BRIGG STATION AS IT LOOKED WHEN PRINCE CHARLES AND ROYAL TRAIN PAID A VISIT

The campaigning Independent Brigg Line Rail Group didn't have to pay a princely sum recently to acquire two archive pictures of our railway station through an online sales forum... just the cost of a pint or two!
The term 'princely' is relevant because these pictures date back to the 1980s - a decade which saw Prince Charles aboard the Royal Train located in Brigg station while a get-together for VIPs was in full swing.
This took place on a Monday evening. A local railwayman and his wife then lived in the former stationmaster's house (pictured here) adjoining platform one. As they were watching Coronation Street on TV, the Royal Train was just a few yards away and clearly visible through a ground floor window.
The Prince of Wales had undertaken a Royal Walkabout in Brigg Market Place earlier in the day, stopping to have a word with some local punks, and others.
Security in the evening was tight for obvious reasons, with a cordon thrown around the railway station.
The only locals, apart from onboard guests, who got anywhere near the Royal Train were the family which lived in the house on the station.
By the mid-1980s, most of extensive buildings had been demolished with the former stationmaster's home being taken down later, as were nearby elevated sidings where wagons arrived with fossil fuel destined for local fires courtesy of the Brocklesby delivery firm. Such Victorian brick constructions under the rails were called coal drops. Few others in England survived into the late 1990s.
Today the former Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway mainline station, dating back to the 1840s, is a halt on the Sheffield-Cleethorpes route with only two bus shelter-type metal & glass structures on its platforms, and a modern footbridge which replaced the earlier cast iron structure.
Pictures courtesy of the IBLRG.