Thursday, August 01, 2024

Replacing Trowse railway swing bridge outside Norwich in 1987

This Anglia TV programme from 1987 is concerned with the electrification of the line from London to Norwich, and in particular the replacement of the Trowse swing bridge over the Wensum just before trains reach Norwich station. The best thing in the show is the footage of the old bridge in operation.

Today, the new bridge is again seen as a bottleneck, as there is a only a single track across it. This despite the fact that it hardly opens to shipping any more. It seems that if you give seven days notice, the may open it for you at 4 AM on a Sunday.

So there is talking of building a new bridge with more tracks, and the odds are that this one won't open at all.

And a word about Bygones

When we moved to Market Harborough we found ourselves in a part of the town that received East Anglian local programmes rather than Midlands ones. That meant Look East, the evening news magazine on BBC, which always seemed to be concerned with the port of Felixstowe and strikes at the Perkins diesel engine factory in Peterborough.

As to sport, though Ipswich Town was then one of the best teams in Europe, the coverage concentrated on Norwich City, whose ground was just down the road from the BBC East studios.

Anglia, the ITV regional station, had its networked successes: Tales of the Unexpected, the wildlife series Survival and the quiz Sale of the Century.

But when you switched over, it always seemed to be showing Bygones with Dick Joice. This was a nostalgia show about old country ways. Each week it featured a mystery object from Joice's own collection of bygones, which usually turned out to be intended for doing something unspeakable to sheep.

I don't remember these 'specials', but this one is certainly a step up from the usual Bygones shows.

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