Tuesday 9 May 2023

The Mystery At Thurnby Lodge (1)

A Series of Murders At "The Lodge"
It is possible that collectors of the green-covered "Penguin Crime' series of years gone by may not remember this particular Agatha Crustie tale, involving, of course, the irrepressible Miss Jane Marbles of St Mary Mead.

That is because it was never written!

The only murder in this blog is that of the public transport information available today for those who may wish to travel to Thurnby Lodge from Leicester.

But here is Thurnby Lodge estate until post WW2. It lies to the east of the city.
It was Council built from the 1950s as a replacement for low grade housing in central Leicester filling the area between Scraptoft Lane (top) and Uppingham Road (red, bottom). The estate takes its name from the village of Thurnby which never had a "Lodge". Way back, the village did have a station ...
... on the line from Leicester Belgrave Road.
Although modest externally ...
... the terminus station had a grand "double-barrelled" overall roof, seen below in decay in 1966.
Belgrave Road was particularly popular for day trips to Skeggy and Mablethorpe.
Such seasonal business failed to save the line which closed (pre-Beeching) in 1962. Google Earth shows no real remnants of the track bed; but the horizontal strip of undergrowth is where it once ran!
Just to the left of the Google Earth view above is a clue showing the name of the line.
It is possibly an old footbridge?

And below is the station master's house (station far right) with an overbridge being demolished after closure.
So here is the estate as it stands today.
The curved road to the north of the stream is Thurncourt Road ...
... and this is where Thurby Lodge shopping centre is. Here it is in the 1980s.
It now offers a substantial co-op ...
... and a parade of ancillary retail businesses ...
... some of which "have seen better days."
Originally this was Midland Red territory ...
... served by L37 and L38 which terminated at the shopping centre.
The route via Dudley Avenue is still covered today, as we shall see. 

By 1972 there had been changes in routes and route numbers ...
... operating cross city to New Parks. The L38 has become the 98, still via Dudley Avenue.

More recent pictures on-line show Arriva 53 to Thurnby Lodge ...
... and First Bus 38A, also to Thurnby Lodge.
There is an on-line Leicester Buses comprehensive map which confirms this.
Also on the map is the 38A which runs via Dudley Avenue, but shows Nether Hall as its destination.
The trouble with "it's all on line" is that lots of "it" is out of date and has never been removed. How about this Arriva map, dated 2011?
Or a very fuzzy combined map with no date?
All maps shown by fbb so far are on line BUT WRONG!

Oh, yes. The bus map on the current City Council web site is also WRONG!
But the map on today's Leicester Buses web site does appear to be RIGHT!

It is to this reliable fount of all omnibological knowledge in Leicester that we shall turn tomorrow.

 Next Thurnby Lodge blog : Wednesday 10th May 

8 comments:

  1. Paper timetables don't just magically disappear when they expire either...

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    1. No, but out of date maps and timetables SHOULD be taken down off the net or marked “no longer current-for historic interest only” or something similar if left in place. So once again FBB has a valid point.

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  2. Information is put on the internet because it is easy to do so. Any organization or company that can't be bothered to take down out of date information should be prosecuted for misleading the public and improper use of the internet.

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    Replies
    1. Though if you copy someone else's information e.g. a parish council reproducing a bus timetable or map, who is responsible for that?

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    2. If YOU copied it, then your copy is YOUR responsibility to keep up to date or clearly mark that it is a snapshot from a certain date and is thereafter not guaranteed to represent the current situation. This is not rocket science, just common decency and common sense!

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    3. The best solution is to include a date on the timetable - granted, an expiry date is not always possible; but a start date would be useful. Since an old version of a web page might stay in the browser cache after the timetable has become out of date, the suggestion about prosecuting companies that fail to take down out of date info is slightly impractical!
      RC169

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    4. Well ... Arriva normally put start and end dates on their online timetables. One thing they've got right?

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