Exploring the Ivanhoe Line east of Coalville

With the Leicester Mercury reporting a new push to restore passenger services to the railway line from Leicester to Burton upon Trent, it's time to visit it again with Our History Underfoot.

In May we saw the line between Burton and Coalville, which hasn't carried any goods traffic for two years and is already showing signs of decay.

This time we go east from Coalville about half the way to Leicester. Matt sees, or at least hears, more quarry traffic than he expected and comes across relics of the district's early railway history. 

A third video will complete his journey to Leicester.

The Ivanhoe Line west of Coalville is disappearing fast: Here's what's left

Ever since I was a councillor in the Eighties, the reopening to passengers of the line from Leicester to Coalville, Ashby and Burton upon Trent has been high on the agenda of transport campaigners in the East Midlands.

Which makes this video following the line between Coalville and Burton concerning. No train has run west of Coalville for a couple of years and, as a result, that section of the line is rapidly being reclaimed by nature.

This is doubly worrying because, though what people in Coalville want is a train to Leicester, it is this section between Coalville and Burton that the authorities now talk about reopening.

Anyway, thanks to Our History Underfoot. Like and subscribe. my children. Like and subscribe.

Coalville: Railway ghosts of the town built on coal

In this episode of Lost Railway Towns, we travel to Coalville, Leicestershire – a town built on coal and railways. Once thriving when coal was king, Coalville was at the heart of Leicestershire’s industrial revolution, its collieries and railway lines powering Britain’s factories and furnaces.

We uncover the story of Coalville’s lost railways, the lines that once linked the town to Leicester, Ashby and beyond – and explore what remains today. Despite decades of talk about restoring passenger services, Coalville’s station remains closed, a ghost of a once-busy transport hub.

Joined by Steve, a lifelong resident of Coalville, we hear his memories of life in a town shaped by coal. I also revisit my own memories of Coalville railway open days – a nostalgic look back at the engines, exhibits, and excitement that inspired my love of railway history.

So says the YouTube blurb from Wobbly Runner Exploring – like and subscribe, my children.

The problem with the Leicester end of this line, which they discuss at the beginning of the video, it that it meets the Midland main line at Knighton Junction, which is south of Leicester station, pointing south. 

There used to be a curve at Knighton that pointed north, and would have enabled trains to get to Leicester station without reversing, but that has been built on.

I took some photos of Oliver's Crossing – a disused level crossing in the centre of Coalville – when I was there a couple of years ago.

How Charley fooled the Luftwaffe and saved Midland cities

Here's the blurb for one of the short Secret Leicestershire features on BBC Sounds – The secret RAF base which foiled the Nazis:

Slightly north of Coalville in the Leicestershire district of Charley are the remains of a secret RAF base which foiled Nazi bombing raids during WW2.

The RAF 80 Wing was formed in 1940 and comprised a team of specialist wireless operators who sent radio signal beams to throw German pilots off course, tricking them into releasing their bombs away from their intended targets.

Charley was one of those specially chosen sites, being close to the important manufacturing centres of Leicester, Derby, Coventry, Nottingham and Birmingham. That secret RAF team was nicknamed "The Beambenders".

You can read more about this operation in the Wikipedia entry for Battle of the Beams, and there's more about the site at Charley on the parish council's website.

Leicestershire pensioner fined £225 by council for flicking snot out of van window

Ashby Hub News wins our Headline of the Day Award for its tale of crime in Coalville.

The judges were, however, concerned by the story below it. The first sentence states that the pensioner was fined for "snotting out his van window".

If one accepts that "to snot" is a verb, then

snotting out a window 

and 

snotting out of a window

are surely two different things, the former being far more newsworthy than the latter.

Bagworth Incline and the remains of one of the world's oldest railway buildings

Steve from the What Once Was channel (like and subscribe, my pretties) writes on YouTube:

Join me as I explore what’s left of the Bagworth Incline House – a forgotten but historically significant structure from one of Britain’s earliest public railways. 

