Geograph - photograph every grid square

The Oxford Canal and West Coast (Trent Valley) main line run side by side for some distance here. The canal here opened in the 1820s and is a straightening of the original sinuous course of the 1770s. The railway opened in 1847. Electrification is in hand in 1962, but principal passenger trains were mainly diesel hauled with steam still in evidence. Here a crack 'Princess Coronation' class locomotive (a good deal more powerful than the diesels used when at speed) is relegated to a fast freight.

The viewpoint is very nearly under the M6 bridge of today, which had not yet been built here at the date of the photograph.