Bolton to Preston including Horwich Locomotive Works and the Ribble Steam Railway

By Tom Heavyside (hardback, Middleton Press, 96pp, £18.95, ISBN 9781910356616).

This latest volume in MP’s Northern Lines series has appeared in advance of the East Lancashire Railway’s June 18/19 celebrations to mark the

100th anniversary of the merger of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway and the LNWR.

The complex story of the line’s history began when what later became Bury Bolton Street station was reached by the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal Navigation and Railway Company on May 29, 1838.

The Bolton & Preston Railway then linked the former town to Chorley on December 22, 1841, and then ran trains into Preston from June 22, 1843, before it was taken over by the hitherto somewhat hostile North Union Railway the following year. The NUR as absorbed jointly by the L&Y and LNWR in 1888.

A chapter on the LY&R’s Horwich Works looks at its locomotive building operation from the steam to diesel and electric eras, and also covers its 71/2 miles of internal 18in gauge lines. Beyer Peacock 0-4-0WT Wren, which was built in 1887 and has for long greeted public visitors to the National Railway Museum in York, is seen being served ready for a day’s work.

The final section deals with the NUR’s steeply-inclined branch from Preston station to the town’s docks which was laid in 1848, and today’s Ribble Steam Railway, a successor to Southport Railway Centre that closed in 1997.

SUPERB STEP-BY-STEP EXPLORATION