Millbridge Street.
The text below was extracted from the Society's newsletter 'Toplink' from Spring 1990, and gives the background to our layout.
TROUBLE AT TH’ MILLBRIDGE STREET
By Dik Leatherdale
Members who have not attended club meetings recently will be amazed to discover that visible progress has been made with the construction of Millbridge Street. Perhaps amazed is not the right word. Stunned is more it. Sit down, have a cup of hot sweet tea. The EM group [Well, Dik and Rob (Since when is Rob an EMer ?)] have purchased vast quantities of Wills brick arches and English bond brickwork and have constructed retaining walls along the back of boards 4 and 5, together with the walls supporting the high ground between the main line (!) and the industrial branch.
All this is joined together with the bridge (does anybody have any ideas for a mill ?). Our first attempt at a bridge was less than successful. Although satisfactory in its own terms, it was swiftly discovered that the two boards could not be bolted together for storage, so it was necessary to demolish the roadway and lower it at the front thus giving it a considerable slope. This adds to the difficulties in constructing walls, fences and bridge panelling, but we all make mistakes, don't we ?
Meanwhile, Jim has started what looks to be a splendid station building more Wills brickwork - Flemish bond this time. The walls are up, the windows are in. We await the roof. Bob is still plugging away at the wiring. Using colour coded wire (green) he continues to remove the odd glitch in the circuits. One day we'll get it right.
Your reporter has put forward a justification for the edifice. Millbridge Street purports to be at the end of a branch off the Lancashire and Yorkshire main line from Manchester to Bradford and Leeds. Diverging just south of Rochdale (But north of the Heywood branch), the branch easily surmounts the high ground immediately to the south of the town to emerge in the valley of the River Spodden (a tributary of the Roch) where it serves a long established group of mills originally sited to to take advantage of the water power of the river itself. Although not conveniently served by the Rochdale Canal, constructed in the late 18th century, the mills survived until reached by the railway in the 1850s.
The intention of the L&Y was to extend the branch northwards, but this was overtaken by events when the Bacup branch was built off the main line north of Rochdale. Actually, this was a much better proposition, because the passenger service from Bacup and Whitworth was able to connect, not only with Manchester, but with Rochdale as well, thus picking up considerable local traffic in the late 19th century, some of which actually reached its destination before the 20th (the L&Y was much criticised by Ahrons for the quality of its passenger "service").
In the early 20th century, around the time of the grouping, the Millbridge Street Branch continues its unhurried existence as something of a backwater. There remains a substantial traffic in coal (of course), bales of cotton and finished cloth as well as the usual local goods service. A private branch has been added to serve a number of local mills (the local millowners working together for once - no doubt inspired by the success of the Co-operative Movement which had its origins in Rochdale).
A passenger service operates fitfully to Manchester Victoria throughout the day. Very little first class traffic is on offer but, every optimistic, the authorities provide some first class accommodation in a couple of morning and evening trains. More popular are the early morning workmen's trains bringing the men in their cloth caps and the girls in their shawls to the mills, returning them safely home at night. Some even traverse the Mill owners' branch, to make sure that the workers are at their looms as the working day begins. From time to time, an electric tramcar is heard, grinding its way back and forward between the middle of Rochdale and the municipal boundary, providing the local service which the railway cannot.
On Saturday afternoons and on Sundays, the activity winds down. The occasional excursion may be seen, organised by one of the various local chapels, fiercely competing in the business or saving souls. Some of the more "enlightened" Mill-owners take their employees for a day out in Blackpool, once a year.
Everything to be seen is covered in a thick layer of filth. The mills, the railway, the forest of little chimney pots atop the serried rows of terraced houses, all belch out an acrid stream of smoke which hangs over the town and settles on the land, slowly turning everything black. Even the new war memorial is now fast losing its pristine appearance, defying the efforts of the widows of the area to keep it clean.
A girl called Gracie strolls home from the mill along the cobbled street, followed erratically by Mrs. Smith's little Cyril, his backside overflowing his ragged short trousers. The Temperance Society brass band is practising in the Town Hall. Our Gracie pricks up her ears. "I wonder, d’you s’pose you could make a living from Music?" "Nay, don't be daft lass." comes the stern rebuke. Well, we all make mistakes, don't we?