not just a branch line!

(Photo copyright Mick Knox Dec 2011)

One of the misconceptions about the S&D is that it was some sort of branch line! Anyone who had seen the line at its peak in the 1950s would never make this mistake. Trains worked block on block, especially on the single track sections and especially on summer Saturdays. Passenger trains were joined by a succession of heavy freights and of course there was the express train, the Pines.

At Midsomer Norton they are relaying double track and the above shot really captures this. The only other double track standard gauge heritage line is the Great Central. Most of the  S&D was of course double track, there were short sections of single track between Bath GP and Midford and through Corfe Mullen, plus a longer stretch between Templecombe and Blandford.

So we will shortly have two restored stations on double track S&D (Midsomer Norton and Spetsibury) and two on single track (Shillingstone and Midford). Perhaps the real beauty of the S&D is that it could look like a main line and a branch line at the same time, depending on where you were and what trains were passing!

here we go ...

This is a gem from Mick Knox. Unbelievably people are STILL complaining about the so-called 'high' cost of fuel!! Are they living in a complete fantasy world or are they so stupid that they can't see what is happening around them?

We need to accept that the car is dying - there is no way it can survive the coming oil shock, and the 'replacement' technology of electric cars will be even more expensive, and will be in such short supply that they simply won't be an option for most of us.

 

We need to move on from this posturing and decadence, trying to hold on to something that is already lost for ever. We need to forget trying to prolong the agony and start planning for the future. Nostalgia is NOT an option.

 

We need to start running our road network down before it happens anyway. All infrastructure projects should be abandoned immediately and the bare minimum for safety needs to become the norm. Speed limits need to be reduced to take this into account.

 

We need to immediately start reopening closed lines, starting with important cross country routes such as the S&D, Great Central, Woodhead, Waverley, Plymouth-Exeter via Tavsistock, Dumfries-Stranraer etc, then begin to put the branch lines back in. Then new interurban light railways and tramways need to be built to fill in the gaps, so that nobody is more than a mile or so from a station. Freight facilities need to be built at all points. Urban tramways need to be built in all larger towns and, of course, cities. Standard equipment needs to be built - locos, coaches, freight wagons, track panels, catenary etc, so that the cost of rebuilding and operating are reduced. Energy generating methods, from solar and wind through to wood burning need to be optimised. ALL infrastructure expenditure over the next three or four decades needs to be thrown at rail development at all levels.

 

I know the following is really an exercise in nostalgia and will not be to most reader's tastes, but try to read it!

MPs urge ministers to scrap a planned rise in fuel duty

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Ministers say they have acted to alleviate the burden on motorists

Continue reading the main story

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The government should scrap a planned increase in fuel duty to help "hard-working, vulnerable Britons", a Conservative MP has said.

Robert Halfon said the government must show it is one "that cuts taxes for millions of British people and not just for millionaires".

He tabled a Commons motion urging action on fuel prices in response to an e-petition signed by 110,000 people.

It was approved by MPs without a vote but it is not binding on ministers.

Treasury minister Chloe Smith said the government was listening to people's concerns but "now was not the time" to change duty rates as such decisions must wait for the Budget.

The government plans to increase fuel duty by 3p a litre in January - meaning an extra £1.50 to fill an average car - and Chancellor George Osborne is under pressure to scrap that as part of his autum statement on the economy later this month.

Petrol prices have tripled in the past two decades, but ministers say prices would be even higher had they not scrapped automatic fuel-tax increases imposed by Labour.

Mr Osborne scrapped the annual fuel tax escalator - a mechanism under which duty rose by 1p above inflation every year - and cut fuel duty by 1p in March's Budget.

However, he has only postponed the planned inflation-linked part of the duty rise from April 2011 to January 2012, and from April 2012 to August 2012.

Opening the debate, Mr Halfon said: "Fuel duty is not just about economics, it's an issue of social justice and this is especially true in rural communities which are being destroyed by fuel prices."

He said the government had to be "realistic and truthful about who pays the lion's share of fuel duty".

"It's ordinary families driving to work, it's mums taking their children to school, it's small businesses who can't afford to drive a van or their lorry, it's non-motorists who depend on buses who are also being crushed by rocketing food prices as the cost of road haulage goes through the roof."
'Inelastic'
In his motion, Mr Halfon urges ministers to consider whether current fuel tax rates are economically competitive; what impact they are having on economic growth and unemployment levels; and to examine the case for a price stabilisation mechanism to even out fluctuations in pump prices.

