Blackpool Central and the Railways of the Fylde

[Tom D]

Hi Tom

 

Don't worry about it, anything like this I'm quite happy to buy the book, should be with me in the next few days. Out of interest, does it feature Salwick, in between Preston and Kirkham which also served the nuclear plant of springfields near by.

 

Cheers

 

Tom

 

Hi Tom,

 

It does include Salwick.

 

Regards,

 

Tom D

[Kal]

Hi

 

 

Actually it is Seasiders way. Blackpool Football Club which sits next this road are know as the Seasiders, hence the name!

 

 

Regards

 

 

 

TNT

[Guest LNER Tom]

Evening all

 

Continuing from the discussion, I'm now looking at Salwick as the area I would like to model as my future layout, set in 1959, when the 4 tracks allowing racing in and out of Blackpool!

I noticed on some footage I have on DVD that the fast lines had gone in 1967/8, I'm guessing they were lifted once Central had gone....or were they kept in place untill the Marton line closed, would that be 1967?

 

Also, would anyone happen to have close up pictures of Salwick waiting room?

 

Tom

[thunderer08]

Hi

I have lived in Blackpool and Fleetwood since the early 1990's and am also fasinated by the stuart taylor books (thought there was to be another but so far not appeared). I have been trying to figure out where on the M55 the marton line would have appeared ie which part of the m55 becomes the old trackbed.

Travelling down the M55 I look for where the trackbed could have been in the fields but there is nowhere obvious for it, any ideas anyone?

mark

 

 

Hi reevesthecat,

If you drive onto the M55 from yeadon way or onto it off the A583 at jct 4 heading towards Preston and the M6, the motorway is straight for a few hundred yards then curves to the left, if you look straight ahead at the point were it curves to the left you will see 4 trees equally spaced apart slightly higher than any others around in the distance. This is were the Marton line was crossed by Church road (B5260) on the multiple arched bridge. The line ran from those trees to were the motorway curves to the left, from the bridge (5260) to the point were the motorway is built on top of it has been completely obliterated!

Hope this helps.

Mick

[reevesthecat]

Hi Mick

thanks for that will take a look next time going that way

cheers

mark

[MarkC]

This was in the 1920s! I am not certain that he travelled in the club car, my mum said he didn't, but other members of the family said he did. He travelled as far as Bolton.

 

I believe the last remnant of the club train was the morning and evening train worked by transpennine units. I don't know when they finished but it started when they were doing the duties they were built for.

 

Roger

 

Now then - in the early 1970s I used to go rail roving for a week in the summer - I remember one scheduled working to Blackpool South in the late afternoon which was a Class 124 Transpennine unit all right . I remember the platforms at South very well, & the signal box was well away from them, across the 'wilderness' where the direct lines used to be...

 

Memories, eh?

[Suzie]

A rare opportunity this weekend to see longer trains running express service on the Blackpool South route. Four car sets made of a pair of 150s have been running between Preston and Ansdel and Fairhaven with selective stops to maintain a two trains an hour service.

 

Anyone of the other persuasion might be interested in the rail replacement bus service that replaces the normal trains on this route for non-golf enthusiasts.

 

Northern rail have published a special timetable.

[Ian_B]

Platform 3 went bust in 1979/80 allegedly due to questionable financial practices. The layout was dismantled by North Fylde MRC (who were in Poulton at the time) and the usable parts sold off by local retailers as BR wanted to demolish the old station buildings.

If you recall the big mountain he had at one end with the rack rail running up it, that thing was Concrete and had to be smashed up with sledgehammers! As I recall all the stock was Flieschmann. The locos were still good, but a lot of the coaches had worn their bearings away and when removed all the wheelsets dropped out!

Ian_B

Thanks for the info chaps

I do find it a crying shame of what has happened to South, from being a fairly big Junction station (similar size as Poulton) and now it's nothing more than a single platform at the end of a long siding. That's very interesting about a model railway/shop being in the old booking hall.....wonder where thats gone now.

<snip>

Tom

[class"66"]

Very interesting read!!! good photos too....

