Pendlebury Station.

[steam for ever]

Thinking about it I have recently visited a bit of trackbed around the area.
In the childerens hospital a few years back there was a picture of the station.

[Tony]

If L.S.Lowry was filmed coming out of Pendlebury station, he may have been visiting my uncle, William Clifford Evans, who lived at 306 Bolton Road with my grandparents. L.S.Lowry and my uncle were both employed together as Salford City Council rent collectors until they retired.

[faltskog36abba]

maybe he was heading home?seen a report on local news that lowry lived in pendlebury in later years,the people who owned his house thought they would make a killing when they sold it-but they didnt,theres a street named after him off station road too.

[Deathbyteacup]

Lowry's house was closer to Swinton than Pendlebury, so why he'd get off at Pendlebury I don't know, unless it was his grandparents he went to visit.

[Tony]

L.S.Lowry lived on Station Road in Swinton, a couple of doors up from Dudley Road. A schoolfriend of mine lived next door! (Funny old fella! Lowry, not my friend.)
His house was 100 yards from Swinton station.

[Fergus J Bend]

Originally Posted by Ian Howarth

Hi Tony,
The orange coloured stream you mention was probably Slackey Brook which ran all the way along at the back of the railway where the land fell away sharply into the area we called "Down Beggars". It ran into the old sewerage works which was disused when I went but a great place to explore. It has all been filled in and landscaped now and new houses are even starting to encroach upon the area from the Agecroft road end. The rush hour that you mention was a hectic time for us after school as we would congregate on the Swinton side of Pendlebury tunnel and wait for the Blackpool and Southport trains to go through. The high point of the evening came when the Windermere express came through. We would go down to the bottom of the embankment and watch for it pounding up Pendlebury Bank looking through the tunnel. it was very often a Britannia Class Pacific and I guess I must have seen almost half of the Class on that express.
Ian

Hi Ian

Your posting evokes great nostalgia in me! I grew up in Pendlebury, just off Hospital Road and went to Grosvenor Road Primary and then Wardley Grammar School. In the mid-sixties I was mad keen on train spotting and used to go every evening to what we called 'The Sandhills' on the Pendlebury side at the top of Agecroft Road. The star attraction was, as you mention, the early evening service from Manchester Exchange to Windermere which was almost always hauled by a 'Brit'. By this time they were pretty neglected, although only twelve or thirteen years old - no trace of BR Green under the black grime, missing name plates and sometimes emitting jets of steam where they should not have emitted jets of steam! Nevertheless they were a credit to Robert Riddles as they stormed up the incline from Pendleton with a plume of smoke rising from the chimney like a small nuclear explosion.

The old L&Y fast tracks must have long gone, but I do remember that the 72 inch diameter Haweswater Aqueduct crossed Agecroft Road on the lower side of the railway, and that one night in the sixties, after heavy rain in the Lake District it burst and flooded the Dauntsey Road Estate where my grandparents lived!

I also remember the wilderness of the old sewerage farm and the spoil heaps between there and Lumn's Lane where we used to play, strictly against our parents' instructions. I used to hunt for fosils in the slag heaps. They were very numerous, usually of million-year old ferns.

One of my grandfathers washed buses at Fredrick Road Depot, while the other was a collier at Wheatsheaf Pit. My father was a tool-maker at Exide Batteries ('The Chloride') and my mum worked at the builders' merchant which was built on the site of the goods yard at Swinton Station.

I left Pendlebury in 1973 to go to university in London and have never returned.

Thank you all for re-kindling so many happy memories.

[Tony]

Hi Fergus,

You must have sat on the same wooden fence that I used 10 years earlier! I lived in Beverley Road. In the late 50's, the "Windermere" usually had a rebuilt Scot in charge.

[Fergus J Bend]

I thought it was still warm! I don't remember the Royal Scots, but my first notebook (now lost) which I think would have been for 1964 mentions the rebuilt Patriot 45530 'Sir Frank Ree'.

Fergus

[Semaphore Sam]

Hello Fergus
You mentioned your father worked at Exide Batteries. There was speculation that chloride was stored in the Black Harry tunnel during the 2nd War, and that might have weakened the roof sufficiently to cause the 1953 cave-in. Do you have any memory of chlorine-filled rail cars stored in the Clifton Hall tunnel? I am fascinated with the Black Harry history, and story, and have walked the route a number of times between Clifton Junction, up and over to Patricroft Station (very difficult to reach, now, using old ROW). Thanx for any info! Sam

[Tony]

Hello Sam,
There was nothing stored in the Black Harry tunnel during the war. I walked through it several times before the cave-in, it was dark and full of rats and dripping water. Coal trains ran through it from the Rossendale direction and Wheatsheaf and New Town collieries transfer sidings to Liverpool. Until the accident, a regular passenger service from Bacup to North Wales used the line on Saturday morning. It was usually powered by a 4-6-2T, I used to see it passing Swinton Park golf course when I was caddying for extra pocket money.