RAILWAY enthusiasts embarked on a tour of East Lancashire’s forgotten branch lines and crumbling railway stations in 1962.
Two hundred passengers, from all over the country, enjoyed a nostalgic afternoon of steam on 134 miles of track, much of them even then closed to passenger traffic, organised by the North Western branch of the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society.
It was a sentimental journey for one of them, Mrs Hilda Lancaster of Burnley Road, Padiham, who had been a signalwoman in the Simonstone box at the end of the war.
She was also the last passenger to buy a ticket on the final train to leave Simonstone, when the Padiham loop line closed in 1957.
Although the society had no women’s section, it had sent her a ticket when she pleaded that she just had to travel the loop line once more.
Also on the trip were about a dozen schoolboys and everyone had cameras and maps, while one passenger even tape recorded every puff and clang as the train trundled on the branch line to Barnoldswick.
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