HALT, WHO GOES THERE?
LOOK south, over the bridge across the railway tracks on Derby’s Osmaston Road, and you might be able to make out a platform on the right. Nobody has got off there since 1991, and the exit to the industrial estate and beyond is blocked – so why is it there?
That platform was called Ramsline Halt, opened in 1990 and shut just six years later. Another name for it during planning was the Baseball Ground Halt, which gives a clue as to what it was supposed to be used for.
When plans for the halt were in motion in the late 1980s, police and politicians were worried about football hooliganism.
Away fans coming from elsewhere arrived at Derbys’Midland Station and were free to mix with the home fans in the city centre before making their way down to the stadium.
The Government’s Football Trust, the city and county councils, British Rail and Derby County put money into a halt station, where specially chartered trains would drop off away fans next to the stadium, thereby keeping them out of the city centre and reducing the potential for trouble.
City councillor Bob Laxton said at the time: “It is my view that the railway halt is very desirable and will improve the environment in the city on Saturdays when Derby play at home.”
Derby became one of a handful clubs that had ever operated a halt station for visiting fans, joining the likes of Manchester United, Tottenham, and Watford. It was much anticipated, not least of all by the police, who could free up resources on matchdays.
England manager Bobby Robson would be the one to officially open the station in January 1990. The man who would lead England to the World Cup semi-final later that year watched the Rams play Nottingham Forest after, with visiting fans from Nottingham arriving at the Ramsline Halt.
For the record, the Rams lost 2-0. For all the anticipation, the Ramsline Halt quickly became obsolete. Cars and coaches were already becoming cheaper options to travel to away games than the traditional “football special” trains, and relegation at the end of that season to the old Division Two meant travelling numbers dropped further.
Then came the plans to build a new stadium at Pride Park, spelling the end for this white elephant of a station.
Jim Fearn, former Derby County spokesman, floated the idea of a possible Pride Park Halt in a piece about the end of the Ramsline, but nothing was ever done about it as the stadium came together.
The halt ended up being a £320,000 solution for a problem that was already on the way out. Later in 1990, English football teams were welcomed back to European competition after levels of hooliganism dropped, and by 2000 trouble largely happened away from the stadiums.
In the end, the halt was used just four times, all in the latter half of the 1990/91 season. The platform gates were permanently closed by 1996, and the halt became a hidden remnant of the Robert Maxwell era.
The platform still looks like it’s in decent condition despite the years, although nature has begun to reclaim it. Trains still trundle past, but the passengers aren’t quite as boisterous as those of the 1980s when the Ramsline Halt was a twinkle in someone’s eye.
It is my view that the railway halt is very desirable, and will improve the environment in the city on Saturdays. Councillor Bob Laxton