Bardon Hill Quarry Level Crossing, Leicestershire

Описание: Date filmed: Tuesday the 8th of July 2025
Video filmed at 11:18

Route: Branch line to Bardon Hill Quarry
Used by Shunters between the GBRf sidings and the Quarry itself.
There is no known written timetable or pattern for this crossing (to anyone who doesn't use it regularly, at least), but it is likely used regularly as wagons are exchanged between mainline trains and the Quarry.

Crossing type: Traincrew Manually Operated Barrier crossing (TMOB)

Filming location: A511 Bardon Road, Bardon Hill (LE67 1TD)

Quite a lucky catch features here in this video. Here we see one of Aggregate Industries' resident shunter locomotives push an empty rake of wagons up the steep incline from the exchange sidings, aside the Leicester to Burton-upon-Trent freight route, into the massive quarry complex which dominates the Bardon Hill area. I had seen this train while passing over the crossing by pure chance, approaching it in an outbound direction, and this video is a re-take of the rushed effort I took during a close-shave arrival here. Thankfully, I had little over 10 minutes to wait for the shunter to return with a rake of wagons being pushed up into the quarry for loading. An emergency vehicle with sirens and 'blues' on pulled up at the crossing while the shunt was crossing the A511, but thankfully it wasn't stopped for TOO long.

From my knowledge, there is no written timetable or known definite pattern as to when this crossing is used. It would be hard to know if you're not local or use the crossing regularly, but a good guess would assume it's used quite regularly in the week with a steady flow of wagons being exchanged. This was filmed at just gone 11AM, and it appeared to be the last set of empty wagons in the sidings being pushed through to the quarry, with it unknown how long it would be until some loaded ones were shunted back. No mainline trains were due for hours either way at the time. The end of video photos were taken from an unsuccessful visit here by me in April, when a train had just arrived in the sidings; I had missed the shunter, and there was no sign of it at all for at least another half an hour.

This is a 'Traincrew Manually Operated Barrier' crossing, lowered and raised manually by members of the shunt crew, and it dates back to the end of 2019 / start of 2020 when the A511 across it was widened to three lanes. It's an incredibly busy road with very high HGV usage, and is very hard to cross when the barriers are raised. Both alarms sound fairly similar to each other, aren't as loud as you'd think, and are found on the same side of the road here, that closest to the Quarry. It seemed like there was very little safe standing space on the other side with the main HGV entrance to the Quarry there, unless you want a really close-range view of the crossing.

Trains featured:
No. 59 'Duke of Edinburgh' (Aggregate Industries)
Bardon Hill GBRf ➡ Bardon Hill Quarry

Filmed on: Panasonic HC-VX1 in 4K, 25fps

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