England's Lost Main Line Railway: Rediscovering the Great Central Main Line 

I hope you enjoy the film - you can really help by *sharing* this film far and wide and by *subscribing* Might you consider supporting my channel even more? www.buymeacoffee.com/rediscovering CORRECTIONS:* It appears I mispronounced 'Rothley' among one or two other places. Thanks for pointing this out.

The UK seemed to suffer a 'crisis of confidence' during the 60's and 70's. I think we seriously lost our way in that period. We're still paying for mistakes made in these two decades, today - not just in our railways but in many other areas aswell. A very well researched video, expertly put together in a clear way and with great narration.

In the late 50to60 I was a fireman many happy days spent at woodford halsey still hold fond memories now 82years barry greenhough from sheffield

I grew up in 50s and 60s...Beeching had a lot to answer for in those days....imagine if we had these routes today, we wouldn't be so dependent on cars carrying one person in endless lines.....it's time they came back these old lines and use modern VLT trains and connect the life we had once before...far superior to that of today..well researched and narrated...continue your excellent work..it deserves recognition...

Just watched this for the first time, utterly brilliant. So well researched and wonderfully presented. It baffles me how the main terrestrial tv channels are filled with trash…reality tv shows, quiz and game shows, etc, when something like THIS should be broadcast to millions. Great work ❤

I've always had a high regard for the GCR; it had a high-quality of civil and mechanical engineering. To destroy it was an act of cultural and economic vandalism.

You’ve made me feel nostalgic for a railway that closed before I was born. Well done.

Beautifully written, narrated and filmed this is a real treat among so much RU-vid dross.

A very fitting tribute to the vision of Sir Edward Watkin and to the existence of his Great Central Railway. Excellent narration and great photography - thank you!

In the mid 90’s I was paid to walk the entire line with a colleague as part of a scheme to reopen the line as a freight railway. A fascinating way for an engineer to spend the summer and both interesting and sad to see the demise of such a great piece of infrastructure. But amongst the many features en route, the one that really stuck in my memory was the section of cutting that an enterprising farmer had turned into a series of fishing lakes. Thanks for the memory

Up until I was 8 years old, I lived less than half a mile from the Great Central Railway at Birstall, Leicestershire. I have fond memories of watching the trains race under the bridge on the Greengate Lane. That was during and immediately after WW2. Thank you for this video.

An absolute masterpiece and fitting tribute to lost Great Central Railway. Thank you.

Thank you for this. As a long term (22 years) Brackley resident I have enjoyed exploring the local trackbed, which is becoming less and less accessible over the years. Films like this help to educate my grandchildren about the local railway heritage. I'm also moved by the fact that my late father used to be a regular on the line from London to Loughborough as a 15 year old engineering student (and railway enthusiast) in 1939. As I plod the trackbed I wonder how he would have felt if he'd known what was to become of it.

I'm English but live in Oz these days. I love these type of films; they are the type of link with my heritage and culture I readily absorb and keenly watch. Indeed on my few trips to the UK (prior to Covid!) I have done similar self exploratory walks along old abandoned track beds to soak up the atmosphere and reflect on times gone by that I have never known and never will encounter in the future. I always find closed lines quite sad when I consider all the lives, time and effort people spent in constructing and running them only to be closed at the stroke of a pen. Indeed our lives are, in some ways, like these abandoned lines. We are here now, but in decades to come, we will be forgotten with only the occasional reminder to others through photos or other legacies of our once active existence. Thanks for the video, great research.

This is just a brilliant video. I'm from lancashire and we also had our fair share of cuts via the Beeching report. I'm not familiar with the places you mention in this video. However, having watched this now I'm filled with sadness and anger that a mainline railway can be just abandoned and left like this. The engineering, the blood sweat and tears, not to mention the huge costs that must have gone into building such a great railway.. Utter madness.

I lived in Bulwell and remember with excitement as a young lad, the demolition of the huge viaduct over the Leen. The disruption and operation to remove it took months. A local Facebook group member that has recently posted dozens of photos of the viaduct. Now as an adult I'm mortified at it's loss. I remember the magnificence and sheer size of the viaduct and the attitude of many at the time who were glad to see it taken down.

Like many others, I consider it an act of pure wanton destruction and vandalism when the GCR was destroyed.Many thanks for this fine film

Sad in a way to watch this, as a family we travelled many times from Victoria Station, my grandfather was a signalman there, my father too was a signal man on the GCR and my great grandfather was with the GCR as well. I spent some time on the Pacific Great Eastern Rly in British Columbia. It is now Canadian National Railways. Good memories.

