IN the early hours of Sunday morning considerable excitement was occasioned at Westhoughton sidings. An express passenger train, from Liverpool to Hull, loaded with passengers, was running through the sidings about forty minutes after midnight, when an alarm was raised by passengers that a man had either fallen or jumped out of the train.

The staff at once telephoned to Lostock Junction, where the train was pulled up and a search was made down the main line. Mr R. Allan, an examiner stationed at Westhoughton Exchange sidings, came across a man lying under the bridge leading to the goods yard. He was dazed, and had received a few bruises about the face and hands, whilst his clothing was torn in several places.

The man, from Yorkshire, stated he was under the impression he had to change at Westhoughton, and as he thought he was being over-carried, he sprang out of the carriage. It is extraordinary that the man did not meet with much more serious injuries, indeed that he was not killed outright was an act of Providence.

He was handed over to Mr Kay, stationmaster, and on Sunday proceeded home.

From the Evening News, July 22, 1953:

FILMS shown in Bolton cinemas on Sundays are "tripe" and "a deplorable collection", according to Councs.. Maughan and Burgess. They yesterday urged Bolton Entertainments Committee to show a weekly winter programme of "specialist feature films and documentaries" on Sunday evenings.

But Counc. Taylor, some of the last lot of civic films shown in Bolton had contained Communist propaganda. "We should not," he told the committee, "use public funds for any sort of political propaganda."

The Sunday civic film proposal was defeated.

From the Evening News, July 22, 1978:

AN incredible £4,000 million needs to be spent on the North-west's ancient and crumbling sewers over the next 20 years. But even that fantastic amount of cash would only replace sewers more than 100 years old. The North-west has a much higher proportion of derelict sewers than anywhere else, and more than 15 per cent are 100 years old or more.

At present, the water authority is doing its best to survey 20,000 miles of sewers in the region with TV cameras. But that will take about 10 years.

WOLFENDEN High School, built in 1913 to hold 900 pupils, held a special valedictory service yesterday to mark its closure. The school is being closed to make space for the expansion of Wolfenden Primary School.

From the Evening News, July 22, 1993:

999 calls operator Jane Fisher has received a top award after she talked a panic-stricken woman through a terrifying fire ordeal. Jane, aged 36, from Bolton, was awarded a rare Letter of Congratulations after bosses heard a tape of her conversation with the choking woman, who was trapped above a blazing flat.

Today modest Jane, of Windermere Avenue, Little Lever, said any of the Swinton headquarters control operators would have acted like she did in the same situation.