Great Central railway

[harry42]

The GC railway (gone completeley!) is being re-opened, so we wanted to find out where we can travel on it:

Ruddington, a suburb south of Nottingham is home to a country park and a fantastic little narrow gauge railway. Turns out that the mainline service has re-opened between here and Loughborough. We went on this a couple of years ago on a visting steam locomotive, but couldn't get off at Loughborough. What we didn't know was that another heritage railway company has opened up the line between Loughborough and Leicester. This means, technichally you can travel from Ruddington (almost centre of Nottingham to Leicester on the GC. However, at Loughborough there are now 2 different stations: Loughborough Central which has been re-opened for services to Leicester (this line is the only in the world where it is a Double mainline for heritage railways and you can see steam trains passing each other!) and Lougborough which is for NR services, (and is also being refurbished like Nottingham.) Loughborough High Level has been proposed by GCRN (Ruddington-Loughborough service,) meaning there would be 3 different stations with limited or no access between them!

I was wondering if anyone knew where the GC railway from Ruddington ends up in Loughborough and if there any plans to link the 3, so you could almost travel from Nottingham to Leicester 2 different ways?

Also on GC railway, between Quantion, Northamptonshire and Brackley, Buckinghamshire the old GC track may be re-opened for HS2. Is this correct?

Thanks

 

[Prairie_5542]

The GC railway (gone completeley!) is being re-opened, so we wanted to find out where we can travel on it:

Ruddington, a suburb south of Nottingham is home to a country park and a fantastic little narrow gauge railway. Turns out that the mainline service has re-opened between here and Loughborough. We went on this a couple of years ago on a visting steam locomotive, but couldn't get off at Loughborough. What we didn't know was that another heritage railway company has opened up the line between Loughborough and Leicester. This means, technichally you can travel from Ruddington (almost centre of Nottingham to Leicester on the GC. However, at Loughborough there are now 2 different stations: Loughborough Central which has been re-opened for services to Leicester (this line is the only in the world where it is a Double mainline for heritage railways and you can see steam trains passing each other!) and Lougborough which is for NR services, (and is also being refurbished like Nottingham.) Loughborough High Level has been proposed by GCRN (Ruddington-Loughborough service,) meaning there would be 3 different stations with limited or no access between them!

I was wondering if anyone knew where the GC railway from Ruddington ends up in Loughborough and if there any plans to link the 3, so you could almost travel from Nottingham to Leicester 2 different ways?

Also on GC railway, between Quantion, Northamptonshire and Brackley, Buckinghamshire the old GC track may be re-opened for HS2. Is this correct?

Thanks

There is a plan in hand to build a bridge linking the two halves of the GCR heritage railways over the Midland Mainline.
This would then give an 18 mile GCR. I did hear somewhere that they were trying to find a way of linking the Loughborough High level station with Loghborough NR. Don't forget when these railways were built they were in competition with each other so didn't want a link between them, to lose custom etc..

 

[steevp]

This has been covered in another thread - see here:

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=84653