Sidetracked - Old Dalby Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is to replace the old 'Sidetracked' that was archived.
Old Dalby station is still there but it closed to passenger used in 1966.
The station opened in 1880 by the Midland Railway when they built their cut-off line from Melton Mowbray to Nottingham. This gave Nottingham direct express trains to London avoiding Leicester.
Next to the station, trains once served the Army Ordnance Depot transporting arms. Much of the depot is in evidence and parts is now used as an industrial estate where there is a brewery too, which is open to the public!
When the station closed for passengers use the line cease to be a through route two years later.
However, the station found new life when it was converted to a train research centre. The track (14 miles of it) is used for testing trains, included the tilting Advance Passenger Train, the pioneer to the Pendolino train, which was also tested on these very tracks. This explains the overhead wires that can be seen. Recently the new London Underground trains have been tested here too.
In the train-spotting world Old Dalby is renown for the test track and older cachers may recall the famous test train crash that occurred in 1984 when a loco and a rake of carriages were deliberately ploughed into a nuclear flask to prove to the world that this flask was indestructible, it was.
The cache itself; is placed at the start of a footpath and can be done as a drive-by cache-and-dash also.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Nfx gur gebyy