The Hellingly Hospital Railway was a light railway owned and operated
by East Sussex County Council, used to deliver coal and passengers to
Hellingly Hospital, a psychiatric hospital near Hailsham, via a spur
from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway’s Cuckoo Line at
Hellingly railway station. The railway was constructed in 1899 and
opened to passengers on 20 July 1903, following its electrification in
1902. After the railway grouping of 1923, passenger numbers declined so
significantly that the hospital authorities no longer considered
passenger usage of the line to be economical, and the service was
withdrawn. The railway closed to freight in 1959, following the
hospital's decision to convert its coal boilers to oil, which rendered
the railway unnecessary. The route took a mostly direct path from a
junction immediately south of Hellingly Station to Hellingly Hospital,
past sidings known as Farm Siding and Park House Siding respectively,
used as stopping places to load and unload produce and supplies from
outbuildings of the hospital. Much of the railway has since been
converted to footpath, and many of the buildings formerly served by the
line are now abandoned.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellingly_Hospital_Railway>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1306:
Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland at Scone near Perth.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_I_of_Scotland>
1409:
The Council of Pisa, an unrecognized ecumenical conference of the Roman
Catholic Church held in Pisa that attempted to end the Western Schism,
opened.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Pisa>
1634:
Lord Baltimore, his younger brother Leonard Calvert, and a group of
Catholic settlers founded the English colony of Maryland.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Maryland>
1655:
Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan , the largest
natural satellite of the planet Saturn.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28moon%29>
1802:
France and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Amiens, temporarily
ending the hostilities between the two during the French Revolutionary
Wars.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Amiens>
1807:
The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing the slave trade in the
British Empire.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
incendiary (adj):
1. Capable of causing fire.
2. Intentionally stirring up strife, riot, rebellion
3. Inflammatory,
emotionally charged
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/incendiary>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down
on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit
of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the
violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there
is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to
the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to
defend his dignity as a human being.
--Rudolf Rocker
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rudolf_Rocker>