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that the hospital authorities no longer considered passenger usage of the line to be economical, and the service was withdrawn.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
_______________________________ 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
_____________________________ 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
___________________________ 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
daily-article-l@lists.wikimedia.org