Wigan Album

Great picture Ian.

Two cracking photos Ian.

The embankment with the earthmoving plant on it was the northern extremity of the railway embankment that had served Central Station.

In fact, this photo shows the last remnant of "broken dreams" of Victorian railway entrepreneurs.

The story is that round the time when the line was extended from Darlington Street into Wigan Central station in 1892, the railway company (the Wigan Junction Railway) had plans to push on northwards, eventual destination Blackpool, by a route completely independent to the existing London & North-Western and Lancashire & Yorkshire lines. So, this embankment was built with a view to easy continuation northwards across Crompton Street - as can be seen here.

The extended line was meant to follow the River Douglas more or less to Boar's Head, then continue on its own route to the River Ribble & Fylde coast. The land where Central Park Rugby Ground was situated was owned by the railway company to ensure an easy departure from Wigan in the future (without needing to acquire and demolish large numbers of permanent buildings).

The ambitious plan never happened, partly due to effective blocking of its approval by the L&YR.

A bit later, in the early 1900s, there was another plan to extend northwards across Crompton Street and through Water Hayes, this time destination Heysham - with a branch line to (where else) Blackpool. This aspiration came to nowt either, leaving the mucky, dead end seen here, and Wigan Central as a terminus and railway backwater, rather than a bustling through station.

The short street on the other side of the shed and site huts, running downhill from Station Road to Crompton Street, was named Watkin Street - after Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Great Central Railway company and a proponent of many ambitious, large-scale railway and engineering projects in the Victorian era. Watkin made a start on digging a Channel Tunnel in the 1880s (he got over a mile out before the project was canned) and started to build a massive tower on the site of what would become Wembley Stadium - meant to exceed the Eiffel Tower in height (it only got as far as the first stage). So Watkin's failed cunning plan for his own Wigan to Blackpool railway was small fry compared to some of his other exploits.