Ghosts of 1950s railway days are easy to conjure here, at five minutes from our front door. Here is the western side (towards Newcastle train direction) platform of Rowlands Gill railway station. Still intact and in-place in March 2019.
In the top RH corner of this shot can be seen the bridge that takes/took the A694 road to Consett over rhe now, sadly, non-existent railway line. The arch of the railway bridge has been blocked by stonework, and a caravan is parked in front of it, just where the trains from Newcastle would have come through that portal.
The concrete edge seen here is the very platform edge where passengers stepped into the passengere trains that ran on this line until 1953. They now lie alongside Burnopfield Road, Rowlands Gill, untouched, presumably because they are considered unimportant, and cause no one any difficulty. For me, they represent a nostalgic reminder of the days of my trainspotting youth and of my Grandpa William and his son, my dad's daily work at Archer Cowley, whose furniture boxes may even have been conveyed along this branch-line if anyone from Oxford or its environs moved to the North East.