Nottingham to Mansfield

By Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith (hardback, Middleton Press, 96pp, £18.95, ISBN 9781910356524) THIS volume describes two rival routes in Nottinghamshire built separately by the Midland Railway and Great Northern Railway.

The opening page contains a tribute to co-author and Middleton Press founder Vic Mitchell, who died last year during the final stages of the book’s production. He and Keith Smith have collaborated on more than 300 Middleton titles over 42 years and in the process have built

up what is described as ‘the ultimate railway encyclopedia’.

This latest addition to the series follows the traditional pattern of maps, track plans, photos and captions, all in black-and-white, and covers one of the most fascinating and complicated stretches of railway in the whole of Britain. For the GN and Midland fought not only with each other through the narrow Leen valley, but with Great Central, too. This led to situations in which three main lines ran literally alongside each other in some locations, and although the GC routes are not covered in this volume, they inevitably appear on the maps.

So intertwined were the lines that the Midland and GN routes are wisely treated as separate chapters.

The Leen valley lies in the heart of Nottinghamshire’s once-vibrant mining district (the main reason for such intense railway rivalry) and numerous collieries were served, including Cinderhill, Bestwood, Hucknall, Linby, Newstead, Annesley, and Kirkby. The last two locations are well known in railway circles, too, both having possessed major motive power depots.

Rather unusually, the book contains three pictures predating the photographic era. Hand-drawn, they depict Nottingham station as it was when new in the 1830s and 1840s. Coming up to date, there are several photographs of trams on the Nottingham Express Transit system that today runs alongside parts of the Network Rail route as far as Hucknall. DETAILED ROUTE ACCOUNT