Donington Road

Give it a try and see, then report back to us all, I'm sure A&E has wi-fi.😀

The lugs were welded in situ and the initial concept was for plates to be installed so that the public could not interfere with the trains that pass in very close proximity on the Down Stamford line. Railings will not stop that, so it is probably is an experiment to see how things develop. It is probably Screwfix sponsoring the use of panels so they get more photographers buying even larger stepladders. Solid panels were supposed to prevent the brainless from poking things at the OHE and frazzling them. Are you saying I might scare you doing my nocturnal videoing? 😀 It is a very busy bridge early mornings and early evening, ok in the summer but it really does need lighting in the winter months.

That is a surprise considering there are lugs on the uprights and top and bottom rails ready to accept panels.

Glad to see you walking down there John, the more people do that then it will flatten the rough ground out to make it easier walking for us oldies.👍 If you thought Cock Lane bridge is a bit uninviting then keep away from Walton footbridge, you need a stab vest and a personal body guard if you go there.😟 It is quite amazing the different type of clientel that pass through those five bridges around Werrington Junction (Walton, Cock Lane, Hurn Road, Lincoln Road and Foxcovert Road). The busiest time for the dive under use at the moment is mornings and afternoons. There is some action of the dive under on my lastest video if you want to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5__Kp_tt5HI

More from our roving reporter Trackside ECML. The strip of land between the green fence and Brook Drain has been seeded with wild flowers and small shrubs planted. There was me yesterday thinking they were clumps of weeds growing through.🙄 Another new sign. The mileage in miles and yards from Manton Junction, whatever happened to chains. I do hope they have measured it accurately and it does'nt need repositioning at the end of the fence. That damn buddleia grows anywhere! Pictures of the day, nice one GB Railfreight.

Hereward Arcade 👍 Cock Lane started life well before the railway, it served the three white cottages which are now at the entrance into Carron Drive. Beyond the cottages it was a footpath to Belham Wood. Before the Carron Drive and Helmsdale Gardens estates were built in 1970 Cock Lane became an unsurfaced track beyond the cottages to serve the Dukesmead mobile home estate, the entrance to which was just south of the underpass at Carron Drive of the now A15 Werrington Parkway. Carron Drive and Helmsdale Gardens were built and the original stub of Cock Lane was renamed Carron Drive, the existing track to Dukesmead and subsequent footpath beyond it retained the name of Cock Lane. In the 1980's when the Werrington Parkway was built an underpass was constructed slightly north of the Dukesmead track for cyclists and pedestrians, the vehicle access was maintained for Dukesmead by building a ramp up to and over the non-opened Parkway until about a year later when they finally provided access off the roundabout to what became Benedict Square. The ramp and track were then removed, the underpass being made into a combined cycleway and footpath following the route of the old footpath to Belham Wood still retaining the name of Cock Lane. Cock Lane has had so many changes to its purpose in life that maybe no one really knows what status it comes under. If the Midland Railway didn't assume it to be a public right away, then surely they would not have provided for or allowed the public to cross their railway, consequently the Great Northern Railway slightly later. Then we have the odd scenario where the GNR built footbridges at Hurn Road and Woodcroft over their own tracks and dumping pedestrians into 'no man's land' between the two railways but that's another story.

Peterborough north of the River Nene is also on Explorer 235. Cock Lane is shown on there as Other road, drive or track, fenced or unfenced. In reallity it is a combined cycleway and pedestrian footpath owned and administered by Peterborough City Council, the land having been purchased from the Fitzwilliam Estate by the now defunct Peterborough Development Corporation who oversaw the expansion of Peterborough during the 1970's. The Fitzwilliam Estate owns much of the existing land around Peterborough. When I purchsed my house in 1972 there was a seperate cost from the building payable to the Fitzwilliam Estate of £867 for the plot of land. This one is from Openstreetmap https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/52.6101/-0.2821

There is on my OS map, showing Cock Lane to Belham Wood. Mind you it is 1876, perhaps I need to invest in the latest edition.😀

The 'gravel' is a bit large, not your usual domestic type, it is about the size of the grey ballast. They were barrowing it in as well which judging by the amount they needed it was going to take a long time.

I noticed a new sign at the approach to either side of the bridge at Cock Lane. I understand the top part, just.👍 But can anyone put in layman's terms what the bottom half means? Initially there was a public footpath from Werrington to Marholm, in 1848 this was bisected by the new Stamford to Peterborough railway where it became a sleepered crossing with wicket gates either side, subsequently bisected again in 1850 with the ECML. It remained that way until the ECML was electrified in the late 1980's where a footbridge was constructed and the footcrosing removed. That bridge was then replaced by the present bridge in October 2019.

I've just asked those doing the gravel, they didn't know.

Adding some nice new gravel around the base of Cock Lane footbridge.

What's this all about too? Up at Lincoln Road a lot of old concrete trunking has been discarded behind the Armco barrier atop of the embankment. No indication of where it has come from and why it was dumped there rather than stacked up in the compound next to the bridge. Surely a safety hazard as well. I always think that if the railway can't be bothered to make itself presentable then those who use it are not going to respect it either. Photo is a screen grab from a video I took yesterday.

I'm lost for words, nothing is making any sense with this. I guess they didn't have the right tools to remove the panels as everything is secured with those captive nuts and bolts, probably ripping things out with a chain and excavator. I went to have a look today but there was nobody working on the fence, they are probably doing it under cover of darkness to hide their embarrassment. It is a job to say from such a long distance but those new panels and posts only look to be about six inches lower. In my experience Network Rail always want the highest fence possible to keep people off the railway, so why the reduction in height? The other question is why did it ever need that sort of fencing there in the first place as adjacent to it is wire mesh fencing all the way down to Hurn Road? These photos were from about two weeks ago.

