Forum: travel.stackexchange.com
Tags: <uk><maps><train-stations>
Title: How to find location on Cambridge-Mildenhall railway that still has tracks/rails?
Question: I want to travel to the UK to take photos of  the closed Cambridge-Mildenhall railway .  I‘d like to find at least one place with all three tracks, however I can't see any rails on Google Maps. Do the rails still exist? If so, could you please help me find a location with all three rails? Preferably with google maps location.

Answers:
sents: text: Update: following comments I asked a friend who lives nearby to get up-to-date information.
text: He took a picture of the actual Barnwell junction, which shows that @DavidRicherby
text: and I are both right:
text: the actual rail junction can no longer be used, but the rails and the points/switch and their actuation mechanism at the junction still exist.
text: He looked through the trees on the right to find out what is beyond the gate and saw a glimpse of rails, but it is private property so could not get any nearer.
text: He also went around the other side to view from the meadow to the north, and there is no longer any track behind the factories , only some rail ballast.
text: He spoke to a construction worker who confirmed the track was picked up.
text: Where the construction work is happening (perhaps the Chisholm cycle path )
text: my friend saw no evidence of any previous railway.
text: So if there is any track left at all, it will be a fragment on private property.
text: The station Barnwell Junction on the Wikipedia map you linked still exists (now a private residence), and the rail track at this part still exists, but not very far.
text: This first section remained in use until recently to service factories and a fuel depot.
text: Parts of the line from there to Isleham and Mildenhall are marked on the 1:50000 Ordnance Survey maps as "dismantled railway" or "dismtd rly".
text: OS maps can be viewed online as streetmap.co.uk and a fragment of the route can be seen from a Mildenhall search, just below bottom left.
text: Best viewed at 1:50000 scale.
text: Here is a clip from an OS map of the route from Barnwell Junction, which is at the bottom left of the image.
text: Here is the same route as seen on Google Earth.
text: The route crosses High Ditch Road under a bridge that still exists, then the A14 highway crosses it with no bridge, as the railway was already defunct at the time of its construction.
text: It is likely that there are other parts which remain, and you can find them using a combination of these tools, possibly with Google Streetview too, to see where bridges still exist.
text: It is unlikely that any of the rest of the track itself still exists, and in places the route has been built over or ploughed.
text: In other places is it used as farm tracks, and there are hints of this on the OS maps, guessed from their location and direction.
text: From Google Earth, traces of the route can be seen even where ploughed over.
text: Below is a clip from Google Earth, showing the former Barnwell Junction station (at the bottom) and the railway track running past its left side towards the factories, where it stops.
text: The tracks on the left are the main Cambridge to Ely route.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/62763/Weather Vane
score: 30
sents: text: For the UK, Ireland, and the west coast of the US, I know no better online resource for this than Rail Map Online .
text: It allows you to view all the railways that have ever existed in the UK overlayed onto various maps (including Google Maps and OpenStreetMap).
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/33051/Muzer
score: 12
sents: text: I don't know about the specific railway you mention, but there were a lot of railway closures in the 1960s
text: and I don't know of any where the rails still exist.
text: Quite often they have been converted to footpaths/cycleways.
text: My understanding is that the rails were generally sold for scrap rather than abandoned.
text: EDIT Looking at Mildenhall station and the old route confirms that (at least most of) the rails are no longer there.
text: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/52.33656/0.50065&layers=HN
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/55929/Mark Perryman
score: 8
sents: text: The National Library of Scotland has digitized a lot of old UK maps (and some world-wide).
text: It will display the old map overlaid with a new one, with a range of dates for the old map.
text: The new map can either be a satellite, road, or OS.
text: The range of old maps is better in Scotland, but elsewhere in the UK there is a reasonable selection available.
text: The site makes it easy to visualise the old map in relation to current maps.
text: If you use an old map between about 1920 and 1963 (the beeching cuts), it will show the old railways.
text: Later maps will show the route of old railways until they have been built over.
text: For example, https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=14&lat=52.2190&lon=0.2069&layers=11&b=3 Change the transparency (bottom left) from 100% to 75%
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/47175/CSM
score: 3
sents: text: It is also currently shown in Open Street Map.
text: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/317247
text: But, like most if not all the others, it does not indicate whether the actual steel has been removed.
text: I looked at a lot of aerials, and in the few places possible, Google’s street view and found no rails.
text: But three photos in someone’s comment showed some.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/12555/WGroleau
score: 3
sents: text: If you are after locations where the track itself is still present, then you're out of luck - Disused Stations suggests that the track was all lifted on closure except for that accessing the oil depot mentioned in @WeatherVane's answer.
text: This is generally the case for most British disused railways - the track was generally lifted fairly quickly after closure, unlike other countries where lines were often mothballed.
text: If you just want to find the route, then OS maps are generally the way to go, as they generally show disused railways, as shown in the example above - they also show rights of way so that you can find how to access the line.
text: Quite a lot have been converted to long-distance foot or cycle paths and so are easily accessible.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/18319/Nick C
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
Apparently, the track was all lifted upon closure and if there is any track left, it is likely to be a fragment on private property.
The track was picked up and a part of it may exist on private property.