McCrory Collection

Page 2

John Street about 1940's.

Margaret Street Edgarstown.

Henry Street Edgardstown.

Following information supplied by Charles Friel

Front of the railway station at the bottom of Watson Street,
I reckon that the picture was taken about 1968 or 69 - when the road that
is now Northway cut across the front of the station.  You can see the
barrier/fence between the car park and the new road on the right hand side
of the picture.  I cannot remember when the Northway was opened but the
station here closed when the new station at Woodhouse Street opened on 5th
October 1970.
 

 

Below only photo I can find of the railway crossing on the Brownstown Road.
Nowadays Brownstown Post Office and Super Market occupies the site behind low fence.

 

Following information supplied by Charles Friel

Photo on left: At Brownstown gates showing a
Portadown to Armagh train approaching the gates.  The loco is Great
Northern T1 class 4-4-2T No 185 (built in 1913).  The train is the 4pm from
Portadown to Armagh on 17th March 1956.  The photographer was the late Drew
Donaldson.  The photograph was taken from the signal cabin which was on the
Brownstown side of the tracks, on the Portadown side of the gates.  The
signal cabin was unusual in that it was built entirely of red brick and
looked like the one in the Hornby-Dublo catalogue.  There is one very like
it still at Butlin's Mosney.  Brownstown cabin was built about 1935, I
think, after a terrible road crash when a car with (four?) Linfield
supporters crashed through the level crossing gates in a thick fog.  They
were killed by a train.  The hut in the left foreground was used to store
oil for the lamps on the signals, coal for the cabin fire and so on.  The
signal to the right was offset over the tracks so that drivers had a good
view of it as they came under the bridge at West Street and the footbridge
which crossed the line from Twinem Terrace (?) to West Street.  The line to
Armagh and beyond closed on 30th September 1957 when the signal cabin
closed.  Most of the line was lifted about 18 months later though both
tracks in the photo remained.  The right hand line remained as a siding; it
stopped just about where the first carriage is in the picture.  It was used
to store wagons being made up into goods trains for Belfast (it wasn't
called freight in those days).  The railwaymen called it the Glentoran
siding after the Minister who closed much of the country's railways in
1957.  The left-hand line in the picture remained in place to serve the
Metal Box factory (on the Armagh side of the gates and behind the
photographer).  Just about where the engine is in the picture, the track
okn the left slewed across to the other side before continuing through the
gates for about just over a quarter of a mile past the factory.  Wagons
going to the factory from Portadown had to be reversed into the factory and
wagons from the factory had to be propelled from here to the goods yard at
Woodhouse Street (Health and Safety would have a fit these days).  The keys
to unlock the gates were kept in the Junction signal cabin and were
collected each time by the shunter.  The shunt usually happened about 10 or
11 each morning and, even up to the closure, there were often ten or eleven
vans out of the factory.  The siding officially closed on 14th February
1965 and was lifted in the summer of 1966 or 1967 - the disused signal
cabin existed until about then too.
 

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