Replacing the fence at Cock Lane. With one of the correct height? 🤔 photo by Trackside ECML

Nope, you have heard about the Nascar Lines of Peru and the alignment of the Great Pyramids of Giza, well, this is the Werrington Alignment bisecting the dive under at signal P497 which does have a pyramid shape above the number. The Werrington Alignment takes in the The Great Spoil Heap in the west, The Little Spoil Heap, Signal P497, Cock Lane Footbridge and Screwfix to the east. Screwfix? I saw a slogan for them the other day, "You want to Fix something, We can Screw it up for you!" and thought it was quite apt for a few of the odd things that had happened during the construction of the dive under, such as the chap using a 24 inch long Screwfix level to align a 10 metre steel pile as it was being driven in.

Just set up another email account with Google (gmail) , Yahoo or Outlook.com. I would think you could even set up another email account with AOL. You really want to have at least two email accounts, not just for testing things like this but also one to use as a throwaway email for those places you may go to only once to order stuff off the internet where they insist on opening an account and you supplying an email address, which, with the sole purpose of using it to spam you for ever more. I have four very active gmail addresses on the go at the moment for a multitude of different things. Those unsubscribe links on some websites don't always work, in my experience the emails you don't want anymore stop for a little while then they start coming again By having a throwaway email address you just delete the email account then open a new one and start again.

As the old saying goes "a picture paints a thousand words" In many posts the loss of a picture breaks the continuity and the thread becomes meaningless.

Mine come out of the camera as img_xxxx and are downloaded in date folders, most images are around 12 to 15MB each. Too much for RMweb, so I process those destined for RMweb, upload them and then discard them. The original files from the camera I keep and rename to something more appropriate and catalogue in folders by subject.

The images I originally posted had all been resized or cropped or adjusted in some way and had meaningless file names. I do have all the original images (larger file sizes than RMweb allows) which I have since renamed after posting. It is now going to be a case of trying to match those links in the old posts to the original images, then process those original images all over again.🙁 Having the EXIF data will help a little with matching dates of files to date posted but it is not a job I am looking forward to.

One year on and the mess at the bottom of the footbridge at Walton is still there. Cables everywhere and no access for Network Rail through their gates. Nice concrete slab for the entrance on the railway side which is starting to collect some rubbish. Then this thing was turned up after being escorted down the access road from Cock lane. Quite why they thought it necessary to come and clean the slab that has never been or cannot be used just seems a waste of time and resources to me. An overall view of the dive under from the footbridge at Walton with the green Cock Lane footbridge above. It would be nice to get more photos and video from this location but unfortunately it is not very user friendly, too much broken glass and rubbish around and not the most desirable people passing through. Then there is this problem. The whole footbridge is covered with this mesh, the gaps only being 20mm wide by 45mm high so on any photo taken through it there tends to be two vertical dark stripes, not so bad with a telephoto lens as they get lost in the focusing like the photo above.

As the last post uploaded properly this time and didn't fail as it did a few hours ago, here is another. I do miss the old emojis though. Looking at a video clip of a train I took yesterday from Cock Lane I thought I could see new gates being put up at the end of the farm track at Hurn Road. My good friend Trackside ECML who is dedicated to finding out more then decided to brave the bitterly cold wind this afternoon and came back with these photos. The mesh fence at the end of the farm track is still inplace but a new gate has been installed beyond it for access to the field. Wire mesh fencing has been installed around the perimeter of the field and inside that hedging whips have been planted. It was stated at the beginning of the project that there would be in excess of 25,000 trees planted once the project came to fruition. I would hardly call hedging whips trees.😀 Remains to be seen if we will be able to get further down the farm track and nearer to the lineside where we previously had access once the these mesh gates are removed, somehow I am not feeling hopeful.🙁 The field north of Hurn Road which housed the last remnants of the Morgan Sindall offices until their temporary movement to Lincoln Road is now clear and having the topsoil levelled out. These views are from the gateway that was on the corner of Hurn Road through which many thousands of lorries removed spoil to fill local quarries.

Update from Cock Lane. The access road next to the Down Stamford line was scraped level last week and the surplus spoil deposited alongside. It was then shaped up and compacted into bunds. A cheaper option than erecting Armco barriers like they did at Lincoln Road to Glinton Junction I suppose? It does look an afterthought and a bit messy too. I think the one beyond the cone was a Friday afternoon job.🙄 Just levelling the area near the outfall of Brook Drain. The sun made for a pleasant few days out last week and I managed to get this view from below the A15 bridge through the new Lincoln Road bridge of the 1:117 rise from Lincoln Road to Glinton Junction.

New gradient sign at the foot of Lincoln Road bridge. 117 up to Glinton Junction, 155 down to the north portal of the dive under.

After all the rain on Wednesday it is good to see the spillway is working allowing the excess water to flow from Marholm Brook into Brook Drain. Some work going on on the west side. The excavator is pulling hardcore away from the green fence and it is being taken and dumped further back along the access road. Not sure what the purpose of that is. The dozer looks as though it has been grading the top surface and pushing hardcore to the right side of the road. This chap was up to something around all the bore holes in the field. Where the blue tubes are sticking up. All photos courtesy of Trackside ECML