From the Evening News, July 31, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

RUSSIA'S threat to pull out of the last two days of the Olympic Games held fast this afternoon. They were still demanding that the 17-years-old diver who had asked for political asylum in Canada is returned to them. Sergei Nemtsanov is one of three Olympic competitors who have defected. The other two are Rumanian.

ENGINE driver John Ritson used his train to stop 96 tons of runaway wagons, which were heading towards the main line at 40mph. Now John , of Tonge Moor Road, Bolton, is to be honoured by British Rail for his courage, being given a certificate and £50. The incident happened last month when John was on shunting duties near Blackrod Junction.

John said: "I was waiting at signals when the signalman shouted to me, and I saw the wagons coming down the track. I drove the train into their path, and the impact derailed the wagons I was pulling, although my engine stayed on the track. But it was nothing really."

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, August 1, 1951

BURTONS - Vacancies for trainees and experienced machinists. Female workers of all ages. Learn to make clothing. High starting rates, 44-hour 5-day week, all customary holidays paid, including Two Weeks Annual Holiday With Pay.

Apply Employment Department, Halliwell Road Clothing Works, Bolton.

PASSENGERS on the buses which travel between Bolton and the surrounding country villages are always on the lookout for rabbits, lapwings, magpies, and other animals and birds which are not seen much in town but are common in country districts.

Occasionally, keen observers catch glimpses of other animals and birds which are not usually associated with this part of the country. A passenger on the Belmont route recently saw a pheasant and its young near Scout-rd. - pheasants are, of course, fairly common in this particular spot - and on the same journey saw a red squirrel nip across the road by the Wilkinson Sanatorium. The squirrel must have been one of those which have settled in the Smithills Hall district.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, August 1, 1876

ON Thursday morning, between nine and ten o'clock, an accident occurred on the Bolton and Little Hulton Branch of the London and North-Western Railway, which, though unattended with personal in jury, did great damage to the company's rolling stock.

It appears the goods and mineral train which leaves Longsight at 6.45 for Bolton had passed along the line in safety as far as Gibson's siding, Little Hulton. At this point the train was pulled up on the main line, which has a gradient of one in sixty, and the engine driver proceeded to put some wagons into the siding.

There were two guards, Fletcher and Oddis, in charge of the train, and on alighting it was their duty to have applied the brake of the guard's van in the rear of the train, and also put "sprags" in the wheels of the wagons.

This rule, it is alleged, was duly acted upon, but nevertheless that portion of the train left on the main line commenced moving backwards, and despite the efforts of the guards to arrest its progress, the runaway wagons, 25 in number, including the brake van, momentarily increased in velocity.

They passed through Walkden station at considerable speed, and bounded onwards on the wrong line in the direction of Worsley, the distance traversed before their progress was arrested by being allowed to run into a siding being a mile and a half. The wagons bounded into this siding at a terrific speed, sweeping down the buffers in their path, and were only stopped by the buttress of the railway bridge, against which they were piled high above the top. Seven wagons were heaped together in dire confusion. They were smashed into a thousand pieces, huge pieces of iron were bent and twisted in an amazing manner, and large pieces of timber flew into the air, alighting on the highway close by.