As a child I lived near a single track that ran (I think) from Near Derby, through lower Kilburn, Kilburn, The Denby Hall Collieries(?) near Denby Pottery and to Ripley and beyond. Does anyone know anything about this line, its history, present status and condition? I'm considering the possibility of a layour based on it but know very little beyond a few vague childhood memories from the 60s and 70s
I'm fairly sure that the track is still in situ, but may well be mothballed out of use. If it's the same line I'm thinking of, it can be seen on the LH side of the A38 going north from Derby to Alfreton (at a different point on the RH side of the same road you can see the preserved line to Butterley, too!), and diverges from the main Derby-Sheffield line somewhere south of Duffield.
David E. Belcher
Dept. of Chemistry, University of York
The track/operational signalling diagrams for this branch as it was in the
1950s is in the Signalling Record Society: British Railways Layout Plans of the 1950s from the John Swift collection vol 8: Manchester and Chesterfield to Derby and Trent. 1995. ISBN 1-873228-09-0. The strip diagram from LMS days, together with dates of opening (1855), closure (late 1960s) etc are in Gough's Midland Railway Chronology, 2ed. There does not appear to be any specific published history of the branch from a perusal of Ottley's Railway Bibliography & its 2 supplements. You could get a copy of the orignal 19th century 6" mapping of a favoured location fromAlex.
The line is still in place but hasn't been used for some time looking at the state of the permanent way.
Dave M
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