SEDDON'S (BROOKS LANE) LOADING BAY, 1974

Today we have taken a little walk down Brooks Lane, down the public footpath that takes us under our local railway line and climbed the embankment to look across the tracks to the rear of Seddon's Brooks Lane Works. It's 1974 and we're still able to see the last remnants of the loading bays used to shovel loose salt onto railway trucks and load bagged salt into railway vans. Presumably the same wooden loading stages will have been used to deliver coal for the furnaces which heated the salt pans. Although part of the Seddon's Works, the bagging and packing was done by employees of Simpsons. Due to their isolated location the loading bays were largely left to rot and fall down of their own accord.

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    Although the railway looked like it was double tracked from Sandbach to Middlewich, the second track was actually a 'long siding' which served Seddon's, Murgatroyd's, the ICI and Murgatroyd's chemical works at Tetton. Later, in 1969, a spur was built into the new British Salt Works and this survives as the only current connection to the branch line. The 'long siding' was removed sometime in the 1970s and new signalling has now been erected on its trackbed, making reinstatement of this second track problematical.
    
    This photo was first published on Facebook on 19th May 2011.