The Railways Today - continued

Where lines have been closed, remains are sometimes becoming difficult to find. Many of the former lines were built over flat countryside needing few cuttings or embankments and, after removal of rails and ballast, the route was ploughed over. However some of the routes survive and are being developed as long distance footways and cycleways. Fortunately, even some of the smaller companies built substantial station buildings or station master's houses and a great many of these have been converted into private houses. Others serve as bases for local industry, a few even suffer the ultimate indignity of use for storing road transport vehicles.

Population & County Boundaries

The population figures for nearest settlements have been affected by the boundary changes mentioned in the main module. Where the changes have resulted in distorted figures such as where two or more parishes have been combined, they have been omitted. Almost every county in the area had some boundary alterations in 1974. Rutland was taken into Leicestershire whilst Huntingdonshire and the Soke of Peterborough became part of a much enlarged Cambridgeshire. These and other more minor changes are recorded on the datafile. Since April 1997 Rutland has become an independent unitary authority.

Searching the datafile

You can either download the datafile or search online. The downloadable datafiles are available in for three platforms; the Acorn, Mac or PC.

The Search facility allows you to search either by the Station Name, the County, the Original Railway Group and / or by the Nearest Town. You can combine these searches in any way you wish. For example, you might want to find all the Stations in 'Norfolk' that were under the 'London & North Eastern Railway'. Alternatively, you can select to view all of the records for East Anglia.

The Teacher Notes allow you to find out more information about the Datafile contents

Please note that when your results are displayed, you can click on the 'Number' to view the complete record for that particular station.

Further Reading

There are East Anglia volumes of both the Regional Railway History and Forgotten railways series (David and Charles). The Forgotten Railways volume has an excellent gazetteer of closed lines.

Of the local historical publications, East Anglia Railways Remembered by Leslie Oppitz, published by Countryside Books (1989) is a very readable account of the railway development and remains.

Follow-up Work

Some parts of the region have seen a definite fall in population in the past 150 years. Locate these areas and attempt to discover the effects of the arrival of the railway on them.

In the main module is the suggestion to compare journey with services of 1910 or other dates for which Bradshaw's timetable has been reprinted. Interesting journeys in East Anglia would be Bedford to Norwich, Spalding to Lowestoft and Maldon to Bishop's Stortford.

Providing for commuter traffic forms an important part of transport strategy. Try to discover the extent of commuting by rail in your own area and, if that is in East Anglia, which centres have commuter services? How many people travel daily to work to Norwich, Cambridge, Ipswich, etc?