Accrington Railways - Robert Kenyon

(NB) ‘ Merlin ’ 0-4-0DH new 1957, then to Bank Hall Colliery Burnley in 1969. Huncoat Power Station All were ‘fireless’ (compressed steam) locomotives. (HL) N o 3 0-6-0 new 1929, ex-Chadderton Street Power Station, Oldham 1958, to Tanfield Railway, Durham, in 1982 for preservation. (?) Unnumbered 0-4-0 new 1949, ex-Stuart Street Power Station, to Wards, Ilkeston in 1986 for scrap. (B) N o 1 0-4-0 new 1951, to Wards, Ilkeston in 1986 for scrap. (?) Unnumbered 0-4-0 new 1952, ex-Whitebirk Power Station, Blackburn, and returned to Whitebirk Power Station in 1954. (HL) N o 2 0-6-0 new 1953, to Wards, Ilkeston in 1986 for scrap. Accrington Plastic Brick Company (AB) ‘ Nori ’ a 0-4-0ST new 1894, ex-Accrington Brick & Tile Co. in 1962, scrapped during 1964/65. (AB) ‘Whinney Hill’ a 0-4-0ST new 1897. Church’s Industrial Railways, (circa 1950) Whereas to the east of Accrington around Huncoat the industries were based on the manufacture of building materials, Church was a centre for producing chemicals. In common with Huncoat it did have a coal mine, the Aspden Colliery, but the main features were chemical works. Like most small town stations Church & Oswaldtwistle Railway Station, although being wholly situated in Church, did have a yard for handling goods which contained its own shed. The two platforms were linked by an underpass from the station booking hall which was on the approach to Platform 1 for trains travelling west towards Blackburn, Preston and beyond. Platform 2 was for trains travelling towards Accrington and further to the east. The platform ends extended to a low bridge over Market Street, which up until much later was too low for double deck trams to pass beneath, so when the line was extended to Oswaldtwistle on electrification of the tramway, only single deck cars could pass through. Immediately after the short viaduct which spanned Tinker Brook and the unmade Coach Road through Foxhill Bank, the sidings for Blythe’s Chemical Works began. It is interesting to note that besides bringing in raw materials for Blythe’s and transporting out the finished articles, these sidings were where the trams for Accrington’s system were offloaded, having been brought in by train by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway. Here they were transferred to horse-drawn carts for delivery to the depot on Ellison Street. Blythe’s Chemical Works was an extensive site which manufactured all sorts of products, some of which were quite dangerous. These included a plant for the production of arsenic, a deadly poison, which often gave the workers a yellow complexion and gave it the nickname the ‘ Canary Isle ’. It also was involved in the manufacture of high explosives, which resulted in a massive catastrophe when a building blew up during the First World War, damaging buildings in the vicinity including the horse stables. Travelling east towards Rishton the railway then passed over two short bridges in succession, the first over the main road to Blackburn, the second over the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. The bridge over Blackburn Road was too low for highbridge trams to pass beneath, so special low-height trams were used on the services passing between Accrington and Blackburn. Later the road surface was lowered which often in heavy rain caused it to flood. The canal, 127-miles in length, was vital to the early development of Church where a large warehouse was constructed at the wharf where the canal took a sharp turn eastwards just a couple of hundred yards beyond the half-way point between the cities on its two extremities. Immediately beyond the canal and the kilns another two sets of sidings were situated, those on the west to serve the colliery at the end of the Aspden Valley, those to the west known as Metcalf’s Sidings to service yet another branch of the chemical industry. Going towards Rishton the line had to cross the long Aspden Valley which proved to be a formidable obstacle to the early railway engineers. The first solution was a wooden trestle viaduct much in the style of those constructed in America, but later the authorities decided to fill it in with ash. This was a by-product of the railway itself. ( The project took several years to complete with some claiming that it took until 1928 for the whole structure to be covered .)

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