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Cottesmore Road: site of Exton Park ironstone railway bridge

The Exton Park ironstone railway tunnelled under the road at an angle. The cuttings have been filled in and the land once quarried restored, and it is hard to imagine what was once here. The parapet on the left-hand side of the road - for a closer look see SK9112 : Exton Park ironstone railway bridge parapet - is easy to see, but its counterpart is shadowed by the tree.

United Steels' Exton Park ironstone quarry railway system was the last to be developed in the East Midlands and the third largest in England. It was an extension of the Cottesmore and Burley systems, and was active from 1951-73. A nine-mile circle of track and quarries, completed in 1956, rounded Exton Park, largely in cuttings to reduce visual impact. The ore was taken to the Oakham-Melton main line at Ashwell Sidings, via exchange sidings at what is now the Rutland Railway Museum. The electricity sub-station which powered the dragline excavators in the quarries is nearby - see SK9112 : Hambleton Bakery.

For more remains of the Exton Park railway, see SK8813 : Rutland Railway Museum, SK8813 : Fields once criss-crossed by railways, SK8912 : Household Waste Site partly covers railway remains and SK9112 : Towards Fort Henry.