Thursday, 6 September 2012

Nottingham Bygones - The steam rises on a ghost train story

STRANGE things happened at Nottingham's old Thorneywood railway station.

Injured soldiers were taken there during the First World War, along with the bodies of the fallen for burial.

​End of the line: The last train through Thorneywood Station, supposedly haunted by fallen soldiers from the First World War.And the embankment and cutting that once housed the station – off The Wells Road, on the site of the old Kildare Road flats – has supposedly been haunted ever since.

Spooky stories increased after the line was abandoned in 1951 – especially after dark.

The smell of train smoke was reported, flickering lights were seen near the old platform and the clanking of carriage couplings was heard.

Occasionally, a phantom train is said to have emerge from the long-since bricked-up mouth of Thorneywood Tunnel on dark stormy nights.

schoolboy at Morley School, St Ann's, in the 1960s recalls how he and his classmates used the tunnel as a short cut to Colwick Woods for games lessons.

One day, they were convinced they were being followed by a man.

"We stopped and hid in the tunnel recesses to let him pass, only he never did," he said. "Eventually we stopped using it as a short cut.

"Sometimes we would mess about in other tunnels on the line... they never seemed to bother us.

"Every time we entered the Thorneywood Tunnel we would become cold and an eerie feeling would loom over us.

"There always seemed and still does seem to me, something sinister about Thorneywood Tunnel."

This and other tales of haunted railways in Notts are featured in the current edition of Bygones.

There are reports and pictures of the National Railway Museum and mighty engines like the Mallard and Flying Scotsmen.

Wollaton's role in the birth of Britain's railways is explored, along with the role that trains played in local industry and the booming business of days trips and works outings.

And there are rarely-seen archive shots of Nottingham's Victoria and Midland stations.

Bygones is on sale now, priced 70p.

From: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/steam-rises-ghost-train-story/story-16826686-detail/story.html

1 comment:

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