Manchester Evening News recently uploaded a 3D animated video of Manchester in the Victorian era. Created by Neil Millington the video starts at Cornbrook before passing St Georges Church, Hulme, Castlefield Canal Basin, Knott Mill Station, Cambridge Street Mills, Oxford Road Station and finishes at London Road Station. It’s a lovely video with very realistic sounds and even chatter from the workers.
Bear in mind that it’s an animation and rendering the amount of detail that we’d have seen in real life would be a momentous task. I would have loved to have seen the smog and chimney stacks belching out black fumes as well as some soot and factory grime, but he video is made to inform us what it would be like to be stood on the footplate of a locomotive working in Manchester at the height of the Industrial Revolution. There are some glaring issues though, namely that trains operate on the left side of the tracks just like modern day cars and that it’s what appears to be a pleasant day; something I’ve never experienced in the many times I’ve visited Manchester.