tree surgery

(Taunton 6.8.2011 copyright Steve Sainsbury)

FACEBOOK - RAIL THING - REVERSING BEECHING

One of the biggest mistakes of the Beeching era was to close branch lines. Many so-called branch lines were in reality secondary main lines. Take the Taunton to Barnstaple route for example. Whilst technically a branch, certainly when it ran to the GW station in Barnstaple Victoria Road, it was in reality a very useful cross country route, much shortening the trip to Barnstaple from the north. It was double track in places. Remind you of another line?

Taunton has lost four of its routes - to Barnstaple, Minehead, Yeovil and Chard Junction. Minehead is now almost fully restored and is one of those heritage lines that is gradually morphing into a genuine community railway. I've touched on the Barnstaple route - this whole area (Barnstaple westwards) will see a huge revival of rail in the next few decades, Bideford and Ilfracombe for example can't seriously be rail-less for much longer, so reopening of this important route is inevitable. The other two lines were more in the nature of branches, but again would both be useful when reopened, bringing Chard and Ilminster for example back into the 21st century.

(Hatch on the Chard line, 1960s. Copyright Rail Thing).

So Taunton today is an odd place, clearly waiting patiently to regain its old importance. Most of the infrastructure is still in place so restoring the lines, at least in Taunton itself, shouldn't be too hard a task.

The whole principle of closing branches was horribly flawed. Beeching and his idiot crew seriously believed that people would drive or take the bus to the railhead and take the train from there. Of course in reality most of them were forced to switch to cars, the substitute bus services - as if a bus could ever replace a train! - were quickly abandoned. Result - a fall in the railways' incomes.

Branch lines that survived are experienced an incredible boom, some lines having doubled their ridership in the last few years (Severn Beach and Falmouth for example).

Beeching - you were WRONG. We need to forget the past and plan for the future, a future that should see all the Beeching cuts reversed and on top of that new lines (both heavy and light) filling in the gaps. That will release rail capacity, will take more lorries off the road and, most importantly, give many towns and villages currently struggling with 20th century dinosaur transport a FUTURE.

unsentimental sentimentality

A two parter today - I'm getting a huge build up of articles, ideas etc, which has to be a good thing!

Top photo is a superb atmosphere shot of Blandford in the last few weeks before temporary closure in 1966. Night photography back then was a real challenge and the photographer (Joe Robbins) is a real hero of the S&D. We've all seen the classic S&D shots, double headers hauling the Pines through Midford etc, but I love the atmosphere shots most of all.

I know, I'm a hard-headed business person, so this shouldn't appeal to me. But, to me, it taps into memories of waiting around on stations at night. There's no sense of threat here, not even one of foreboding which could be excused due to the circumstances! It's the solidity, the sense of quiet purpose, more importantly the sense of connectedness. You don't get this with roads - an empty road at night is a spooky place ... and even 'modern' railway stations lack a lot of this.

Think of Blandford today. Remarkably rail-less, even if just for a few more years, bland and characterless, with nothing like the above to make it stand out. Just waiting really, for the New S&D's time to come.

Sentimental? Not at all. To fill our trains in the future, and there will be an awful lot of them, we need to make the railway environment as comfortable, friendly, familiar and, yes, English, as the above shot. We don't want bus shelters, trains where the seats don't match the windows, services stopping at 9pm rather than 1am and starting again at 7am rather than 4am. There'll be almost as many trains at night as in the day, possibly more when you factor the freight trains in. We deserve a pleasant environment to do our stuff in. The harsh brutality of 60s architecture offers nothing to us 21st century types. The pathetic haste in which ESSENTIAL railways were closed under the most crooked circumstances should never be forgotten - or forgiven. This photo, to me, has the same redemptive - and predictive - power as the 'Perchance it is not dead' wreath at Barnstaple Town.


And completely unsentimentally here's the lean-to oil store at Midford as it was in September 1961 (photo © John Eyers). Had this survived, or been rebuilt, I'd have been up there today in the rain - but sadly the oil store will not reappear for a little while yet! This is a particularly nice shot as it shows all our trackbed up to the Long Arch Bridge.

Both these photos appear in the superb S&D Telegraph number 36, available to members of the SDRHT at Midsomer Norton and usually available at their shop, as well as other back issues.

perchance we are all waking up!

Photo courtesy Welsh Highland Railway.

FACEBOOK - RAIL THING - NARROW GAUGE RAILS

Narrow Gauge page on the Rail Thing website.

Look carefully at the photo above. It says a lot about the way things are going.

The lead loco is the new build 'Lyd', an authentic copy of the elegant and charming Lynton and Barnstaple Railway loco.

The Lynton and Barnstaple closed in 1935. It was a digraceful closure, robbing southern England of its second most charismatic railway. It served a prime holiday area and had it survived a few more years would now be one of the biggest and most profitable tourist attractions in Britain. On the buffer stop at Barnstaple Town some incredibly far sighted admirer placed a wreath stating 'Perchance it is not dead but merely sleepeth'. I suspect it was partly this image of optimism that encouraged brave preservationists to suggest in the 70s that the L&B should be rebuilt. The best thing is that the small start up group has over the years developed into an ambitious affair which intends to eventually restore the whole line, and in fact even extend it in Lynton to make it a more appropriate public service for the 21st century. Of course the original closure of the L&B was idiotic, it was a visionary line that has an even bigger role to play in the 21st century than it ever did in the 19th and 20th. Its time has come, and now one of its engines has returned from the past.

The second fascinating aspect of this picture is the track. Note that it's laid tramway style. This is the start of the section of line in Porthmadog that runs as a tramway. Who would have thought back in the 60s and 70s that this could ever happen? Again trams are possibly the most iconic 21st century transport system imaginable, and whilst this is not a tram or tramway in any normal sense of the word the return of rails to streets in other parts of the UK has made their adoption in a small Welsh town possible. It may well be that parts of the S&D in the future use tram like tracks in places, to save huge demolition bills. The Welsh Highland Railway has now been fully rebuilt giving tourists a modern way to explore the heart of Snowdonia. This is not preservation as such, but the first wave of a huge railway revival in Britain.

steam loco trials on the S&D

A superb shot from John Penny (30.10.2008).

This is the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway's new locomotive, Axe, on trials at the Gartell Railway. This of course is running on the existing 2 foot gauge section of the S&D just south of Templecombe.

'Perchance it is not dead but merely sleepeth', famously quoted on a wreath left at Barnstaple Town station on closure in 1935, was very prophetic and should also apply to the S&D. Bearing in mind that the wreath was placed 74 years ago, the designer obviously had an uncanny ability to see into the future!

It is great that the two routes are working together and hopefully inspiring each other. Certainly the land buying L&B group, Exmoor Associates, has very much inspired the setting up of the New S&D with a similar remit.