Description:
Bulwell Forest station and signal box looking south, with Rigley's Wagon Works on the left.
This station was situated on the Great Northern Railway's Leen Valley line, opened from Leen Valley Junction (on the same company's Derbyshire Extension and situated between Basford and Daybrook) to Newstead and Annesley in 1882, although there was no stopping place here until 1887. It was always quite an isolated location with no housing near, so it is unsurprising that passenger services were an early casualty with trains ceasing to call in 1929, two years before they were withdrawn altogether over the route. The station closed to public goods traffic in 1958.
Until the closure, due to its poor condition, of Mapperley Tunnel in 1960 the line through Bulwell Forest was used by coal trains from collieries in the Leen Valley (and north thereof) bound for the yards at Colwick. This kept such traffic clear of the busy ex-Great Central main line through Nottingham Victoria, but after 1960 and until final closure in 1968 there was no alternative with all traffic then taking the connection between the GNR Leen Valley line at Bestwood and the GC main line at Bulwell Common.
This rendered the short section north of Bulwell Forest to Bestwood redundant, with that from Leen Valley Junction to Bulwell Forest retained in truncated to form purely to serve the wagon works, which was latterly engaged in scrapping redundant British Railways steam locomotives. This continued until final closure, which was recording as taking place on 31 December 1964. However, all seems intact in this view taken five months later and the signal box was not officially taken out of use until March 1966, perhaps suggesting there was some hope of traffic to the wagon works resuming.
Some years later in advance of the site being redeveloped for a new retail outlet, the steel frame of the main wagon works structure was acquired by the Midland Railway Trust at Butterley, Derbyshire who re-erected it as the basis of their Matthew Kirtley Museum building. By then the station had been entirely demolished.