Talk:Stainby railway station

No evidence

I have been unable to find any information on a station or branch line with this name. Unless anyone can find positive evidence of this then I recommend you delete all reference.[[Steamybrian2 (talk) 14:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)]]

It's marked as a closed station in

• British Railway Atlas 1955. Shepperton: Ian Allan. 2000. p. 16, section D1. ISBN 0 7110 2726 9. 0011/C2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

intermediate between the branch terminus at Sproxton and the junction station Great Ponton, which is between Stoke Tunnel and Grantham (the junction with the ECML faces Grantham). It's shown similarly in

• Rail Atlas 1970. Hersham: Ian Allan. 2003. p. 16, section D1. ISBN 0 7110 2965 2. 0308/. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

although the junction station is now omitted. However,

• Sectional Maps of British Railways. Shepperton: Ian Allan. 1967. p. 16, sections D1-D2.

shows the branch differently - it splits, with the route to the west going to Sproxton, and that to the south goes to Stainby, where it terminates. Again the junction station is omitted, although the junction is named as "High Dyke Jcn.".

The Ordnance Survey One-inch map for the area (6th edition, sheet 122, published 1947) shows the branch as splitting several times, although no stations are marked on it. Written alongside the route is "L.& N.E.R. (Stainby & High Dyke Br.)" toward the eastern end, and "L.& N.E.R. (Skillington Road Junction & Stainby)" near the middle. Most importantly, it connects to both the LNER as noted above, and also to the LMS (ex-Midland Rly) route between Saxby and Bourne, about a mile to the west of South Witham (the junction faces South Witham). Key points include: Great Ponsford station SK933303; High Dyke Junc SK939293; Junction near Colsterworth SK927248; branch terminus near Colsterworth SK926245; Skillington Road Junction SK902242; branch terminus near Sproxton SK877251; connection to the LMS SK908187. Stainby village is at SK907228; Sproxton village is at SK856244. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Careful examination of old large-scale maps shows several sidings serving ironstone quarries around Stainby, centered on the bridge at SK903228. Similar maps suggest that the Sproxton terminus may have been at SK856251. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The location given is certainly on one of the ironstone lines, and there is a bridge taking the road over the route of a line that joins with the quarries at South Witham. I remember seeing these metals in use by an 0-4-0 saddle tank and a small diesel in the 1960s, with a flagman where it crossed the road west of South Witham. I am more in doubt of a passenger link to Great Ponton, and it cannot have surely been the Great Eastern, for this is GN or M&GN territory. And the GE did not survive until Nationalisation. I have never heard of passenger workings over the High Dyke branch.

This Page is fascinating but unhelpful in either regard. I have spoken to committee members at the Rutland railway museum, and none believed in passenger workings to Stainby. Nor does the fairly definitive Pastscape site list such a station. Even the photographer at the overbridge and the location on Geograph dismisses the 'station' as a siding.

It is not impossible that at some time the quarries ran some workman's trains for access, but I am very sceptical of a public service. --Robert EA Harvey (talk) 00:49, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

PS There is a splendid photo of the network as I remember it here. Geograph has this picture of the green shed in the background as it is today.--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 00:58, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I'm in full agreement that it cannot have been GER: if you look at the edit history, you'll see that it was me who slapped the {{citation needed|date=January 2011}} on the statement "It was owned by the Great Eastern Railway until nationalisation." - my intention was that whoever originally wrote that should be given a chance to prove it, although I was (and still am) personally 100% sure that the statement was false.

A few weeks ago I went through articles in Category:East of England railway station stubs to ensure that they correctly bore {{EastEngland-railstation-stub}} (per the boundaries given by East of England), during which I fixed up a large number to {{EastMidlands-railstation-stub}} (per the boundaries given by East Midlands) and a smaller number to {{Yorkshire-Humber-railstation-stub}} (per Yorkshire and the Humber). When doing this, I also noticed that a number of stations on the Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway had been put as purely Great Eastern - and worse, several Great Northern routes had also been put as Great Eastern, including the line between Honington and Lincoln Central. I suspect that an article creator/editor was copy&pasting text from elsewhere without checking it. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:53, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I have invited the originator of the article to come and join in this discussion. He is an active wikipedian still. --Robert EA Harvey (talk) 20:54, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The Ironstone Quarries of the Midlands, Part Eight South Lincolnshire, Eric Tonks MSc, FRIC, Dip.Maths 1991 ISBN 978-1-907094-07-1, pages 17, 22, 25, 28, 37, 66, 67, 69 all make reference to Stainby station. It was on a branch from Skillington Junction on the GNR High Dyke branch, 52.79443871028668, -0.6624683347025117 AsparagusTips (talk) 14:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The only ref given is "British Railways Atlas.1947. p.16". I have now purchased a copy of what I think is the same book, mine is published by Ian Allan (reprinted 2011) ISBN 978-0-7110-3643-7 and on the page indicated, in section E1, I find that Stainby is not shown as a blue dot (which it would be if it were a passenger station) but is shown as a black line, i.e. a freight facility - presumably related to the ironstone workings mentioned above. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:30, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Geograph—which is not a reliable source—says "The Great Northern Railway High Dyke Branch, built during the Great War to carry iron ore from the iron-rich area south of Grantham, made an end-on junction with the Buckminster quarries railway system at Stainby, and opened in 1916. (The Buckminster system also had a southern junction with the main line, at Buckminster Sidings on the Saxby & Bourne Railway, which had opened in 1898.) This is the site of Stainby Station - which wasn’t a station in the accepted sense, but just a single siding in a wide, shallow cutting, now partly filled in. The Buckminster line then curved gently south, west and south again to reach its headquarters south of a level crossing on the Sewstern to Gunby road, now the Sewstern Industrial Estate, just visible on the horizon right of centre. Quarrying, which extended over the parishes of Stainby, Sewstern, Gunby, Buckminster, North Witham and Thistleton, ceased in the 1970s and the land has been restored to agriculture.". I suspect this is another one like Church Siding railway station, which had occasional passenger workings (if only for the quarry's workers) and appeared on timetables at some point (and thus was technically a "station") but had no facilities of any kind. – iridescent 17:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

rfd?

I think it is time to get this nonsense deleted. The ironstone railway was built in recent memory, and I can find no evidence it was ever anything but that.--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 08:14, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Further evidence from that supplied above (Tonks, 1991) is available on https://www.tracksthroughgrantham.uk/recording-the-railway/railways-rediscovered/the-high-dyke-branch-rediscovered-part-2/ which discusses Stainby station and provides a photograph, but not a very good one. AsparagusTips (talk) 09:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)