A Walk by the Great Western Mainline

 

 

 

Evening shot looking West along the Great Western Main Line

 

It was the railways that brought industry to Slough, and many industrial buildings old and new still stretch along its route. The Horlicks factory, seen here with its turreted tower and stack in silhouette, was built there specifically so that it could have access to the railway; a separate little line used to divert from the bridge where this shot was taken and travel over to the South side of the factory so that Horlicks could load up on its own doorstep.

 

This is what many of the older industrial parts of Slough look like outside of the Trading Estate, mostly modestly sized buildings of differing age clumped together offering physical services; while the rest of Slough is all glass and steel offices, call centres and dull people talking about digital platforms, along the railway you find scrap yards, recycling centres, auto sheds, chemical plants and gasworks, throwbacks to the time in Slough’s history when people called it ‘industry’ instead of ‘business’– an irony, as most of the lifeless, stultifying office-based ‘businesses’ are hardly ‘busy’ at all, at least in any sense that would make you break into a sweat.

 

 

Pedestrian tunnel under the Great Western Main Line, taken from the top of Salt Hill Park

 

This Victorian shortcut under the rail lines is as old as the railway itself and connects Salt Hill Park with the bottom of Baylis Park. Shortcuts like these are handy and interesting little routes for the urban explorer and add character to the setting. Its charm comes not only from the history of the route but also the fact that it serves as a pedestrian space, meaning that for once in Slough you can cross something without having to share the way with noisy, psycho traffic.

 

This charm is, however, contingent on the route being well maintained and safe; in recent years the tunnel became a bit of a troublespot for litter, graffiti, gangs of teenagers and the kind of sinister, lurking weirdos that give parks a bad name after dark. A few licks of paint have gone some way to making the tunnel a bit more user-friendly, and extra measures have been taken for security– in the past, this might have meant a bobby strolling down every night, but these days it means that the council have simply added a menacing CCTV pole a few yards away from the entrance.

 

 

Simpson Skip & Grab Hire, by the railway tracks

 

Pictured from Salt Hill Park on the other side of the rail lines, this is Slough’s version of Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad. As discussed in the last post, this is an example of the kind of prosaic, physical industry you typically find by the rail-side, as opposed to the modern, office-based businesses you find elsewhere in Slough– a consequence of the historical need for heavy-lifting, physical industries to be near the railways to make transportation easier, and the fact that land situated right next to the tracks is deemed undesirable for the kind of image-conscious companies that demand ever more prestigious-looking office buildings. This is the kind of earthy, unglamorous industry that Slough was built on– factories, plants, depots, scrap yards– before the change to office-based businesses that started in the 60s and really took off in the 80s and 90s, and that still dominates today. Say what you like about the smell, but there’s a kind of refreshingly frank honesty about places like this.