The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
A Spalding man has told of his sadness at the closure of a busy train line that ceased to service the town 60 years ago – and is appealing for specific pictures.
Life-long railway fanatic David Smith (75) remembers the day the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway stopped its passenger service in Spalding when he was just 15.
“I stopped in bed all day I was so upset. It was a very sad day for me,” he said of February 28, 1959.
David added that he could hear the trains from his bedroom.
As a schoolboy, he would run to the railway tracks at Welland Bank Junction before lunch to watch the brand new steam engines on test runs from the workshop in Doncaster, before going back to school for his dinner.
The MGNJR line through Spalding ran across the town as it travelled the country from Little Bytham, near Bourne, to Norfolk and Suffolk. The freight service remained as far as Bourne.
David said there is another closure anniversary coming up next year.
In 1970, the passenger service from Peterborough to Grimsby ceased and along with it trains from Spalding to
Peterborough. The line reopened as it is now known six months later.
“You wouldn’t believe how busy Spalding was in the late 1950s,” David said.
So busy, in fact, that a short Spalding bypass line existed but in all David’s years of hunting, he’s yet to find a photograph of it and has asked readers who might have one to get in touch.
“I’ve been trying to get a photo of the avoiding line for Spalding, but not even train societies have any,” he said.
The line, which ran behind Spalding and ended at Glen Road opposite the Royal Oak Pub, has alluded him so far so if you have pictures of the line in operation, email news@spaldingvoice.co.uk