A fantastic film. It’s so sad to this once great railway sadly destroyed.

This is by far the most professional, informative and stunning record of our GCR history. Photographs with first class commentary totally enthrall the viewer. I totally applaud and thank the author. I shall share all of this production with fellow GCR enthusiasts as well as my grandchildren.

My god,that sure was a labour of love,fantastic film and well done for doing it,what a great line we have lost

Every time I watch documentaries like this my blood pressure goes up at the destruction that transport minister marples and beeching did to the infrastructure that is now lost, now they are going to spend billions on a railway that was already there, as this land was publicly owned it should be brought back into public use once more if not for mainline use then for local light railway, trams etc, if the government wants use to use public transport then give us transport we can use Britain does not begin in London and finish at Watford,

A thumbs up isn't good enough for this video. Thank you.

Thank you for this as it takes me back to forgotten lines in Northamptonshire. Beeching was a criminal.

I'm having a second comment, this is the David Attenborough of lost railways in full effect outstanding effort.

I’ve watched this video two or three times now and still find it very interesting, as I was watching I was also following the route via Google maps/Earth, and although the countryside areas and small stops weren’t difficult to follow I kept getting lost in the larger towns/cities like Nottingham especially, so hats off to you for finding the whole route inc buried bridges and hidden tunnels, this wasn’t an easy task, so your hard work is appreciated.

Superb, thanks. I could just about cope with the destruction of Nottingham Central Station if the architecture that replaced it had any merit. Almost without exception anything demolished in the 1960s was replaced with something awful.

I can't say I enjoyed this video as I found it deeply sad :-( I grew up in Leicester and while aware of that magnificent station it had fallen into neglect and that part of the city centre was somewhat neglected and abandoned in my childhood. Keep up the great work as this part of our history is important.

I'm 25 have a few good books like the GWR then and now i could watch videos like this all day...

Wow such a nice film showing the lost railway. Thank you so much for this. It showed me what was and now is. It's sad to see a mainline lost.

Great film. I get so angry thinking about what they did the the GCML and the railways in general in the 60s. Petrol was pennies and things like that I know, it was the age of the car etc but my mind shudders at both the monumental lack of foresight and the destruction of some fine railway architecture. How could someone sanction the destruction of a viaduct, or wilfully burn down a signal box... Maybe we should all campaign for Calvert to be given the full GCR revival, seeing as in the next few years trains will run down that section as part of East West Rail, not to mention HS2. One last piece of glory for the GCML's southernmost original station.

The shear waste aspect was the destruction of so many viaducts and bridges after closure. I’ve endless books on the GCR, and remember it from my youth, especially the magnificence of Nottingham Victoria. This is a superb video of times past and unfortunately never to be repeated.

Brought a tear to my eye watching this, many thanks for the great memories I had from my dad taking me to Loughborough station many a weekend when I was little. He loved it there, sadly he passed away last year so watching this made me very emotional but thank you! 👍🏻 also being a Nottingham native history nut I have old photos of Victoria station on my walls and even an a3 framed replica timetable from 1929 😬 I would have loved to have been alive when Victoria station was open ☹️

Thank you so much for sharing your beautifully-crafted video masterpiece with us. I particularly love your narration, which is a joy to listen to, especially as I no longer live in the UK these days. As a student living in Loughborough during the 1980s, I got know and admire what remained of this fine mainline. I like to think that the GCR is dead, but is merely sleeping patiently waiting for her next call of duty. Thanks to you and many others she will never be forgotten. Life is constant change. It’s destruction seems so permanent, but as we have witnessed, the pendulum has begun to swing in favour of public transport again. So what is happening to the Varsity Line could happen to the London Extension, too.

What an interesting and informative documentary which neither insults or baffles its viewers. It seems to be written and narrated with both enthusiasts and people merely interested in that old railway that they walk along regularly in mind. I certainly learned a lot. I live in Rugby and have walked most of the length of it that you can between the M45 and M6. Just a quick pointer, Lutterworth was the only town served by the GCR which wasn't served by another railway company although Ullesthorpe station on the Midland Counties line was renamed Ullesthorpe and Lutterworth in 1897 presumably to encourage people to use that station despite being nearly 4 miles away.

I remember going from Marylebone to Nottingham with my mother back in the early 60s on these trains, including the sooty smell in the St John's Wood tunnels and my mother hating the effect of these on her ears!

Superb film I really enjoyed watching. I was lucky to see the rebirth of the Central line. I was born in Loughborough and my father - a keen railway enthusiast worked at Brush. We would walk the stretch from Loughborough to East Leake on those warm summer evenings in the early 1970's.

