please empty your brain below

I got genuinely excited for a second, thinking you were releasing a book
Dobbin Close was so named because it (and the primary school at the same time) was built on the last remaining bit of pasture land that hadn't been built on in the area in 1975. On that land (a relatively small triangle) resided a well loved horse called (unsurprisingly) Dobbin. He had previously eked out a living with his owner as a rag and bone cart based in a ramshackle building in Byron Road a few streets away.In the late sixties that pasture land (slightly bigger than as they had appropriated the railway line land as well) also had a couple of cows that belonged to Braziers dairy which has only just recently been demolished a few streets away in Kenton Lane (the bit that goes towards Kenton not the bit that goes to Harrow Weald) There was a field there also where a few more cows were stabled
Unusual for a railway line so close to London to be closed by Beeching.
"Belmont station in South London, one of the 10 Things to Do in Sutton"

Never misses a chance to get dig in. :)
Thanks for the links. As a Harrow resident I've done a lot of these, but there's still some of that list I'll have to search out!
Walking the Belmont Trail I recognised some of it from where it crosses the 186 route.
The 'killer' for the Stanmore branch was that it didn't really have a through service to London, its prime destination. Trains arrived at Harrow & Wealdstone from the SOUTH so had to reverse (potentially more waiting time for a clear path, especially northbound/'down' trains) to cross the fast lines, or squeeze on to them to continue to/from London. Admittedly fewer trains than now, but didn't prevent a major unrelated crash there, so that manoeuvre had limited opportunities. No land was available for a branch to/from the north of H&W station, which might have saved the route, but I wouldn't have bet on that...
Having grown up a few streets away in Sancroft Road in the 1960s/70s, I know the area well. I was 5 and in my second term at Belmont Infants when I was met after school by my mother and taken not home (which was only across the road and round the corner) but to Belmont station for a ride on the train. It wasn't a journey we did normally as we were between Belmont and Wealdstone. It was years later that I realised it must have been the last day of the service.

That Shoe Repairs sign - I'm sure it hasn't been repainted at least since I moved to the other side of Harrow in 1981! Is there a preservation order on it?
At the right hand end of the 'Old Station' is a small window shaped like a cross which is another survivor from the original railway station. For more on the History of the line find a copy of the 'Harrow and Stanmore Railway' by Peter Scott.
Ooh, I've just moved to Harrow. Cheers for this!










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