The Treasury has already said it will introduce a "fair fuel stabiliser" to ensure price rises are capped to inflation when oil prices are high.

Lib Dem party president Tim Farron agreed that people in rural areas were hardest hit because "demand is so inelastic for petrol because people have only one way of getting to work".

AA president Edmund King: "High fuel prices are already bringing in record amounts of tax"

Labour have welcomed the chance for a debate on the issue, but said there must be "concrete action" to help business and families rather than "warm words".

The party's leadership had backed an amendment by backbench MP Dave Watts urging the government to reverse January's rise in VAT to 20% - which they say would cut 3p off the price of a litre of petrol.

Russell Brown, MP for Dumfries and Galloway, said: "I have some people in remote areas who have discovered that to get to work has become far too costly and some of these people are considering giving up working all together."

Conservative Caroline Nokes, MP for Romsey and Southampton North, highlighted the struggles of haulage companies.

"Profit margins for hauliers are very tight. This makes it a very vulnerable business and in particular fuel companies are not willing to extend credit terms, leaving payments in some cases to as little as three days.

"Now when haulage firms may not be paid for work for up to 60 days, this proves to be a very hand-to-mouth industry and companies can only afford to think ahead to January."

Motorist: "Petrol prices are appalling at the moment"

The AA said the latest fuel price rises were already impacting on drivers, and that for the average motorist the planned increase would equate to an additional £38 a year at the pumps.

AA president Edmund King told BBC Radio 5Live the AA's latest survey showed that some 70% of motorists were already cutting back on journeys - or other expenditure, like food shopping, to pay for petrol.

He said price increases were "socially divisive", saying the nation was being divided into "drives" - people who can afford to drive - and "drive nots".

'Strangling the economy'

Motoring journalist Quentin Wilson, who speaks for FairFuel UK, a pressure group behind the e-petition, said he and others "want the whole fuel pricing issue to become open and transparent", adding that high fuel duty is "strangling the economy".

"There are desperate, desperate people who cannot afford to use the roads. The effect on society at the moment has been absolutely desperate. Fuel duty is strangling us," he said.

Meanwhile, Richard Hebditch, of Campaign for Better Transport, said the "big problem" is that Britons are reliant on their cars and dependant on foreign oil supplies, which are "quite risky oil supplies".

He said: "What we need to do is take the money from fuel duty and invest it in giving people real alternatives and modernising our transport systems so we aren't so dependant on foreign and risking oil supplies."

Tuesday's debate, which lasted three hours, was approved by the Backbench Business Committee.

S&D comes to the GCR!

(Apologies that the picture doesn't show some ersatz S&D recreation, but I love this shot as it shows just how good the GCR is in recreating scenes from the past - surely the best qualification?)

The Great Central Railway's October 6-9 autumn steam gala will have a Somerset & Dorset theme.

Eight locomotives will take part in a festival of steam which for the first time will last four days!

S&D 7F 2-8-0 No 88 should be the guest star, along with Southern Railway West Country No. 34007 Wadebridge. Neither have visited the Great Central Railway before and will bring with them a flavour of the Somerset and Dorset Railway which was closed in the 1960s.

However a late addition to the line up sees Southern Railway N15 4-6-0 King Arthur class No. 30777 Sir Lamiel back to GCR for the first time in many months. It offers the exciting prospect of seeing Wadebridge and Sir Lamiel passing each other on GCR`s double track and recreating the Southern Region steam scene.

Richard Patching, GCR’s general manager said, "Our autumn galas get better and better. We'll prove the letters 'S' and 'D' really stand for Spectacular and Dramatic! “We'll have nonstop mail drops, a mixture of freight trains and of course a very busy timetable of passenger trains passing on the double track.

“Interestingly, just as the S&D went from double track to single in places, we have just the same sort of arrangement south of Rothley station, so we are uniquely placed to capture the atmosphere of this long-lamented railway."

Five locomotives from the current home fleet of Great Central Railway should also join the line up, including sole surviving GCR freight locomotive, O4 2-8-0 N.o 63601. This locomotive will turn 100 years old in January next year. With GWR Hall, No. 4593 Pitchford Hall on the roster and LMS 3F 0-6-0 No. 47406 there will be a perfect mix of motive power which once worked over and around the Somerset & Dorset.

The GCR's gala event could be the first to feature the recently installed turntable at Quorn & Woodhouse station which is nearing completion. A new 50-seater cafe has also opened at the station giving a perfect vantage point to watch passing trains.

