the decision was made to close the GCR as part of the Beeching Axe, in the late 1960s contractors were appointed to remove the railway tracks and major parts of the civil engineering infrastructure. This included the section north of to north of the Midland Main Line. Contractors initially removed the railway tracks, before also removing the bridges and supporting buttresses over the Midland Main Line, and then the embankment to its south. Unfortunately, the following year the Hermitage Brook flooded, resulting in additional contractors being engaged to reimplement part of the railway's former embankment. After the formation of the Great Central as a heritage railway, bridging the resultant "gap" always became a significant challenge to realise the full operational vision. Since the closure of the line, Morley Street industrial estate had been developed on part of the site formerly occupied by the embankment, whilst Loughborough Borough Council had developed, filled with household waste and then covered a landfill to the south. The GCR itself, having started re-instatement of the GCR line from to the south, had developed its locomotive shed on the old alignment to the north of the station. Current features The Gap is long, and approximately wide for most of its length, running due north–south approximately north from . It is bounded: to the west by the northeasternmost part of Loughborough, including the Loughborough Midland station and Morley Street industrial estate; to the east by the covered former household refuse site; and to the north and south by GCR's northern and southern sections respectively. Current plans for bridging the gap, using a single-track line, include: Removing the Loughborough north shed. This will be a long-term project, as the approach from the canal bridge to Loughborough North signal box will initially be a single track running alongside the existing shed. This has been 3D modelled to prove feasibility. The Loughborough Top Shed project would then rebuild the recovered remnants of the former LNWR Workington, Cumbria steam shed on an old landfill site, just to the north-east of the current shed. Using two donated spans from the former Great Western Main Line to the west of , which were removed in April 2011 by Network Rail when revamping the station as part of an £825 million project. These were originally planned to bridge the gap over the Midland Main Line, but are now planned to be deployed elsewhere in