I live in Rugby and have always been fascinated with the GCR. This video is something to be proud of, seriously, it couldn’t have been made any better, I absolutely loved it!

This is an extremely informative and well made film - thank you so much for the hard work and dedication that has clearly gone into making and sharing this with us; although I have a strange tinge of sadness when watching this and seeing what has happened to many of these sites! I wonder how many locals know what they pass by most days. New subscriber to the channel.

The bridge over the M1 was the last GCR structure to be built while the line was still open.

The amount of effort that has gone in to this is superb.

A lovely journey through time. I traveled to Manchester from London many times as a small boy to spend Christmas with grandparents. Much later in life I lived in Loughborough, very near to the Great Central Station. I have been watching closely the progress of linking the line, across the Midland main line and River Soar, to the Nottingham heritage railway

Of all the closures from Beeching, the GC had to be the maddest !

From the USA, thanks for an absolute gem of a presentation on something I never heard of before. Abandonment was such a waste of splendid British engineering. Curves of 1 mile radius, extremely low gradients. Can one imagine how the railway could have been adapted to 21st century high speed trains! Such a loss.

I really enjoyed that. Excellently balanced with aerial views, maps and some really great shots. Whilst i'm here, shall we raise a glass to all our splended volunteers for the great work they perform. Again, superb production!

"You don't know what you've got till its gone. They paved paradise to put in a parking lot " ( I think I got that right). Here I am nostalgic for something I never knew . Thanks for posting .

Excellent video . It surprises me that there are people out there .who go to a lot of hard work to make videos on topics that would be forgotten if not for them

While it's sad to see the line like this it's a magnificent film. Many thanks.

I used to live in Rugby. I rode on this railway plenty of times.

I had no idea all of this was so close to where I live. Thank you for informing me about such a great railway

I can never understand why councils destroy viaducts and bridges The cost in money to do it and for what purpose

Just watched this for the second time, enjoyed it as much as the first. I come from near Nottingham and remember travelling to and from Victoria as a child on the steam services. I used to be a welder on the railway and did some volunteer welding work on crossings for the GCR near Loughborough.

I can’t thank you enough for this fabulous film, it’s fascinating to see the GCML in its full length examined so closely

Well done! You see so much of this destruction... it's a wonder there wasn't a general revolt and Beeching tarred and feathered for it...

What a great film after all.Having lived all my life a couple of hundred yards from a section of the disused line to the North of Rugby I often thought of making a film of the route as it exists today.This is precisely what I had in mind-good job Sir (or Madam).

Past and present collide with such nostalgia. A pleasure to watch this fine piece of history/geography. Thank you.

Slick production, loving your work Sir.

Absolutely criminal destruction of that route. Imagine if it had made it to the days of HST thundering along it.

Once again, you have excelled yourself in keeping me gripped from start to finish. What better way is there for me to chill and relax? This is worthy of a series on Yesterday! Thanks for all your hard work remastering this.

Thank you for bringing this to our screens. The GCR’s legacy captivated me since I first encountered Mac Hawkins’ wonderful book in the 1990s, and It’s splendid to have a videography update!

I do hope that Beeching bloke is enjoying his hellish afterlife.. what an awful legacy he left. Your film, on the other hand, is a joy to watch. Please keep up the excellent work.

As some one who's spent a great deal of time watching the trains at Mt Sorrel, thankyou for this.

Excellent video... possibly the best I have seen about disused UK railways. Well done!

I'm not a railway enthusiast, but I enjoyed this as it revealed the history of the railway I knew had existed near where I lived. In the 1970's - 1990's I lived in Brackley, only a few minutes walk from Brackley Central Station. The old railway bridge there created a zig-zag in the road, so about the same time the Brackley Viaduct was demolished the road was straightened. Ironically I wrote my car off avoiding an approaching vehicle on the wrong side of the road and ended up down the embankment roughly where the track had been! I also had a sort of souvenir from the viaduct demolition works. To contain the blast the contractors used large sheets of rubber matting, about 1 inch thick. My resourceful step-father "acquired" a piece of this matting and used it in the floor of the old van I drove, thus deadening the drumming noise of the old vehicle! I moved to the other side of Brackley in the 1990's, near to what I knew as "Skew Bridge" taking the road to Banbury over a track at a slightly quirky angle. However by the time I move the bridge was demolished and the road now sweeps past it.

