The site of Radford Station

Image: © John Sutton Taken: 12 Jul 2011

Radford Station closed in 1964 when passenger services between Nottingham, Mansfield and Worksop were withdrawn (I was on the last train), only to be reinstated as The Robin Hood Line thirty years later. The small red-brick booking office was at road level, just to the right of the camera position, and wooden covered stairways led down to the platforms. The land to the right of the tracks, now occupied by industrial units and the Opal 1 student flats (Image]) was once a large railway goods yard, from whose sidings Player's cigarettes were despatched in rail containers brought by lorry from the factories on nearby Churchfield Lane and Radford Boulevard. Older Radfordians will remember that the streets to the west of the station (left) were once locally known as Sodom. At Radford Junction, in the middle distance, the Radford-Trowell line swings to the left and the Leen Valley line to Mansfield goes straight on. The Trowell line was opened in 1875 and enabled trains to and from the north to avoid the bottlenecks at Trent and Toton. Until the 1960s it was the route of the Edinburgh to St Pancras Waverley Express. The principal traffic on the Mansfield line, though, was coal from the Leen Valley pits, the first of which was Radford (closed 1961), whose sidings were half a mile to the north, beyond New Bridge.

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