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Comment by Dick Bodily on September 22, 2015 at 11:59

In those days the Greens Norton road ran along the route of the present day road leading to the Tidy tip and Aldi so it was right next to the railway embankment. Bill Kendall's article (British Railway Journal 76) talked of road stone being unloaded manually at Towcester station yard for repairs to the A5, which was taken by local hauliers Challis' lorries to where it was needed, this would presumably have been used as a hardcore base rather than the top surface. Whether this was at the same time I've no idea. I wonder how they rolled the tarmac, Towcester RDC had an Aveling steamroller ideal for laying a hardcore base, which is incidentally preserved, but this wouldn't have been very suitable for the tarmacing. After the war in the 50s this section of the A5 was concreted possibly as flooding precaution as the river frequently overflowed onto the road there. The joins in the concrete are still detectable in that although metalled over nowadays they cause a clicking sound from your tyres as you drive over them.