REALLY SideTracked – Kirby Muxloe
Flanders and Swann Slow Train event No 2
A geocaching meet-up between 3.00 and 3.30 pm on Saturday, 8 December, at the site of the old station at Kirby Muxloe in Leicestershire.
This is the second of a series of SideTracked events based on the song Slow Train by Flanders and Swann. Written in 1963, the song laments the closure of many stations and railway lines under the Beeching cuts of that era. The song is introduced by Donald Swann reciting in a slow monotone: "Millers Dale for Tideswell — Kirby Muxloe — Mow Cop & Scholar Green", before the song starts with both Swann and Michael Flanders singing "No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe, on the Slow Train..."
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Kirby Muxloe station in 1967.
(Photo copyright Nigel Tout, 1967, Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike licence 4.0)
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Kirby Muxloe was a station on the Midland Railway line between Leicester and Desford that bypassed part of the Leicester and Swannington Railway in Leicestershire, England.
The Midland opened line through Kirby Muxloe in 1848. The following year the Midland opened its line from Coalville Town to Burton-on-Trent, making the line through Kirby Muxloe part of its through route between Leicester and Burton-on-Trent.
British Railways closed Kirby Muxloe station in 1964.
In the 1990s BR planned to restore passenger services between Leicester and Burton as the second phase of its Ivanhoe Line project. However, after the privatisation of British Rail in 1995 this phase of the project was discontinued. In 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies published a £49 million proposal (Connecting Communities: Expanding Access to the Rail Network) to restore passenger services to the line that would include reopening a station at Kirby Muxloe.
From Wikipedia
The event will allow like-minded cachers to meet up to chat, discover and swap trackables, and hopefully view the site of the old station, if it is possible to do so from a safe location away from the railway. It should also be possible to listen to a recording of Slow Train.
Please note: although the station is closed, the railway line here is still open for freight trains. Do not trespass on the track. Parking is limited at the location, though on-street parking is available nearby. Please show consideration to residents.
Related web pages:
(Background images - Donald Swann and Michael Flanders in concert, 1966; disused track near Dunstable Town station in 2006, copyright Nigel Cox, CC-by-SA)