Railway Bylines: Special 'Industrial Railways in Colour' -North West- (IR023)
Product No.: IR023
Title: Railway Bylines: Special 'Industrial Railways in Colour' -North West-
Author(s): Poulter, Michael
Illustrator(s): N/A
Publisher: Irwell Press
ISBN: 9781906919023
Condition: New
Binding: Laminated Pictorial Boards
Dust Jacket: None
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Year: 2009
Features: 64 Pages with Colour Photos.
On a humid August day in 2007 I searched for any tell-tale signs of a pit once existing at Bickershaw. Alighting at the swing bridge over the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where the singularly appropriately named Plank Lane, Slag Lane and Crankwood Road meet up, the scene was set by the derelict pub on the corner. Here I was faced with fenced off, desolate wasteland on one side of Plank Lane and Crankwood Road with densely overgrown land on the other side of Plank lane.
The casual visitor could be forgiven for being unaware that a colliery had ever been here. The dusty grass and wild bushes on steeply sloping ground that rose from the plain were overgrown slag heaps and the gas burners gave evidence of what still lurked below. Such was the grim reminder that there is precious little to Britain's coal and steel legacy, with no longer the smell of coal in the wind. Surely it must have been a trick of the human consciousness that proud corporation buses transporting us to collieries on the Lancashire Plain infested with steam locomotive gems would last for ever. However the book also traces more recent times and within a more clinical world there are some industrial railways of character which still survive.
The images begin where the hedgerows of the Midlands meet the dry stone walls of North West Derbyshire. The route follows the Welsh Borderlands to the western reaches of the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal. Then we journey along the canal to Manchester with incursions in to Northern Cheshire. From the collieries of the Lancashire Plain the way lies northwards to the cotton towns of the Pennine Foothills followed by crossing the River Ribble and the River Lune to finish in Cumbria.