Take Route 6 : between the centre of Leicester and Blaby it's an excellent, well used, well maintained disused railway with an asphalt surface; between Market Harborough and Northampton it's a poor, badly maintained disused railway with 'dust and stone' surfacing.
...
I'm sure if the Northampton section had a bit of investment there is potential for greater use (cycle commuting from Brixworth; and Park&Cycle into Market H).
heh. when I was young that was a real railway, I'd cross it twice daily on schooldays. There was a (wo)manned* level crossing with a signal-box alike structure for the people on duty. Then there was a footbridge a bit further down if you used the footpath instead of the road, though tbh if on the footpath mostly we skipped across the track paying careful attention.
*tbh all the staff I saw were male, it was the 1970s after all.
Completely OT - my grandmother was a Crossing Keeper in the 1960s on the line between Leighton Buzzard & Dunstable - I used to spend most of my summer holidays 'helping' her, or trailing after the gangs of (Polish) platelayers.
So female railway workers weren't completely unheard of!
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Although terms like signalman have been replaced with signaller, level crossings are still referred to as manned (rather than eg staffed), eg "Manned Controlled Barrier with Obstacle Detection". Though obviously most are automatic nowadays.
Ed: Thinking about it, the official term is actually "Manually Controlled" rather than "Manned Crossing" but it hasn't yet filtered down to the geeks and cranks.