All locomotives and attractions appear subject to availability.

wise words

Nice succinct comments from Nick Howes re yesterday's story about the new high speed link from London to the north.

a) air travel is a dying duck eg Heathrow spur and

b) the Great Central is sat there doing nothing (Berne gauge) and I’m sure that wont cost 30 billion to put back. Where do they get these inflated figures from?!

I suspect the figures are thrown about either to stop things happening or to get a huge budget!

The Great Central is such a valuable asset but at the moment its either used to shuttle a few commuter trains (Aylesbury southwards), to recreate BR in the 60s (Leicester-Loughborough - a fantastic line but still a waste as it doesn't run 'real' trains (yet!)) or, mainly, serves as a scar on the landscape that should be a vibrant and extremely busy route. It's ironic that in parts it runs alongside the M1, I can see the roles being reversed in a few decades time!

And as for connecting to Heathrow, what bloody future does even the most stupid politician think that white elephant will have?

The real issue here, and it's only been slightly touched on, is that construction of an entirely new route will cause even more destruction to our landscape. There are NO intermediate stations planned between Birmingham and London so how on earth do they plan to sell this to the communities en route? Even a motorway would have more value as it can be accessed! I don't disgree with High Speed Trains but I would still rather see existing and new routes serve the towns and villages in between BEFORE investment in High Speed Rail. There are still far too many towns and villages in Britain that are rail-less, large towns like Norton-Radstock, Glastonbury, Gosport, Ripon etc for example. Air travel is already losing ground rapidly to the existing rail network, we don't need to force this by building completely new rail routes, not yet at least. Imagine how many new rail miles could be built to the places that count for that £30 billion - probably around 500 miles. That's the whole S&D, Great Central, Waverley, Plymouth-Okehampton, Dumfries-Stranraer, Ilfracombe, Tiverton, Bude and a dozen other routes that should never have closed.

This brings up the whole secondary disaster that Beeching caused - the closing of thousands of small stations on routes that are STILL open. Most if not all of these could now be economically reopened, indeed many have, but don't they make it difficult!

If there's money like £30 billion out there for starting to get our railways up and running again let's use it to help everybody, not just every damn fool in London who wants to be in Birmingham in forty minutes!

return to Evercreech Junction

My last trip to Evercreech Junction was in 1980.

It was good to see that the main station building is still standing, ready for purchase by the New S&D in the future.

This iconic location - and not just from an S&D perspective - is a sad sight today. It should be bustling with life with trains coming every half hour or so. There should be shops and restaurants serving the thousands of visitors coming by train. There should be trains running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It underlines the utter desolation of certain places when they lose their trains and how desperately they need them back.

In fact the whole journey today from Bristol to the Gartell Railway underlined this economic apartheid. Binegar, Shepton Mallet, Evercreech Junction - all seemed dull and lifeless with few if any amenities. Conversely the two places we did pass through that are still served by trains - Castle Cary and Templecombe - seemed lively and alive. The car park at Castle Cary was packed on a Sunday.

This contrast will become sharper and sharper as the Energy Crunch bites harder. Those people clever (or lucky) enough to live on a railway will be able to continue to go about their daily lives. Their property prices will rise (or fall less) than those who suddenly find themselves out in the sticks, with just crumbling roads and hideously expensive cars and buses to rely on. There will be a shift away from these blighted areas to those that will have a bright future. Even today properties close to railways (or more precisely stations) are worth a good deal more than those that are bereft of modern transport.

This perception will ensure that as time goes by more and more people in these areas (which, currently, sadly includes most of the S&D route) will absolutely insist that their railways are returned. But they can't all be returned at once, there will be a distinct pecking order. We have every intention that the S&D will be up there with the usual suspects - Exeter-Okehampton-Plymouth, Oxford-Cambridge, Waverley route, Great Central, Skipton-Colne, Lewes-Uckfield etc etc.

more wasted main line infrastructure

(All Charwelton 20/9/08, courtesy Mick Knox)

There were many appalling main line closures in the UK thanks to dipstick Beeching. The S&D of course, the Waverley, Plymouth-Exeter via Tavistock, Dumfries to Stranraer, Woodhead and the Ripon line for example. But probably the maddest was the Great Central route, the UK's last main line, built to European loading gauge throughout and promoted way back in 1900 as a future link to the Channel Tunnel. This should be one of the first lines to be reinstated, but at the moment it's still in deep sleep apart from the Nottingham-Leicester section and Aylesbury-Marylebone. This is the sort of line that will compete with us for resources in the future!

elsewhere

(Photos copyright Mick Knox 2008)

These are a few shots of a line not totally dissimilar to the S&D - the Great Central. Like the S&D the GC was once a very busy route linking urban areas through the countryside, serving both local communities and the nation. The major part of both routes were closed in 1966. Both lines, even in a world where oil was endless and the climate was stable, should have been retained and developed so they could fulfil a useful role into the 21st century and beyond. Now of course both routes are essential with Peak Oil and Climate Change visible to everyone.

