Wigan Album

And Wilson promised to stop the cuts if we voted him in, then promptly cut them anyway.Lying politicians are clearly not a new thing.

The end of an era in Wigan. No more could the town boast that it had three town centre railway stations. I only ever travelled once by this route, that being as a child in the very early sixties,and more than likely travelling to Manchester Central.

Many happy memories of going from Hindley South to Lowton Saint Mary's visiting family who'd moved there from Platt Bridge.

The Minister of Transport at that time was Ernest Marples and good old Ernie took a keen interest in closing as many railway lines as he could.
Do you think it had something to do with the fact that he was making vast sums of money from his own company, Ridgeway Marples who were building Motorways and other civil engineering projects all connected with Road Transport?
A crooked politician?? Never.

The death knell for the a Lower Ince Station in front of my Grannie's house at 22 Junction Terrace Lower Ince.... :(

These were disgraceful periods in our history.I am sure the road traffic can be horrendous in some of these routes. In our district - Bath & Somerset, there are huge rush hour queues every day - along the route of the former Somerset & Dorset Railway. yes, I also believe that it was because of Marples' business that all this took place.

I used Wigan Central Station quite a lot in the late 50's, travelling to Irlam and Cadishead, which was the station for the steelworks, or the Lancashire Steel Corporation as it was known in those days. There was usually about a dozen lads, all from WGS, on the train. We worked in various parts of the steelworks. I worked with a fitter on the Coke Ovens, repairing the coke pusher, which was a very large machine designed to push coke out of each oven, into a special railway wagon, and from there it was doused with thousands of gallons of water to cool down the coke, coke being a basic raw material in steel production.
We worked 6 and a half days a week for £14-10s-0p.
Very happy and rewarding times.
I seem to remember that the Wigan Coal and Iron Company moved to Irlam and later became the Lancashire Steel Corporation.
Perhaps someone can add more to this.

Jim: A well known local person, the late Mr Anderton, has written a book 'Wigan Coal and Iron', which might interest you.

from beeching's report,whilst the line was heavily used it was unmodernised and therefore deemed uneconomic ,though many other lines which where less well patronised did not close,why?

Jim, that's not a bad wage for the '50's! You may find that Donald Anderson's book is out of print, but maybe Wigan library have a copy.

Sorry, my wage was £14-10s-0d, not 0p. This was 20+ years before decimalisation.

Where was the south station in hindley

Ladies Lane. owd viewer.

Owd viewer, Hindley South (closed 1964)was off Liverpool Road. The present-day Hindley station in Ladies Lane was then called Hindley North. Lots of information on former stations on Disused stations website.

Hindley South was at the top the bridge going up from the Strangeways pub on the left hand side.The right side near the pub was a goods yard.

Hindley south was strangways and hindley in 1884, then renamed Hindley and platt bridge in 1892.

laughable to look back and read this section .they are negotiating a bus service to run from wigan via ince,hindley,abram, lowton,newchurch,culceth and glazebury for irlam.how long would that journey be two or three hours.
beeching conned the dum british public into thinking bus services for rail routes where ok,when half the bus operators where running at a loss on these services.
I have said this before, leigh council must have been the thickest on the planet when it agreed to lose its railway station.leigh before atherleigh way was a congestion nightmare.leigh now with atherleigh way is a congestion nightmare at peak times.