Railways, Part III , Blisworth, Northamptonshire, UK.

All pictures are presented at relatively low resolution.  Printed below each image is the photographer's name, if known.

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27-30   An artwork from 1837 shows the construction of the railway bridge over the canal.  The lattice of cast-iron beams can be seen.

27-31   This picture taken around 1900 shows the bridge and the gas house.  The chimney "behind" the gas house was actually built onto the rear corner of the building and served the steam engine that was used to pump water up from reservoirs next to the canal.  The other chimney is believed to be for the workshops which accommodated blacksmiths who maintained railway wagons - it is mentioned on the previous page.

Next to the bridge can be seen a modest house - no one knows what it was for..  On an early map it carries the label P.L.  It was Bert Varney who supplied the answer in one of his letters to GF (box 26, 2002) - the large hut was for railway workmen - Plate Layers.  He also supplied a drawing from memory of the old chimney - inset.

27-37  A similar view but dated more recently at c 1920.  The houses on the far left were a pair of railway cottages - one was the stationmaster's house.  At first, the stationmaster was accommodated in one of the two villas at the Northampton Road end of Station Road.  The various sheds in the field were agricultural.  The bungalow of unknown ownership was used to house Belgian refugees in the late 1930s.  On the skyline above the bungalow is the railway goods-shed.

27-36   The stationmaster with his dog.  Name and date unknown.  See the listings for ideas circa 1900 judging from the dress.

Apart from the evidence that the men are very confident  about train punctuality, the picture is puzzling because there appear to be no wooden sleepers under the rails.

27-38  The "Ro-Railer"

Designed by J. Shearman, who worked for the LMS railway, this vehicle was a hybrid single decker bus, built by Karrier Motors of Huddersfield with a Craven body, equipped with both tyres and flanged steel wheels.  It was put into use in early 1932 and worked on the rails between Blisworth and Stratford Goods Yard on the SMJ line.  The different pairs of wheels were exchanged using levers inside the body so that from the goods yard it made its way through the streets of Stratford to the Welcome Hotel.  The service was discontinued after only a few months.

 L.N.W.R. men displayed a fierce loyalty to their railway as can be detected in the group proudly posing around the loco - the group including most grades of maintenance and footplate staff.

Removal of rails took hold from 1961 onwards yet RTH were still using the northerly 1/4 mile section of the SMJ line in order to continue delivery, until 1967, of ironstone at the long parallel sidings just a few 100 yards north of where this picture was taken.

The gauges of the mineral railways and the national railways was the same.  Once the SMJ line was non-existent to the south, engineers lifted some track near the sidings and made a more or less permanent link with BR.  This was illegal but it saved time messing about at the sidings.  I suppose there was the risk of a runaway train of wagons hurtling into the closed Blisworth Station, demolishing the SMJ buffers and coming to a stop in front of the hotel. (see Tonks)

part IV