Description:
Weekday Cross Junction was located south of Nottingham Victoria station and was where the Great Central Railway main line from London Marylebone to Sheffield and Manchester was joined by a Great Northern Railway link from Trent Lane Junction on that company's Grantham - Nottingham (London Road) route. The two lines are seen here on the right and left respectively - both were carried on viaducts with the entry into Victoria station being via Thurland Street Tunnel, to the rear of the photographer.
By the date of this picture, the GC main line had closed as a through route and was just used for freight traffic, serving the army depot at Ruddington and gypsum works at East Leake. These trains had to reverse at Weekday Cross, a convoluted arrangement that was dispensed with in 1974 when a new connection was made to the Midland Main Line at Loughborough, thus enabling Ruddington - Weekday Cross - Trent Lane to be closed. The viaduct at Weekday Cross was later demolished, ironically to make way for a new viaduct carrying Nottingham Express Transit's (NET) tram line.
Picture the Past website contributor John A Thickitt adds: 'A pair of English Electric Type 1s (Class 20) double-head a freight train. Note the alpha numeric 9T40, the headcode, which in this case described the activity of the train. The first characters '9' and 'T' show this was a 'trip' working. Also known as a 'pick-up' goods train, a trip train called at sidings along a route, on an as-required basis, to collect loaded wagons and return empty ones (the number of wagons involved from any one siding being too few to justify a dedicated locomotive for each location). The last two characters, '40', separate this train from all those running over the same line on the same day, each train showing a consecutive number. The Class 20s often worked in pairs because a single locomotive was not powerful enough for the load it was required to haul. Locally, around the date of the photograph, they were frequently to be seen double-heading coal trains along the Erewash Valley line between Chesterfield and Nottingham.'