IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Oldham Road, MANCHESTER, M40 5AA

Looking north east.

Railway bridge crossing Oldham Road.

A notorious hump in the line from Miles Platting to Ashton caused by the need to provide clearance for double-deck buses (trams, originally!). Philips Park No.1 signalbox is visible in the distance.

The station area as seen in early 1989. The former Area Manager's offices and all station buildings had been demolished by this time (see here for photo of the main station building http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1009589). Tickets had to be purchased on the train, though passengers boarding or alighting were a distinct rarity. In the left distance, the dome belongs to a former cinema on Oldham Road, by 1989 in use as a bingo hall.

Miles Platting was once an important station at the junction of the Oldham (foreground) and Ashton routes. Between the two routes stood this large station building, plus an even larger office for the Area Manager, responsible for the extensive marshalling yards at Miles Platting and slightly further north at Newton Heath and Moston. All traces of the station have now been eradicated.

The very tight curve of the branch line to Ashton diverging from the original Manchester-Leeds railway line is readily apparent, as are the long sloping access ramps to each of the platforms. Railway operators may notice that the signalman at Miles Platting Junction has replaced his signals to danger remarkably quickly.

Looking NE from Miles Platting station, the signalbox at Brewery Sidings is in the middle distance, with Wilsons brewery's 1970s buildings on the left. In 2008, nothing recognisable is left, the whole area having become part of Manchester's urban regeneration zone, the station closed and the tracks realigned and resignalled.

The small door to the right of the bridge marks the former entrance to Miles Platting station, abandoned as unviable in the 1980s. Once a major railway site, changes since the late 1980s have removed all trackside traces of the station and its extensive offices. The coloured brickwork marks the course of the sloping access to the Ashton-Manchester platform, one of four at the station.

The 17.37 Manchester Victoria-Leeds train approaches Miles Platting junction and its already aged signalbox. For about a decade, this was the only train using the old Lancashire & Yorkshire line across the Pennines which called at Miles Platting station. In 1977, Manchester's skyline had just two high-rise blocks, both of which are visible in the photograph. On the left, the much-derided Arndale tower from the early 1970s; to the right the CIS tower from a decade earlier. Compare with my photograph from the same spot a decade later!