Arnold Road bus stop: where there was once a railway bridge

Image: © John Sutton Taken: 21 Jun 2011

To Nottinghamians of my vintage, the interest of this picture may be in the grassy wooded slope on the left, which is all that remains of the Great Central Railway embankment. This was the site of a girder bridge which carried the Nottingham Victoria to Sheffield and Manchester main line, closed in 1968 and its course largely obliterated in the city and to the north. This was a good spot for trainspotting, with traffic on the GC and also the GN Derby Friargate line. Derby-bound trains took the Bagthorpe West Curve, which crossed Arnold Road a little way down the hill (see Image]); when the smoke of those from Derby was spotted away to the right, beyond the sidings where a depot now is, there was a frantic dash under the GC bridge to see them emerge from the short "Rathole" tunnel which had brought them under the GN Back Line to Daybrook and Colwick and the GC (under the present Britannia Avenue, to the right) - they then passed under Arnold Road (just behind the camera) on their way to Bagthorpe Junction and Nottingham Victoria along the single-track Bagthorpe East Curve, whose route is echoed by the northern end of Fenton Road, which was built after the railway was closed and its cuttings and embankments filled or levelled, landscaped or built on. (Those post-War trainspotters were of course sustained by sherbet lemons and penny chews from Nellie Bisby's shop on Arnold Road.)

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