[robertcwp]

Steam at Blackpool South after the closure of Central:

 

43033_BlackpoolSouth_1967 by Robert Carroll, on Flickr

[Keith J]

On the subject of the South Fylde route here's an interesting little project for anyone with old photographs of the stations.

 

https://www.lythamstannesexpress.co.uk/news/people/can-you-help-track-history-fylde-line-railway-stations-2860843

 

[PenrithBeacon]

One survivor of the Central demolition was the toilet block, but the last time I was in Blackpool (about 2yr ago) it had been replaced by a new loo

[robertcwp]

Does anyone know of any plans of the layout at Blackpool South after the closure of Central but before the service to South was reduced to a DMU shuttle in 1970?  It appears that carriage sidings and the turntable at Bloomfield Road were still in use. 

[NorthernGuard]

I'm an irregular participant on this site, but if anyone's still interested...

 

About 15+ years ago, I had a mooch around Bradkirk & Weeton, where the Marton line ran parallel with the one to Poulton. The road which crossed the latter by Weeton SB continued over the Martin line a short distance further on. Looking towards Kirkham the wide cutting was (is) somewhat overgrown, but was clearly a railway trackbed. There are still some rails in place from when the stub of the Marton line was used to dump spent ballast.

 

Crossing the road, facing toward Blackpool, it appeared as if the railway had never existed, so completely had the contours of the land been reinstated with spoil from the M55 construction, I believe. Aerial photography during a long dry summer (never guaranteed in Lancs) might reveal the course of the old railway. The precise location of the point where the motorway joined the the trackbed is hard to discern, certainly by the time you reach the big roundabout. When I started driving regularly between Preston & Blackpool around that time, it was a bit of an obsession to identify the spot: tricky at 70mph! I'll look out for the 4 trees if they're still there. I still get a slight frisson driving along the trackbed/Yeadon Way & suspect many a visitor sat in stationary traffic has wondered why there's only one lane each way!

 

I was dismayed to discover that Arthur K's amazing photos are (temporarily?) unavailable following RMWeb's recent problems. Luckily, a friend in Blackpool North SOP printed them off for me about 10 years ago, albeit on thin copier paper. Thanks, Arriva or whoever it was then!

 

The scene at Kirkham has changed greatly in the past few years with electrification, remodelling & re-signalling. At my age, I'm not always convinced that change=progress. OLE is necessary, but unsightly, & the new layout feels like it was done to a tight budget, rather than for operational flexibility; ditto Blackpool N.

 

I confess to a sense of loss akin to bereavement when the remaining boxes disappeared. They were old friends & a link with the glory days of the Fylde's railways. I am in awe of the railway men & women who made the summer operation work in the old days. Kirkham was like Clapham at times, the difference being the more famous junction was busy all year & had the systems & infrastructure to suit.

 

Signallers used circuit phones & initiative to ensure everything was kept moving & Preston didn't become blocked with a back-log of trains, which wouldn't necessarily arrive in STN order, let alone WTT.

 

The September1959 Fylde RCTS traffic survey commented that by the end of the day, they could only find one example, where a train might have been signalled more effectively to avoid delay. If anyone is daft enough (modesty forbids) to contemplate modelling that wonderful scene, the survey reveals that every other loco was a Black5 that day. You can never have too many!

 

Part of that operation required the efficient disposal of locos & stock at North & Central. My understanding is that although there were pilot engines, it was usual for train engines to propel their trains in & out of the termini. There were literally miles of sidings, but once they were filled, rakes of empty stock would be cascaded to the station goods yards on the Fylde & beyond. These ECS movements would be reversed later in the day, to get the day trippers home. These days, with fixed formations & barely enough stock & crews to run a basic, 'clock-face' timetable, there's no spare capacity to cope with surges in demand. As I said, not all change is progress!

 

After Central closed, services terminated at South but the carriage sidings remained until loco-hauled trains were transfered to North in the early '70s. The SB, a short distance beyond Waterloo Rd bridge, then continued to operate with no track adjacent to it.

 

The Foxline series is a goldmine: shame the final Blackpool book never materialised. Check the other volumes for more pics of Fylde seaside specials photographed further afield...