Makerfield, my 1970s North West UK layout

[springs branch mickey]

Sorry, I don't have anything, but I'll ask around. I worked on the water treatment works behind the school around the time you are talking about, and I think the colliery was closed by then. Bickershaw, just down the road was still hanging on.
Mickey

[meurglysIII]

I just had a look back at this thread from years ago, noticed that a lot of the links to pictures are dead.
If you are interested, they can mostly be found on these pages:

http://www.railwayforum.net/gallery/...&imageuser=245

The layout still exists by the way. For now..........

[Tony]

Golborne colliery closed in 1992. The site is now a housing estate.

[meurglysIII]

Actually Tony, it's a business park. About half a mile from my house ;-)

[D.O.G.F.A.N.]

Originally Posted by Tony

Golborne colliery closed in 1992. The site is now a housing estate.

Closed in 1989.10 years after the 1979 disaster.{wiki}
Stuart

[Tony]

Hi Meurglys,
I had forgotten about the business park, when I left Golborne there were only about half a dozen "start up" businesses there. The majority of the colliery land is covered by housing. I knew many ex miners who all said that they were made redundant in 1992. For the last years of existence no coal was brought to the surface at Golborne, it was transported underground to Bickershaw in Leigh about 3 miles away. I lived in Golborne for 14 years up to 2000 (in Halewood Avenue).

[meurglysIII]

Well, Makerfield has now been officially dismantled. I wasn't happy with aspects of it so I decided to build something new. It was a complete pain getting the track up due to the glued ballast (I ended up using a steam cleaner, holding it against the ballast until it dissolved the glue, then carefully getting under the track with a narrow wallpaper knife.
I have to admit to being sad about ripping everything up. I actually couldn't get the station platforms up as they were chipboard based, seemingly spot welded to the baseboards. So I had to remove the whole front of the layout and replace with new boards.
So now I have a massive workbench until I start to build the new layout! I will start a new thread soon. The layout will be called "Hope Springs" as I like the name, I have a track plan and a massive diesel shed to accomodate (see "Hope Springs TMD" thread).
Quite looking forward to it now.... :-)

[meurglysIII]

Also I think I will create a new profile with my actual name (Pete) - that meurglysIII thing is annoying me now.

[Pete C]

ShepleyFlyer - a lot of the links are expired unfortunately. Photos are on flickr though.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/614182...7631182168086/

This layout is now pushing up daisies. RIP.
Pete