Wigan Album

Looks like this is taken from the actual signal box that was by the level crossing at Edge Green & Golborne Colly Sidings.
Nice photo,thank you for sharing.
The signal box there closed on the 21st April 1968,the area looks a lot different now Brian.

is this the gcr line from lowton st marys.they put a spur in from the wcml after the gcr's closure.

Yes Baker
There was a single line chord line installed by BR & commissioned on the 22nd April 1968.
It was built from off the WCML at a point near to Golborne Summit(& named Haydock Junction)
The new chord line met up with the ex GCR route just behind the bridge (& out of view).
After this short chord/link line was built it enabled the entire closure of the ex GCR line to Lowton St Marys & Glazebrook.

Hope this has answered your question

Fowler 3F 0-6-0 ?

Yes the photo is taken from were the signal box used to be, I have some photos of the box I will put on soon, there are houses on both sides of the line now witch is now single and unused but it is still maintained, it used to go into Kelbits with tar and chippings but that stopped about 4 years ago, I live just feet from the level crossing that is behind were the photo was taken from, it takes a footpath from Ashton rd to Edge Green near Golborne Asda.

Brian,

Thanks for putting your recent pictures on and what a great picture this one is, taken as Baldylocks rightly says from the signal box window. There is much to see for the discerning eye here:-

You can just see through the grass the trap points on the single track branch, set against a move onto the main line. This will protect the main line from any locomotive/train move off the branch that might take place without the signalman’s authorisation; as is happening here with ex Midland design 4F
0-6-0 passing with a rake of coal empties, apparently under a good head of steam heading towards Ashton in Makerfield. Presumably the empties might be for part of the Haydock collieries system?

The train stretches back under the overbridge Ashton Rd. in the distance, careful examination will reveal that the subsidence under that bridge was nowhere near as severe then as it is now. There is only a slight depression apparent under the bridge at this time, which I presume John would be the early/middle sixties?

The semaphore signal above the train is an upper quadrant type which would be a later BR replacement for the MSLR/GCR original. It looks to be on a steel tubular post, but some of the signal posts on this branch were replaced in BR days with reinforced concrete. Two of these in fact are still in existence on the remaining section of embankment between Slag Lane and Murphy’s yard on Wigan Rd. This, (along with section between Ashton Rd and Haydock racecourse) is the now the last remaining recognisable section of the GCR’s St. Helens branch left to posterity. Both of these signal posts are now “felled” but can still be readily seen. One in fact is the “down splitting Home signal” [please excuse the railway “techno babble”] which controlled access either into Golborne GCR station (Golborne North in later BR days), or down into Golborne goods yard. And this signal was still a lower quadrant type, which is a much older design and probably the original GCR signal at the location, albeit it now fixed to a concrete post rather than the original wooden one. Both the station and goods yard are now buried under Murphy’s yard and office block. For many years after the lines closure, the remaining bridge pier and wing walls in blue engineering brick, stood silent sentinel over Wigan Rd. on the opposite side of the road to Murphy’s, until inevitably, someone had to build a house on the embankment and the bridge remains disappeared for ever.

For some views of the other end of this branch into Golborne colliery and also of the other end of this now single track branch onto the WCML at Haydock Branch Jct. Junction, please see page 1 of work/Golborne colliery and page 25 of Work/Railway. The GCR St. Helens branch which took over ten years to build for its perhaps six miles in length now ends just past behind this photo as a headshunt and a set of stopblocks (buffer stops) for the last remaining service that used to run to Kelbits. The remaining section of the GCR branch between Glazebrook West Jct. and here was, as Baldylocks quite correctly points out, closed once the connection was put in to the WCML at Haydock Branch Jct.

One of the oddities of railway closures is that the original branch into Wigan built in 1879, and from which this St. Helens branch departed at Lowton St. Marys Jct. closed beyond Lowton St. Marys Jct. as a through route in 1964 and it was the poorer relation, the St. Helens branch, that actually became the last bastion of the GCR in the area.

Once again thank you John for a really wonderful picture.

Brings back memories
I remember as a child watching these trains arrive, about one a day. Once the guards van bringing up the rear passed the SB then the guard would signal to the driver for a rough shunt so the he could uncouple his van, jump aboard release his handbrake and let it roll back towards the bridge before bringing it to a stop, he would then walk back up to the points and check the route giving a clear (white cloth) wave to the driver who in turn would propel the wagons into the pit siding line which had three tracks for storing the empties. I think the Pit shunter would then arrange how many wagons went onto each road.
Once completed the light engine would return to the main line drop back down and couple up to the guards van before returning light to Glazebrook (or beyond)
From the underbridge to the bridge over Edge Green Lane, which is still in place the line had one of the steepest gradients in the country, which certainly helped the Guards Van to run back and why it needed a rough shunt to uncouple
I also remember the spur being built onto the main down slow which was then named Haydock Junction allowing the former route to Manchester to be lifted and for the first time to receive from and to and dispatch wagons onto the former LNWR lines
It would be nice to make contact with those who put these articles on the website
Kind regards
David Whitmore