Clay Cross railway station was a railway station built by the North Midland Railway in 1840. It served the town of Clay Cross in Derbyshire, England.
It was originally planned to have been built within the Clay Cross Tunnel, however it was clear that it would be impossible to ventilate it effectively, so instead it was built at the northern entrance - nearer to Tupton.
The original station was the usual Francis Thompson Italianate design. In 1879 the line from the Midland Counties Railway was built through the Erewash Valley meeting the North Midland at the station, which had platforms serving two passenger lines, with two goods lines passing to the east, which continued the whole way down the Erewash Valley. The station was rebuilt in the Midland Railway style and, at some time, it was enlarged to serve four tracks, with two outer platforms and an island platform in the middle.
The station closed in 1967. There are no visible remains. There is talk of re-building the station, but plans are only in their infancy.
North of Clay Cross, there developed very busy Coal sidings, particularly those serving the Avenue Coal Carbonisation Plant. A locomotive shed was built at Hasland in 1861 with at one time as many as sixty engines. In the 1960s it supported sixteen Garratt 2-6-6-2 locomotives used for the coal traffic from Yorkshire.
The next station northwards was at Chesterfield.
Famous quotes containing the words clay, cross, railway and/or station:
“You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But soft, behold! lo where it comes again!
I’ll cross it though it blast me. Stay, illusion!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)