MOTORISTS complain of increased traffic and congestion in Railway Road in Blackburn town-centre ever since the closure of adjoining Church Street 20 months ago.
Yet, this picture from June, 1952, shows that the gridlock there is nothing new -- and that, back then, buses, now seen as a solution to road congestion, were evidently a prime contributor to the jams.
But the freely-available on-street parking in Railway Road can hardly have helped the traffic flow. Though Blackburn's trams had been scrapped nearly three years earlier, the tracks for them were still to be seen among the granite setts that paved the thoroughfare.
In the background, beyond the art deco-style frontage of the F.W. Woolworth store -- present-day T.J. Hughes -- dating from 1938 can be seen the old Cinema Royal which was rebuilt the same year.
It was demolished 30 years later.
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