I have become well acquainted with the section of GC through Rugby & beyond since moving to the area in 2007 & never tire of the wonderful heritage walk section from Onley Lane to Abbey St where the amazing"Birdcage Bridge" connected to the viaduct across the Avon valley.The bridge was demolished on Christmas Day 2006! I still marvel at the scale of the bridges etc particularly Ashlawn Rd which is spectacular.Further south before work started on the test facility one could walk into the epic Catesby Tunnel;a neighbour & I did some years ago.The platforms at Rugby Central remain & the local rotary club have managed to lay some sections of track in the positions they would have been in the day! Of course as well as the GC Rugby has several other disused lines & I am still exploring them!

Also in London this railway runs along side the Met and jubilee lines. Past stations like kilburn and west Hampstead.

A fantastic film. Historically, extremely important. Thank you so much for all the wrok you did to make this film possible

The guy has become a great video producer. Thanks for also showing it on the map for us uninitiated Americans. We share your railroad heritage. Also the destruction, but that was invented here.

Thank you so much for all the material you've produced. This, especially, is absolutely fantastic. I hope you continue to do narrated longer episodes. They're absolutely marvelous. Once again, thank you, and tons of respect for the work you've put into your channel. Cheers!

Great video! Am a massive fan of the Old GCR having being brought up in Northamptonshire. A railway before its time .

Stunningly great documentary with alot of background information. I love your work & enthousiasm!

Great video, very enjoyable yet saddening to watch.

Really enjoyed this film. Brought back happy memories watching engines from Southern Railway coming up at least as far as Leicester when I used to go fishing with my dad in the Grand Union Canal at Blaby not far from Whetstone. Remember going to Leicester Central when we travelled by train to Portsmouth for a holiday on the Isle of Wight. Well done.

Just watched the whole thing on my telly, it's fantastic what we can do for entertainment these days. My 20 year old self who spent a fair amount of time looking for his of this railway in Nottingham would be amazed. Great film, will worth a watch, you have a new sub. 👍

I was working at Catesby Aero Research a couple of weeks ago. If I'd known you were doing this video, I'd have taken a few photos. Anyway, for info, in the view from bridge 489 (21.30), the area to the right of the road (up against the A361), now has a 75% complete 2 storey office building. Between it and the packs of timber on the left is a concrete batching plant. This is used to make lean mix, which is transported to the tunnel mouth in 8 wheel tippers (my job!). Br 489 (21.34) has been infilled for 2/3 of its length and a new concrete portal frame installed under the existing deck to strengthen the bridge. A tarmac road has been laid to the tunnel. Only bit of infrastructure I saw from station to tunnel was the cut off remains off a lattice signal post ( up distant for the station?). Approaching the tunnel, you can't see the tunnel now (apart from the two ends of the parapet wall) as an industrial 'shed' has been built in front of it! As obviously 8 wheel tippers can't tip in the tunnel, we tipped into a paver (like you might see laying tarmac on roads) fitted with a conveyor at the back, which in turn filled a fleet of 5t dumpers, which then went into the tunnel to tip into the paver that was laying the lean mix on the tunnel floor. If I go back again, I'll definately take some photos.

Nicely done thank you! This should go on National TV.

Viewers and subscribers to your channel are very fortunate to have such remarkably talented and professional programming available at the tip of our fingers. Thank you so much.

The most informative video of any closed line ever published. Well presented too. Now the next project must surely be the Southern’s Withered Arm in Devon & Cornwall

Very sad but compelling viewing. My first proper memories as a toddler are the trains running through the rugby cenral station in 1959/60. It was a very busy line with goods trains but i don't recall more than occasional passenger trains. From december 1966 to september 1967,track lifting trains were a regular sight heading north through rugby till the line lifting was completed to just south of rugby central a few yards beyond the pedestrian only bridge from where i had watched the trains in 1959/60.

Absolutely stunning video! A pleasure to watch, but of course you cannot view this without a tinge of sadness, what a waste, to close the GCR was an act of criminality. And that's an understatement! 😪

Been waiting for this video and you've smashed it! I've spent so much time exploring this line. You've done us all (and yourself) proud by showing the world how a vision can become a reality, the Victorians really were the pioneers of civil and industrial engineering, such a shame that we are governed by people who don't share that vision. Thank you :)

i love viewing old railway lines in glasgow. its sad to see all these lines etc now gone but great to see their remains!

Everyday I drive from Long Eaton to Market Harborough and Kettering I look over at the north side of the M1 and think; it isn’t MH or Kettering Station I should be working on, I should be pulling into the hard shoulder and starting work to restore the ‘HS2’ of its day back to its original glory! This film is fantastic .... thank you for your work in presenting this historical gem!

