware, I'm one of the Walk Leaders in our local walking group, and this morning I led a walk which covered a short section of the above long dismantled railway. One of my walking friends mentioned that he had a print out of the viaducts on the line, the main one of which was the "Horns Bridge" viaduct in Chesterfield, which was the upper viaduct of the only triple railway crossing in the UK, so I thought it might be of interest to others. The nearest the railway got to Lancashire was about a mile west of Chesterfield Town Centre, nearest to the East Coast was Lincoln, as they ran out of money due to the costs incurred in building the necessary viaducts and tunnels on the line, so the Company established it's 'Head Office' in Chesterfield at the Market Place station, adjacent and in similar style to the surviving 'Portland Hotel', now a "Wetherspoons". Upon Nationalisation in 1948, it continued, passenger traffic ceasing around 1952 with goods following a few years later, the station building surviving as a paint company's warehouse until the early 1960's when it was demolished for construction of a new Government building, the viaduct surviving in an unused state for a good few years until demolition under a road widening/bypass scheme which also saw the removal and utilising of the old Great Central station and trackbed, though one small section of tunnel remains if you know where to look! The collapse of a tunnel under the town of Bolsover due to mining subsidence was the final nail in the coffin of the line, the town (at that time) still having the Midland main line and the old Great Central stations in operation (The Great Central was closed in 1963, and lay derelict for several years until construction of the Chesterfield/Dronfield bypass began). Market place station was where my interest in railways began, my late Father having taken me on the platform to look at the trains in around 1949/1950, and I still have memories of how things were in the town 'back in the day!'
Here's the print for interests sake.

 

The Great Central ran pretty much alongside the Chesterfield canal, with a station on Brimington Road North, then Staveley and on towards Killamarsh. There was a small goods yard behind what is now the Sainsburys supermarket at Tapton, with what was known locally as the '3 Bridges' where the Midland crossed over the GC and the canal close by. As a kid at secondary school, we used to bike down the canal to that point to await the arrival around 4.15pm of one of the few trains still running on the GC by then, usually putting ha'pennies on the line for fun. The stations were built in the usual GC style, timber clapperboard (presumably for quick and cheap assembly) whereas the Midland stations were mostly stone built in a grander style. I don't remember the Bolsover tunnel so have no idea where it actually was, but can clearly recall the LD&ECR station and goods yard, plenty of the three-wheeled Scammels around in those days, seems strange to think that the lorries of that era all carried a '20' plate (20MPH speed limit!) which seems ridiculous nowadays, but then again, with many of the lorries around that time, it was probably about all they could manage!