I saw this on the news today – you can view it on the BBC website.
On the Notts/Derbys border is a place called Toton. It’s not what you’d call ‘rural’, but it’s not in the city either. One of its poorer points is the fact that it has a railway going through it, and this involves ‘sidings’ which – as everyone knows – is railway-speak for “a bloody great Victorian mess that can only be described as a scrapyard”. Mind you, another bad point is the number of anoraks who spend their weekends with cameras and binoculars watching the trains… but that’s another story.
Anyway, near the sidings there was a large expanse of land which was filled with Silver Birch trees. Just look at the slideshow below to see what it looked like last week (in the snow)… then look at what they have done to it now.
[kml_flashembed movie=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/toton_sidings_slideshow.swf” height=”290″ width=”500″ /]Apparently, the rail company sold it on to someone (who has not yet been identified), and they ripped all the trees down without warning. Obviously they are going to build something.
As the news report makes clear, no laws have been broken. But it is a shame that there are no laws which prevent this kind of thing.
The story is also covered by This Is Nottingham, and there they claim they spoke to two men who said they were the owners but who wouldn’t identify themselves, but who said they were doing a ‘mineral survey’ (what a way to do it, eh?) There is a suggestion that the site is going to be mined for low-grade coal!