History of the Area
Next to the river was a railway line known as Little Eaton Gangway serving the Servy Canal. It has recently been removed and replaced with a footpath. In 1792 Benjamin Outram was was asked to prepare plans for a broad canal from Swarkestone to Smithy Houses, near Denby, with a branch at Derby to the Erewash Canal at Sandiacre, which he estimated would cost £60,000. The use of a wagonway as an alternative was first proposed by William Jessop on 3 November 1792. The Derby Canal Act of 1793 authorized a rail connection between the Derby Canal at Little Eaton and the collieries to the north. The wagonway ran four miles (6 km) from the canal wharf to Smithy Houses and another mile further to Denby Hall Colliery. Further short branches served Salterwood North and Henmoor Collieries as well as the Denby Pottery.
The purpose of this 5-mile (8 km) long plateway was to carry coal from Kilburn and Denby down to the canal at Little Eaton and general goods including stone, pottery and "clogs of wood".
When the Midland Railway built its branch line to Ripley in 1856, it lost most of its trade, finally closing in 1908.
The trackbed was used for a new road, the A61, bypassing the old road through Coxbench. This, in turn, was superseded at the end of the twentieth century by the A38 trunk road, demoting it to the B6179. Thus there are three generations of highway side-by-side, plus the remains of the railway.
The Cache Details
The cache is a medium size clip-top sandwich box covered in Black Tape. It contains a pen, pad and some toys for kids.
It is accessible from the track, no need to go off-track and a good cache and dash!