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East from Western Boulevard Bridge

The green-and-white buildings in the distance are the Opal 1 student accommodation (SK5440 : Opal 1, Wollaton Road) built on land east of the former Radford Station once occupied by sidings, Chettle’s and Butterworth and Walker. This picture updates Stephen McKay’s SK5440 : Approaching Radford Junction, taken from the same place in 2008, before Opal 1 was built.

From the 19th century until the building of Western Boulevard and the council houses either side of it, a railway linking Babbington (Cinderhill) Colliery and the Nottingham Canal at a wharf immediately south of Wollaton Road crossed the Radford-Trowell main line at right angles and on the level here – where the tree on the right of the railway in the middle of this shot is; the colliery railway continued due south on a line corresponding to the boundary between the allotments and the back gardens of the houses on Newland Close (the first of which is on the right) and there were sidings and a weighbridge further south where Marchwood Close now stands. Until the abandonment of the colliery railway there was a signal box here, originally west of the colliery railway and later to the east. Babbington Sidings ran parallel to the main line back under the bridge and almost as far west as Woodyard Lane.

For other vestiges of the Babbington Colliery line, see SK5442 : Former colliery railway, SK5442 : The entrance to Melbourne Park Medical centre, SK5441 : Melbourne Park: poplars which once bordered a railway and SK5441 : Melbourne Park: where there was once a busy railway.