IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Barlock Road, NOTTINGHAM, NG6 0FF

Tunstall Drive is built where the Great Central Railway main line from Nottingham Victoria to Sheffield and Manchester once ran - on the top of an embankment in the region of 40ft above the present road level. The trees in the background grow on the slope of the truncated embankment and give an idea of how wide the earthworks were. Bagthorpe Junction and its signal box once stood roughly where I stood to take this picture, but a long way above my head. The scene at the top of what remains of the embankment is shown in Image], and for more about the railway network in these parts, see Image], Image], Image] and others.

The main line from Nottingham Victoria to Sheffield and Manchester ran straight ahead - the right wall of the modern factory is parallel to the former tracks. Bagthorpe East curve, carrying Derby Friargate trains to Basford North and on to Kimberley and Ilkeston, passed to the left of this building, where the bushes are. Behind the camera the embankment - 40ft high where it crossed the ring road - has been levelled and the houses of Tunstall Drive built. For more about the railway network in these parts, see Image], Image], Image] and others.

The trees to the right are growing on the remains of the Great Central Railway embankment. Beyond them, the embankment - 40ft high where the railway crossed Valley Road on its way south to Nottingham Victoria - has been levelled and the houses of Tunstall Drive built. Fenton Road follows the course of Bagthorpe East Curve, which brought trains from the Great Northern Derby Friargate line to join the GC at Bagthorpe Junction (which was just north of Valley Road bridge, way above the roofs of the present houses, and those on Harmston Rise and Heatherley Avenue, whose alignments follow the bottom of the former embankment). In railway days the downward slope straight ahead was a single railway line rising to meet the main line. To the right of the houses in the distance on the left of the picture, the railway passed through the cutting in the sandstone ridge shown in my Image

The low brick wall on the other side of the road is all that remains of the south abutment supporting a huge plate girder bridge which carried the Great Central main line from Nottingham Victoria to Sheffield 40ft above the road. That bridge, replacing the original simple brick arch, was built in the late 1930s, when Valley Road was widened and became the northern part of the ring road. The houses opposite are built where the embankment has been removed; the trees above them are growing where the sandstone railway cutting shown in my Image] once was. For more about the railway network in these parts, see Image], Image], Image], Image] and others.

These sloping gardens occupy what was once a railway embankment: Bagthorpe West Curve, which took Derby-bound trains from Bagthorpe Junction, half a mile to the south on the Great Central main line, to Basford North and then west to Kimberley and Ilkeston. There were carriage sidings, where spare coaches were stabled, to the left, between the Derby line and the Great Central main line, which crossed Arnold Road just to the north. Image] is the view in the opposite direction, towards Arnold Road. It is well worth consulting old OS maps to get an idea of how much railway infrastructure there once was here - all now landscaped away.

At the end of Frances Grove.

Looking through one of the avenues of mature lime trees.

This landscaped area and children's playground, serving the houses on Roman Drive, Gothic Close and Script Drive, is built on land once occupied by the Great Northern Nottingham to Derby Friargate railway, which crossed Arnold Road behind the camera. The street names recall the Barlock Typewriter Company, whose factory was on - and gave its name to - nearby Barlock Road.

Channelled and about to join the River Leen.