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The Signal Box Field, Cummersdale Station, Cummersdale, Carlisle, Cumbria

The Cumbrian village of Cummersdale, lies about two and a half miles southwest of Carlisle’s city centre, in an area that proudly boasts some beautiful countryside.

During the mid-1950’s it became host to Greyhound Racing, with a temporary track being sectioned off with wooden stakes, on an open meadow that lay next to a busy railway line south of the village. The venue was recognised as a flip track, meaning that it could only stage eight meetings per year on a license issued by the local council.

It operated throughout the summer months only, with its first ever meeting being staged during May 1954. Events would be run during evening time, with its first event commencing at 7pm, with races consisting of both greyhounds and whippets, who would chase a ball hare type lure, which was pulled along over a two bend 316-yard course, by a winch powered by a jacked-up car engine.

Little is known regarding operations, but racing had ceased well before the turn of the 1960’s. The meadows later became sectioned off to be used as an occasionally rifle range, but today all that remains is just farm grazing land.

This advert printed in The Greyhound Owner of May 1954.
The track was located roughly at the centre of this aerial shot, just west of Carlisle Racecourse.