 Our
old Longridge Line page is still available HERE
The following article has been kindly provided by David Hindle, Author of "All
Stations to Longridge"
“GRIMSARGH, CHANGE HERE FOR WHITTINGHAM”
The first railways were crucial in transforming the
social and economic prosperity of the country’s towns and villages, and
the Preston & Longridge Railway was no exception. The charm of rural
branch lines once epitomised those wonderful days of steam in a forgotten
scenario of quaint little trains in a vanishing natural
landscape. The tranquil railway scene between Preston and
Longridge preserved the rustic essence and magnetism of this unique and
historic line, which impacted on the rural villages, it served during the
late Victorian and Edwardian era. Preston ’s place as a
forerunner of national railway growth coincided with the opening of this
combined mineral and passenger line on the 1st May
1840. The original Preston terminus of the branch was situated
at Deepdale, near to the former coal sidings on Fletcher Road and was
completely detached from Preston station and the emerging rail
network.
The seven mile long Preston to Longridge branch line
was only the second railway to open in the Preston area and was first
conceived during 1835 as a means of conveying large blocks of Ashlar stone
quarried from the Longridge quarries, which were used to transform the
interface of Preston during the Victorian era. Eight years
before the age of steam, genuine equine ‘horse-power’ was the means of
propulsion up the steeply graded route. The quarries at
Longridge were situated about four hundred feet above sea level and the
railway company exploited the natural contours of the land by using
gravity for part of the return journey.
 At first the only intermediate station on the
railway served the village of Grimsargh utilising the west side of the
Plough Inn as a booking office. A passenger service of sorts
ran between Preston and Longridge on Sundays, Wednesdays and
Saturdays. The fare from Preston to the Plough Inn at Grimsargh
was 4d and to Longridge was 6d In 1846 a new consortium, the
Fleetwood, Preston and West Riding Junction Railway Company, (FPWRJRC)
formed an alliance with the PLR Company to rent and operate the
railway. In June 1848, it was ‘all change’ to steam
traction and, thereafter, plumes of white smoke became a feature of the
local landscape. The horses were pensioned off in the wake of
this new technology and enjoyed a well-earned retirement in the tranquil
fields of their home station at Grimsargh. Celebrations were
held at Deepdale to mark the departure of the first steam locomotive to
Longridge. Officials of the railway company and a large party
of officers from Fulwood Barracks were hauled by the engine, ‘ Addison
’, along with some 200 invited guests and a band of the 89th Regiment to
the Longridge terminus. Various young ladies with their
delighted partners tripped it lightly to the astonishment of villagers.
The new company had ambitious plans to promote the
commercial viability of the port of Fleetwood with the profitable traffic
of a new railway linking Fleetwood with the cities of Leeds and Hull
. This would have been accomplished by utilising a section of the PLR
between Preston and Grimsargh but following the determined opposition of
Lancashire landowners the bill put forward by the FPWRJR was thrown out in
the House of Lords. The abandoned project to extend the railway
through the Ribble valley was described by Dobson (1877). “This
was a huge unfinished embankment. Climbing it we saw for some
distance an excavation, with level bottom and sloping sides, continuing to
the next dingle there was again the beginning of an embankment, as if to
cross over the valley through which runs Clough Brook. I soon
saw that this was a detached and uncompleted portion of that once
ambitious project, the Fleetwood, Preston , and West Riding Junction
railway. The Act for making this railway was passed in the year
1846. It was to utilise the Preston and Longridge line by
branching off that line below Grimsargh, and pass via Hothersall, Dutton,
Hurst Green, and Mitton to Whalley and into Yorkshire .”
At Hurst Green – near Clitheroe - a railway
cutting of over 200 metres in length survives as a monument to this
ill-fated Victorian enterprise. When I visited the site, I
experienced a surreal encounter with this little-known, but nonetheless
significant, railway landmark. Whilst standing in the cutting,
I took time to reflect upon its legacy, for there is something poignant
about this place, which brings to mind the challenges, expectations and
aspirations of the early Victorian railway speculators at the height of
railway mania. Nestling in splendid isolation the cutting is
clearly recognisable as a detached section of that once ambitious project.
However, the company opened a one-mile
extension to the detached line at Deepdale to link it with the railway
network at Preston in 1850 and subsequently three intermediate stations
were established at Deepdale, Ribbleton and Grimsargh by 1856.
 A new station was built at Grimsargh in 1870,
replacing the Plough Inn halt, which now had more time for serious
drinkers! Amazingly, the small agricultural hamlet of Grimsargh
once sustained two stations on separate lines when it first became a
railway junction in 1889. A second private railway station was
built on the north side of the level crossing gates to serve the new
Whittingham Asylum. The renowned Grimsargh to Whittingham
hospital branch line was built to convey coal and provisions for the
hospital though it was to rank one of the most fascinating and
anachronistic Victorian steam railways in the country. Indeed
during its sixty-eight year existence the trains operating on this totally
eccentric branch made the veteran steam locomotives on the neighbouring
Longridge line look like today’s equivalent of ‘Eurostar.’ The
extra freight and passenger traffic for Whittingham boosted returns on the
Longridge line, with both lines enjoying their social and economic heyday
during the first two decades of the twentieth
century. Undoubtedly unique, the Whittingham line claimed to be
the only free passenger railway in the world and was to outlive the
passenger service on the line by 27 years when the last train ran from
Grimsargh to Whittingham at 7.20pm on Saturday, 29th June,
1957.
They say, ‘all good things come to an end’ and
this was also to include the Longridge branch line passenger
service. The line was scheduled to close on Monday,
2nd June, 1930, but in the absence of a Sunday service the last train
from Longridge was at 10p.m. on Saturday, 31st May,
1930. Following the withdrawal of passenger trains freight and
parcel traffic continued to operate from both Longridge and Grimsargh LMS
Stations. The last freight train ran from Preston to Longridge ran in
November, 1967. However, it was the demolition of the landmark
Courtauld’s chimneys in 1980 that signalled the end of the last
substantial section of the Longridge branch line from Deepdale Junction to
Courtauld’s exchange sidings. The very last segment of the branch
was a triangular section that ran from Maudland through the Maudland (Miley
tunnel) to the Deepdale coal concentration depot and this too finally
succumbed when the depot closed during 1994.
My own fondest memory of the Longridge branch
was to ride on the footplate of at steam locomotive from Courtaulds to
Lostock Hall, on Friday 2nd August 1968, which also marked the last
day of full-scale steam freight operations on British Railways and was
actually the penultimate day before the official cessation of
steam. The train was unceremoniously hauled by an unkempt
former Carnforth engine in the form of Stanier Class 5 4-6-0 No 44874 and
proved to be the final occasion that a steam locomotive would traverse the
old P.L.R. metals. This particular engine had just been
transferred to Lostock Hall depot from Carnforth, to be used as motive
power on one of the six enthusiasts’ specials operating on the final day
of official steam working - Sunday 4th August 1968. It
would never return to its home shed.
The grand finale of steam heralded the closure of
the last three remaining engine-sheds on the BR network, at Carnforth,
Rose Grove and Lostock Hall, and the blanket scrapping of steam
locomotives. Thereafter, Lostock Hall shed became a morgue for
rows of condemned locomotives. Recalling those great days of
steam are a few photographs taken at the depot just two days before
the very end of steam on British Railways.
David Hindle 2011
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