Excellent and informative film. I used Marylebone - Rugby many times in the 1960s.

Takes me back if that's Marylebone station in one of the photos at the start. I was born and lived in a house where you can see those chimneys in 1943. it only took 2 minutes walk to be at the station. All us kids were always there, getting into mischief, playing or train spotting, plenty of trains being that it was a mainline station. plus there were loads of different sidings and goods sheds on the left of that photo a bit befor the platforms .on the right a bit further up was the railway allotments just by the bridge which I used to cross get to school.

Great job with this video. Your commentary adds much more than just captions would and is very relaxing to listen to.

Brilliant, truly brilliant. Thank you so much for your hard work on this. Your efforts are appreciated. Will watch this multiple times.

Some of the best content I have seen on RU-vid in a while, very informative and detailed. I look forward to when the gap between the two GCRs is bridged, especially as a GCRN Volunteer. I suspect I will spend several hours, if not days binge watching the rest of your videos!

52 minutes well spent, thanks for producing this and sharing on this platform, no pun intended?!

Just amazing.. Incredible work, great narration and truly appreciate the hard work that went into producing this documentary. Also those archived pictures really speaks a thousand words.. Liked it and shared the documentary with my mates... Stay safe and continue with your amazing work. Cheers...

This is a very nice piece of work, and beautifully put together. I know a little of the GCR's territory, and I spent some of my youth adjacent to the southern end of the London Extension. Thank you so much for the video. I'm looking forward to your next excursion.

I worked the last loco from Grendon Underwood to the site of the old UK Fertiliser facility 56056 was the loco. As per the video, is now a road way to the new recycling power plant.

As a kid my hangouts were the New Basford and Carrington cuttings - always finding relics and able to walk the tunnels, platforms were visible as were remains of signal boxes foundations - the speed to destroy was incredible- hindsight hopefully one day they will realize Watkins plans and reinstatement would follow - a lot of it is still viable but I’m hoping that the three trusts join together

A beautiful film. Great knowledge, and splendidly presented. Many thanks .

Wonderful - thank you so much for this great video. I was left with a combination of sadness and anger about the loss of this wonderful railway, which passed so close to my home near Bulwell Common.

my grandad used to maintain the section between leicester and rugby. i walked part of this line the other day and i have still got his 45 years service watch. great film many thanks.

I can't believe the professional quality of this video, indeed, all of the videos you have done. Fantastic! Thank you!

What an amazing piece of content! I remember when I was working for HS2 and seeing the remains of Calvert station as we were on site there and always wondered what line it was when we were discussing where the route would go! Cannot wait for more!

I know nothing of England's railway history and still found this documentary on the Great Central extremely interesting. The period photographs from when this was a working railway were splendid as always; those of the line's scrapping at the end are quite melancholy. Your narrative throughout, RLR, is concise and informative without being overbearing. Use of maps, especially for those unfamiliar with the route, are a must. With its abundant number of extensive cuts, notable fills, and viaducts/bridges built to high construction standards, the GC reminds me of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad's Blairstown Cut-off--a low-grade, high-speed (for the time) bypass route built in Northwest New Jersey here in the United States, 1908-1911. Like the Great Central, the Blairstown Cut-off was abandoned (1984) but is seeing a portion reactivated--if ever so slowly--for commuter traffic. Unlike the GC, there is talk of long-term plans to reactive the entire line as part of national passenger carrier Amtrak's system. I think I've read reference to "blue bricks" (given their coloration?) in several posted comments (if not here then in other videos), and you, RLR, used the term "engineering bricks." Am I to take it that bricks used in British railway structures are of special, superior manufacture? Do you know what differentiates blue bricks from their ordinary (red) brethren (composition, density, firing process, et cetera)? Rothley is a living time capsule of which the preservation society should be very proud. The tour along the platform provided a wonderful insight to traditional Great Central depot layout. Thank you, RLR, for filming it in color, as I feel black-and-white with a steam locomotive present might have been a little bit too surreal. The fate suffered by Nottingham Victoria immediately brought to mind New York City's Pennsylvania Station. Local activists learned too late of the latter's pending destruction so as to save that magnificent railroad cathedral. The one positive which arose from Penn Station's loss was the birth of NYC's preservation movement--which helped save, among numerous other structures, architectural marvel Grand Central Terminal when that building was threatened. The effort that went into this presentation is obvious given the quality of the product. Keep up the excellent work, RLR; thanks for helping educate this ignorant Yank in British railway history.

What a great film. Such detail in the story and care given to the production. Thank you.