The vanished railway sidings in Stockport

 Now this will be the last for a while on the short series on Stockport’s industrial relics.

2021

There are plenty more stories and images of the area’s working heritage, but the series focused on what was Georges Road Sidings, which originally was part of the Cheshire Lines Railway.

Today part of that land is the new industrial site which is home to Decathlon.

And so, I thought I would close the set of stories with a picture which captures both the new redesigned plot, with the Decathlon sign, the landscaped embankment, and the new road, with the of the area’s past.

1950s

The site is still impressively large, and according to Eddie Johnson, "the sidings were almost half a mile in length. [they] had been opened in 1866, together with the adjacent Wellington Road Depot and were the focus of the Cheshire Lines Railway goods operations in the central Stockport area. 

1922

Through the smokey haze, parallel to the railway line, are rows of terraced houses fronting Travis Brow and Brinksway Road.  A study of the Ordinance Survey map of Stockport for 1896 shows the area around the goods yard to be a hive of activity, with cotton mills, tin, iron and brass foundries, not forgetting hat factories”.*

Location; Stockport

Pictures; the former George Roads Sidings, 2021, and circa 1950s, from Railways In And Around Manchester Suburbs, and the area in 1922, from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1922, courtesy of the Royal Bank of Scotland

* Railways In And Around Manchester Suburbs, A Selective Pictorial Review, E.M. Johnson, 1989