Supporting the campaign to save Bourne’s Bridge 234
I’VE BEEN following your articles in Heritage Railway regarding saving the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway’s Bridge 234 at Bourne in Lincolnshire.
I fully agree that we should not lose our railway heritage, and after living in Bourne from the 1960s to the 1990s, I remember from my childhood the railway still being in situ but only used for a daily freight train until total closure.
Myself and a friend as schoolboys walked the closed line from Bourne to Lound Viaduct and back, going through Toft Tunnel. The lines had only been lifted but the ballast was still down.
I remember the total destruction of Bourne station, engine shed, and water tower.
Going back to the remains of railway infrastructure surviving at Bourne, my wife and I visited in 2009 to see the exhibition featuring the closure of the line in 1959 at Baldocks Mill Heritage Centre.
While in Bourne, I visited where the station and infrastructure used to be and there was very little to be found. But with a little bit of searching at the end of the lawns of the Red Hall, I found the filled-in remains of the turntable pit, as can be seen in the photograph.
At the time I thought wouldn’t it be nice to excavate and have it as a sunken garden and put the idea to Bourne United Charities, but I never received a reply.
Perhaps times have changed now and something could be done with what’s left of our railway heritage in Bourne?
I wish good luck to the campaign to save and restore this bridge for future generations. Luckily, I can remember Bourne when it was a railway centre.
The photograph I took in 1964 at Peterborough East is the turntable that was originally at Bourne and is now at the Nene Valley Railway. Stefan Gronkowski,
Cornwall
➜ To join Bridge 234 Preservation Society free of charge, email savebridge234@ gmail.com or search for Bridge 234 Preservation Society on Facebook.