This year’s celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of operations on the Great Central Railway have been deemed a resounding success. So what does the next 50 years hold in store?
The simple answer is that if the current blueprint for development – basically, the completion of the reunification project and links to both the Great Central Railway (Nottingham) and Network Rail’s Midland Main Line – proves successful, the sky could be the limit in terms of the generation of the ultimate multi-faceted heritage line. Earmarked for the axe in the Beeching Report, the major part was closed in 1966, but the section from Nottingham to Rugby was retained until 1969.
Revivalists hoped to save it as a heritage railway, but hard financial reality forced them to quickly edit their dreams and their final target became the Loughborough to Belgrave & Birstall section. BR then installed a chord at Loughborough South Junction giving access to what was left of the by then isolated northern section of the GCR from the Midland Main Line to maintain the rail link to the Ministry of Defence depot at Ruddington. Hopes by the GCR revivalists at Loughborough that they might still one day be able to extend north of the town were dashed by the mid-1970s as other remaining infrastructure was removed, culminating in April 1980 with the removal of a bridge over the MML.
When the MoD depot at Ruddington was closed in the mid-1980s, and it was deemed unlikely that British Gypsum of