Built in the early 1830s as part of the Leicester & Swannington Railway, this incline control house once helped transport coal across Leicestershire using rope-worked, self-acting incline technology – long before modern locomotives took over.

In the course of this video reveals that he lives in Hugglescote, where I once went to photograph its Edward VIII postbox.

The Joy of Six 1430

David Howarth knows how to make the BBC less afraid of Nigel Farage: "Proportional representation would free the BBC from fear, but more than that, since under PR many parties would enjoy a reasonable prospect of entering government and so of supplying the secretary of state for culture, the BBC would have better incentives to maintain impartiality among democratic parties."

"Calling Andrew entitled is beside the point. He was raised with no economic purpose and now he finds himself as a connector to whom no one wants to be connected. 'I have no idea who he will socialize with,' one Norfolk grandee told me. 'All his friends are Chinese spies.'" Tina Brown claims to have the inside story on how King Charles pulled the plug on Andrew.

AI is supercharging abuse against women journalists, but Megha Mohan argues that it doesn’t have to be that way.

"For a period beginning in the 1960s and ending around the turn of this century, the preferred form of the homicidally inclined was the drawn-out danse macabre of serial murder. This was especially true in America’s Pacific Northwest, where an astonishingly large number of serial killers, from Ted Bundy to Israel Keyes, from the Green River Killer to the Shoe Fetish Slayer, from the Werewolf Butcher of Spokane to the Beast of British Columbia, grew up or operated." James Lasdun on the serial killers of Seattle.

Stephen Prince introduces us to the 1970 book Filming the Owl Service (1970), which is "long out of print and rare as hens' teeth to find second hand, which is a shame as it is a fine companion piece to the series, full of rather lovely photographs, artefacts, anecdotes, background story, prop sheets and designs from the filming and the series itself".

Robert Hartley explores the Leicestershire connections of George Stephenson, the father of railways.

Oliver's Crossing: A disused level crossing in the centre of Coalville

Snibston Colliery was developed by George Stephenson and opened in 1832. Coal from it reached the outside world via his Leicester and Swannington Railway, one of the first of the steam age.

Oliver's Crossing lies on the line that led from the colliery to the Leicester and Swannington, running through what became the centre of the town of Coalville - a name that could have come from Hard Times.

The crossing was named after Oliver Robinson, who became crossing keeper here in the 1880s after suffering a mining accident. The hut that sheltered him can still be seen.

Oliver's Crossing remained in use until the colliery closed in 1983.

The Rex, Coalville: "An astonishing Moderne style façade to find in a small town"

I knew I had to look for a derelict cinema in Coalville and, when I turned my mind to the search, I found I was standing outside it. 

Cinema Treasures reveals that it had 1200 seats and two screens, and says:

An astonishing Moderne style façade to find in a small town, originally surmounted by a neon-lit semi-sky sign. Inside the two-level auditorium, the main feature is the highly-ribbed ante-proscenium, covered in silver plastic paint and up-lit from the balcony parapet. The tabs were up-lit from the false orchestra pit. ...

The Rex Cinema opened on 2nd February 1938 with Errol Flynn in “Charge of the Light Brigade”. Like the Regal Cinema, it was operated by the Deeming family. It was converted into a twin cinema in May 1973.

The Rex Cinema closed on 3rd May 1984. It went over to retail use as a store for the textile company Dunelm Mill, which closed on 26th June, 2016.

You can find newspaper stories about the Rex being reopened, but I don't know if they are more than wishful thinking. For the time being, enjoy the picturesque dereliction.

Hugglescote: An Edward VIII post box with horns

I've been to Leicester's Saffron Lane Estate. I've to Earl Shilton. And now I've been to Hugglescote, so I've photographed all three Edward VIII post boxes in Leicestershire.

Since you ask, Hugglescote is a village that has now been absorbed into Coalville.