Loughborough Gap
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The Loughborough Gap is a short, disused section of the former Great Central Main Line in the northeastern corner of Loughborough, England, between the northern and southern sections of the present-day Great Central Railway. The formation originally consisted of an embankment and three bridges: two to span the Midland Main Line, and one a canal. Nearly all of this alignment was removed in the late 1960s under the Beeching Axe.
[edit] Location and physical features
The Gap is 500 metres (550 yd) long, and approximately 30 metres (33 yd) wide for most of its length, running roughly from north to south. It is bounded to the west by the northeasternmost part of Loughborough, including the Loughborough Midland station and the Morley Street industrial estate, to the east by a now disused household refuse site and to the north and south by GCR's northern and southern sections respectively.
Current plans for bridging the gap include:
- Removing the Loughborough north shed, which is currently sited on the old alignment
- The Loughborough Top Shed project would then rebuild the recovered remnants of the former LNWR Workington, Cumbria steam shed on an old landfill site, just to the north-east of the current shed
- Using two donated 17 metres (19 yd) spans of the former western Reading railway station bridge, removed in April 2011 by Network Rail when revamping the station as part of an £825million project, to bridge the gap over the Midland Main Line.[1]
- To renovate the residual bridge over the canal
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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