This key holder cache belongs to the SideTracked series and is sited at the station entrance. It is not designed to take you to a magical place with a breath taking view. Its a distraction for the weary traveller, but anyone else can go and find it too.
Normanton station has a long history and is still a busy commuter station. Current building work sees the erection of a long overdue footbridge across the track. The original station was opened by the North Midland Railway in 1840 and provided a junction with the York and North Midland Railway and the Manchester and Leeds Railway. At that time it boasted the world's longest railway station platform – a quarter of a mile long.
In Victorian times Normanton station was one of the most important stations in northern England and can boast that Queen Victoria stopped over in the nearby hotel.
The town also served as an important part of the transport infrastructure for national and local industries including coal and bricks, although most of this was lost during the 1950s and 1960s with the last remaining operational brickworks eventually closing in the mid-nineties. There were three brickworks in town and were all built within the small area known as Newland, taking advantage of the abundance of clay from the area. A fourth works was founded in the 1890s by a man named Thomas Kirk from Nottingham who had heard rumours that Normanton was rapidly turning into an important junction on the railways. Both Kirk and his sons used their life savings and formed a Brick Company at nearby Altofts which was in operation until 2013