The tram stop …. a poem ….. and Adlestrop

Yesterday I was at Navigation Road, that tram stop and railway station on the line from Manchester to Altrincham and beyond.

The day was hot and promised to get hotter and apart from my companion I was alone.

And it evoked memories of my childhood and in particular waiting on empty platforms in the middle of summer between trains.  

Back then the railway sleepers were made of wood and after decades of being covered in engine oil and preservatives they gave off a distinctive smell as they cooked in the heat.  

Nothing stirred save the lazy buzz of insects, and the regular tick of the station clock, only interrupted by the vibration from the wires which announced the imminent arrival of a train.

You could never be quite sure whether this would be the regular stopping train or an express whizzing through on its way from the coast to the city, all noise and speed and gone in a minute.

Leaving me and the busy insects to share the peace which descended again on the still empty platform.

I could only have been ten, but the memory has stayed with me only to bubble back up when I re-read the poem Adlestrop by Edward Thomas which was inspired by the moment his train stopped 

“one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name”*

And like my moment it was one of stillness punctuated only by my bees and his by the song of a single blackbird.

But back on Navigation Road the tranquillity was replaced by the arrival of a train bound for Chester and the Bury tram.

Now my Wikipedia tells me “Navigation Road station serves the east of Altrincham … It lies on the Mid-Cheshire line and the Altrincham Line of the Manchester Metrolink network. There are two bidirectional platforms: one for heavy rail and one for light rail. A level crossing operates at the southern end of the station.

The station was opened on 20 July 1931, on the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJAR) following the electrification of that line and was referred to as Navigation Road (Altrincham) on early tickets and timetables. 

British Rail electric multiple units between Manchester Piccadilly and Altrincham ceased on 24 December 1991. The former Altrincham-bound (down) platform has since been used for Mid-Cheshire Line trains and the former Manchester-bound (up) platform reopened as a Metrolink stop on 15 June 1992”. **

At which point I could wander off and reflect that along with Altrincham Metro stop, Navigation Road is the only other tram stop to share light and heavy rail use on the former Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway, throwing in a bit of the history of that line.

Or alternatively write about Navigation Road, its own gated level crossing, the Duke’s Canal and the Timperley Brook which The River Restoration Centre describes as “a tributary of Sinderland Brook, located South of Manchester and West of Manchester Airport. It scores very low in all the criteria used to assess its quality, except for one reach, which has been restored".***. 

But I won’t, all of that and more will be in our next book in the series, Greater Manchester By Tram – The Stories At The Stops which will published later in the year under the title, Old Trafford to Altrincham.****

Location; Navigation Road

Pictures; Navigation Road, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Adlestrop, Edward Thomas, 1914/1915, published 1917

**Navigation Road, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Road_station

*** The River Restoration Centre, https://www.therrc.co.uk/timperley-brook-project

****A History of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram 

Watching the trains pass ……… leaving for Crewe

It will have been sometime time in the early 1980s and perhaps even earlier.

Armed with two new cameras and a lot of spare time I wandered from the different city centre railway stations, snapping whatever took my fancy.

Now there will be people who can tell me exactly what unit is pulling out of Piccadilly Railway Station, and no doubt the time of day.

And then there will be others who question the significance of the picture, to which I will reply, that there is nothing special about it other than that this was what I saw 40 odd years ago.

Location; Piccadilly Railway Station

Picture; Leaving for Crewe, circa 1980, from the collection of Piccadilly Railway Station, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The magic of an empty railway station ............. somewhere in the west country

Now, if you are of that generation who grew up with Muffin the Mule, and thought that the light had gone out of the world on hearing of the death of Ottis Reading, then this picture of this railway station will be as familiar as spangles, and Blue Peter.

This is the stop at Bishops Lydeard, on the railway line to Minehead, and if you were to take the trip courtesy of the West Somerset Railway, you would pass the equally picturesque stations of Crowcombe, Heathfield, Stogumber and Doriford Halt.

Between them, they conjure up that lost world before and just after the nationalization of the railway companies, when even the smallest hamlet had it own branch line.

They are the stuff of romance and nostalgia, and it takes little in the way of imagination to think yourself on to that platform on a hot summer’s day, waiting for the 12.20 to somewhere.

The chances are you would be alone, with the railway staff away busying themselves on routine tasks, leaving you with the feint noise of insects, the smell of warm oil from the wooden sleepers, and the tick of the station clock.

At a little before midday the peace would be broken by the express train thundering past on its way to some place full of people doing purposeful things, and just possibly one of the passengers on that speeding train might give a glance across to the solitary figure before the scene vanished, replaced by hedgerows and open fields.

And the noise it had made only contrasted all the more with the tick of the clock and the buzz of the insects.

All of which will doubtless be dismissed as pure nostalgic tosh, although it chimes in with many of my cherished memories.

That said, when Lois took the pictures of Bishops Lydeard, the station was full of expectant passengers intent on getting aboard the train to Minehead, pulled by loco no.6960 which goes by the name of Raveningham Hall which I guess is named after the same house and estate situated south of Norwich.

It might be a tad unfair to describe the rush to catch the train as a stampede and I wasn’t there, so I will just let the picture say it all, leaving me to include the other images Lois chose from the photographs she took on the day along with a favourite poem by Edward Thomas, who wrote "Adlestrop", after a train journey on June 24th 1914, during which his train briefly stopped at the now-defunct station in the Gloucestershire village of Adlestrop.

Yes. I remember Adlestrop

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.


The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name


And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.


And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire


Location; on the West Somerset Railway

Pictures; catching the train at Bishops Lydeard, 2018 from the collection of Lois Elsden

*The West Somerset Railway; https://www.west-somerset-railway.co.uk/the-railway

Cheshire Line Tavern ..... Cheadle ....... yesterday

Now I like Andy's title to his picture, which is succinct and to the point.

This is the former Cheadle Railway Station, opened in 1866, and closed to passenger traffic just two years shy of its hundredth birthday.

According to that excellent site Disused Stations, it was converted into a pub in the 1980s and "extensions have been added to the original building but in a sympathetic way".*

The entry also offers up a fascinating history of the railway station and the railway line, leaving me just to comment we often fall in to the pub after doing the garden centre" which is next door.

Location; Cheadle

Picture;Cheshire Line Tavern, 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Disused Stations, http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/cheadle_cheshire/index.shtml

Passing through Derby Station on a Sunday in September ............

Now sometimes it is the unremarkable picture which offers up a story.

The train was passing through Derby on its way from Bristol to York and Lois caught the moment mainly I suspect because Derby was where mother grew up and where I spent many holidays.

As such it is a place I have often written about but in truth with little affection.

That said it plays an important place in our family who grew up in a small area bounded by Traffic Street, the railway station and the canal.

Like many in the early 19th century they were agricultural labourers who migrated to the nearby town and made a living as handloom workers, domestic servants and in the new engineering works.

And when the time they came acquitted themselves in the armies of the old Queen and later still in the great global conflicts of the last century, but always they returned to the same small collection of streets.

Of those that left and never returned, one is buried in a war grave in Thailand, two crossed the Atlantic and mother settled in London.

It’s a set of family stories which could be replicated countless times and all that makes it different is that it’s my family.

And I had come to forget that story which makes Lois’s picture very timely and has set me off on a whole new quest.

Picture; Derby Station, 11.47, Sunday September 13, 2015, from the collection of Lois Elsden