Tracking down the rail
TRACKING DOWN THE RAIL..
The train bringing over 56,000 wounded soldiers came from Clitheroe via Barrow and then round a bend which had to be widened to take the longer trains, under the bridge on Mitton road - where you can find a commemorative blue plaque and then through the wooded cutting.
There isn't much left of the old rail architecture, however....
Closing in, you can see where the train went along the cutting pulling up near the end of Fell View (far left on the map).
The path from Fell View has looked like this for years.
However, behind the bushes, there is an 'unofficial' path (right), where we noticed signs of some concrete construction.
Not much to go on, but with a bit of digging we unearthed this. It looks like the platform where wounded soldiers would have got off the train.
The image went through some changes until we decided that a soldier being take off an ambulance was about right.
We also wanted a nurse in the picture.
This is from an original photograph (out of copyright)
We discussed text and images.
We were limited to 50 words, so that the text could be big enough to read easily.
We wanted the scene to 'come to life' - although this is an odd phrase in the circumstances.
We wanted to conjure the feeling of what it must have been like to arrive here from the front.
The text was cut into sheet steel, then filled with plastic. It will last a long long time.
