Milton Park Trading Estate 1993
Though not a great photo, I've uploaded this shot of the shunt loco at Milton Park purely because I've never seen another photo of it.
Milton Park Trading Estate - now reinvented as a science park and innovation community - occupies the site of a former RAF supply depot west of Didcot. The RAF site was rail connected to the adjacent Great Western Main Line (GWML), and the connection was retained to the trading estate.
BR certainly served Milton Park during the Speedlink era, with local trip workings delivering Cargowaggon type ferry vans to what appears in railway literature as the Lansdown International freight terminal here.
I do not know if freight traffic continued here after the demise of Speedlink in July 1991, but in this mid-1993 photo, the rails serving this particular building are certainly rusty. I do not recall how many rail-connected buildings there were at Milton Park by this time, so traffic could have course been using a different siding with all movements carried out by the main line locomotive. I seem to recall there may have been some freight traffic to Milton Park during the late 1990's as EWS were seemingly offering freebies to everybody.
A few months after I took this photo however, a return visit to the site (probably in an attempt at a better photograph of this loco!), the track alongside this building had been removed and the loco was not here. The link to that photo is below.
www.flickr.com/photos/194923731@N02/54349267962/in/album-...
In 2025 this building still stands, but with the long loading dock completely enclosed and the building being very much repurposed. There are also no clues that the building was ever rail served.
As for the shunt loco, Adrian Barr's informative and extensively researched comment below identifies it as Hunslet 0-6-0DH No. 7276 of 1972.
I'm sure some of you will be able to fill in any remaining blanks, so as usual any corrections and/or further information would be much appreciated.
Milton Park Trading Estate 1993
Though not a great photo, I've uploaded this shot of the shunt loco at Milton Park purely because I've never seen another photo of it.
Milton Park Trading Estate - now reinvented as a science park and innovation community - occupies the site of a former RAF supply depot west of Didcot. The RAF site was rail connected to the adjacent Great Western Main Line (GWML), and the connection was retained to the trading estate.
BR certainly served Milton Park during the Speedlink era, with local trip workings delivering Cargowaggon type ferry vans to what appears in railway literature as the Lansdown International freight terminal here.
I do not know if freight traffic continued here after the demise of Speedlink in July 1991, but in this mid-1993 photo, the rails serving this particular building are certainly rusty. I do not recall how many rail-connected buildings there were at Milton Park by this time, so traffic could have course been using a different siding with all movements carried out by the main line locomotive. I seem to recall there may have been some freight traffic to Milton Park during the late 1990's as EWS were seemingly offering freebies to everybody.
A few months after I took this photo however, a return visit to the site (probably in an attempt at a better photograph of this loco!), the track alongside this building had been removed and the loco was not here. The link to that photo is below.
www.flickr.com/photos/194923731@N02/54349267962/in/album-...
In 2025 this building still stands, but with the long loading dock completely enclosed and the building being very much repurposed. There are also no clues that the building was ever rail served.
As for the shunt loco, Adrian Barr's informative and extensively researched comment below identifies it as Hunslet 0-6-0DH No. 7276 of 1972.
I'm sure some of you will be able to fill in any remaining blanks, so as usual any corrections and/or further information would be much appreciated.