RAILWAY enthusiast Dennis Sweeney has completed an eight year labour of love to publish the story of a once busy local rail network.

The Bolton and Leigh Railway - the first passenger line in Lancashire - ran through the middle of the South Lancashire coalfield branch lines.

Yet apart from this section, and the more illustrious Liverpool-Manchester link across Chat Moss, little has been told of the part the iron road (now part of the Leigh bypass) played in the growth of the area's industry. But now Dennis, of Wigan Road, Leigh, has put that matter right and the first copies of part one of his impressive story "A Lancashire Triangle" are available.

In it he tells the history of the London and North Western Railways, beginning with the Bolton and Leigh and Kenyon and Leigh Junction railways. Part one is 192 art paper pages and features 237 black and white photographs, plus map and line diagrams.

Part two, which should be out this time next year, features the Tyldesley, Pennington, Bickershaw and Roe Green branches.

It costs £25 from The Leigh Journal office, 44/46 Railway Road, Leigh. Phone: 01942-670669.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.