| Although I've ridden around the Oldham Loop hundreds of times (literally) during my lifetime, I'd never bothered to photograph very much of it, and with the closure date of October 3rd approaching rapidly, now seemed like a good time for one final photographic trip before it all becomes a part of the Metrolink empire.
Thursday 17th of September was the chosen date, and after catching a 'Green' charter at Castelton Station earlier that morning, it was off to Rochdale to buy one of the cheap Day Rover tickets and spend the day visiting all of the stations on the Loop. After taking a service train direct to Manchester Victoria via Castleton, Mills Hill and Moston, it was a quick change onto the Shaw 'stopping' train and first stop on this was at Dean Lane. Last time I was on this station was when I visited the open day at the nearby Newton Heath Works in 2007, the entrance of which is just across the main road from the station. A little time was spent here (photographing everything in sight of course), before again catching the 'stopping' train to the next station along the line at Failsworth. Failsworth Station, like all the Loop stations as far as Shaw is double tracked, and the platforms here are of the wooden type, with the railway line and station looking down onto the main road, which passes underneath it. Next up was Hollinwood, which since it was originally built, now also has a motorway running alongside it (and under the line just to the north of the station). It also has a very large and impressive looking building just to the rear, and this was where Ferranti had once made electricity transformers (back in the days before we exported our manufactring industry to the far east and eater Europe), but for some years now it has been well known as the place that turns out over 11 million copies of the Daily Mirror newspaper every week. From Hollinwood it was back on the train to the next station up the line, and this time it was the turn of Oldham Werneth, where, if all goes to plan, the new Metrolink service will leave the old line and make its way through the centre of the town before rejoining the old line at Oldham Mumps once again. Werneth Station is quite intersting in that the northern end of the platforms approach the Werneth Tunnel, and this has a nice stone carved emblem up above the portal. According to its Wikipedia entry, the station was originally built to serve the Platt Brothers cotton spinning engineering company. To the south there was a former branch line called the Werneth Incline, which ran down towards Middleton Junction. If you look very carefully you can just see where the line once curved away from the mainline on the southside of the bridge, though like many other places, this is now heavily covered by trees and bushes. Next station visited was Oldham Mumps, and this is the main station for the town, but is located well down at the bottom of the hill from the town centre, and reaching it requires crossing the B & Q car park and going under the subway or across a very busy main road (and it's not much fun doing this after dark). The Mumps Station platforms look quite run down, and at times I half expected David Attenborough to pop up, but this is not surprising since there hasn't been any great incentive to make improvements and investment when it has had the threat of conversion to Metrolink hanging over it since the early 1990s. It will be interesting to compare how it looks after the Metrolink conversion, and just which bits survive. In spite of that I personally like Mumps Station, it certainly has a bit of character about it anyway! 
Before moving on to the next station at Derker it was a quick trip on foot to the south of Mumps Station to get some shots of the Oldham Signal Box, and the nearby old and impressive iron footbridge which crosses the mainline near there, and does seem to be well used by the people of Glodwick. Derker Station is the 'newest' station on the line, and I can well remember this coming into service in 1985, with its 'temporary' wooden platforms. It now looks very different to what I remember though, as the large mill that once stood alongside it has now been demolished and there is just a very large space there (future park and ride site perhaps?). After Derker we reach Shaw & Crompton Station, which is not only the terminating point for the 'stopping' trains from Manchester, but also the last station to be double tracked on the northern section of the line. This station always seems quite busy, and has a main road/level crossing at the southern end (operated by Shaw Signal Box just the other side of the main road to the south, with a semaphore signal on the end of the platform, which I can't see surviving into the Metrolink era). There is also a footbrige across the line and this makes a fine vantage point for visiting photters. There is a 'crossover' to the north of the station where trains that terminate here can cross over to the other platform before they start their return journey back to Manchester. 'Direct' trains from Manchester Victoria also call here on their way to and from Rochdale as well. From Shaw the next station is at Newhey, and trains from Rochdale call here on their way down from Rochdale, and the trains that don't stop at the stations between Victoria and Mumps also call here on the northwards journey. Now single tracked for many years, the old platform can still be seen under the heavy undergrowth. It will be interesting to see if this comes back into use when Metrolink finally gets there, hopefully I will be back in 2012 to make the same trip again and compare it with how it looks in this gallery. The end of the platform at the Rochdale end requires the trains to pass under a bridge, which carries Huddersfield Road over it, thos main road is connected to the platform by a short path for the use of passengers. An old Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Warehouse across from the station still dominates the skyline and looks quite impressive. Milnrow Station is the last stop before Rochdale, and the station is again single tracked with a disused platform looking very overgrown at the other side. There is an old iron sided bridge crossing the track just to the north of the station, and the stretch of the line between here and Rochdale Station crosses the Rochdale Canal at one point near to Firgrove. The plans for the new Metrolink extension propose various new stations to serve the vast Kingsway Business Park, and parts of the town leading down to the planned new interchange in the centre of Rochdale, so this end of the line will look quite different, and we shall not see the 'Bay Platform' Platform 2 in use at Rochdale after the conversion. This gallery ends with a shot of a Class 156 parked in the bay there awaiting its return to Manchester, this was the one that we had just arrived on. The line currently has Class 142, Class 156 and Class 158 DMUs running on it, so if you haven't yet visited the line you'd better be quick, because it won't be there for much longer in its current form! |
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on the pacer from Werneth 1024x704 IMGP3894.jpg |
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