Mick is working on a website that I think will be superb. The premise is a critique of the 'reasoning' behind the extraordinary destruction of the British railway network in the 1960s. The socialist bureaucrats that ruled the roost back then seriously believed that the railway network was no longer needed and - appallingly - would never be needed again. But even in the sixties politicians knew that oil was a finite resource and would eventually become too expensive to be practical. What were they thinking of? At the very very least the routes should have been retained even if the infrastructure was removed.

Of course the S&D and GC will be rebuilt, and probably a lot sooner than most of us expect, but the cost will be far higher as a result of the stupidity of politicians forty years and more ago. Where development has taken place there will need to be massive compensation - although many will argue that there should be none. And competition for the skills of railway workers will be fierce. This is why I have always argued - and always will - that the S&D needs to fight and claw its way to the top of the reopening pile!

double track

The sleeper pile has finally been moved after a Herculean effort by some of the track team over the previous week. And suddenly double track is on the cards again as the ballast reappears! Even on the extension the trackbed is beginning to look ready for double track!

The S&D will be one of only two double track heritage lines in the country (the other of course being the Great Central). The line back to Radstock will be single however as the route will be shared with cycles, but hopefully the whole Midsomer Norton to Shepton section will be double ...

the benefits of foresight

It seems odd that it’s taken forty years for the reversal of the idiotic closure of the S&D to start, and it’s worth looking at some of the possible reasons why.

There’s a story (surely apocryphal) that the whole S&D was offered to anyone interested in 1966 for £50,000! That’s line, stations, signalling, the lot. Even if true would a privately-owned S&D have been viable back in the sixties? The preservation movement was in its infancy, rail was (incredibly) seen as a dying technology, and marketing was unheard of. And at the same time steam was still reasonably common on British Railways, so steam on the S&D wouldn’t have been that much of a novelty. On top of the £50,000 locos and stock would have had to be found, and at that time about the longest preserved line was the Festiniog at 7 miles, the longest standard gauge was the Bluebell at 4 miles. A 100-mile preserved line would have been impossible to run economically - in 1966.

As the sixties became the seventies rail preservation was beginning to find its feet, the Dart Valley and Keighley and Worth Valley were added to the small list of standard gauge lines, and a small preservation set-up was emerging at Radstock, with the seemingly very reasonable and easily-achievable plan to restore the (in-situ) line to Writhlington.

Its failure in the anti-rail 70s surely left a bit of a cloud hanging over the S&D. Attempts (mainly pipe-dreams) to set up other schemes all fell through, without even laying track. The 80s were the real low-point for the S&D, not an inch of track remained and the clock was ticking.
So how could the finest line in the country be allowed to reach such a state? Surely with the huge love and support of rail enthusiasts and local residents at least part of the S&D could have been reinstated, even if only as a tourist attraction? Less worthy lines were being restored all over the country, the Great Central was restoring a double-track main line, the West Somerset turned a decaying branch line into a 20-mile plus tourist trap, even once empty trackbeds were being restored.

Was it the sheer magic of the S&D that frightened people off? Surely those coffin-chasers in the 60s actually quite liked the idea of being the ’last ever’ passengers on the line, there was perhaps a poignant grandeur in decaying stations fading in the mist, the ‘Withered Arm’ generation prefering the easy route of fondly remembering the recent past rather than facing up to the sheer hard work of restoring one of those dead routes? Perhaps they still see the next generation, those of us born too late to travel on and know the original S&D, as somehow inferior to them? Or perhaps there were simply too many other distractions - established steam railways, music, women, cheap sangria etc?

The world has changed so much in the last thirty years that perhaps it’s difficult for any of us to really get into that downbeat mindset any longer. Rail is in the ascendant, roads are coughing their last as the oil runs out, people want to live quieter, friendlier, more connected lives. Doors are opening for us all along the S&D.

Perhaps the S&D needed that period of temporary closure from 1966 to 2007 to gain an insurmountable mythic status where the iconography of Ivo Peters melds with the pathos of Jeffery Grayer, where Mike Arlett’s dulcet if somewhat pessimistic tones are replaced by the guitars of Arctic Monkeys to transform a whisper into a shout that ‘we are back, and this time it’s for good!’