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.

the simple solution

Just looking at your site again and had to think hard about some of your comments. You say about 'running down the road', and 'blocked route', in other places. The answer is 'demolish it' - house, factory, road - it was done in the 19th Century for railways and more recently for ridiculous road 'improvement' scams, sorry, 'schemes'. Take Yeovil (please, take Yeovil) where 35 houses, , two pubs, a hotel, and a school were demolished (in the 70's this was) and a road cut a swathe across Yeovil making it bloody awkward for cross-town traffic. Hopeless. We know, cuz all the cross-town traffic then came past our house, and the roads started to crumble. We left... We need the railways!!!

a dorset branch line

Powerstock.


Bridport.


Toller. (Building now at Totnes on the South Devon Railway).


Powerstock.

Four shots from a Dorset branch line (25.2.1975).

This was the Bridport branch a few months before closure. It was a surprising survivor in many ways, although if it were open today no doubt it would be flourishing. Sitting on the southern side of the train you hardly saw a house the whole way, but Bridport itself was a large town, certainly deserving of a railway station in the 21st century!

There were preservation attempts, but the mid seventies were a pretty difficult time for heritage railways. A later scheme planned a revival of the whole route including the extension to West Bay, and a second line to Crewkerne. Some work was done at West Bay, which currently has track laid, but the scheme was a little before its time. No doubt it will reappear quite soon! Gauge would be 2 foot rather than standard.

This whole area is quite similar to the countryside of the S&D, in fact the Castle Cary-Dorchester route is quite S&D-like, serving small villages with a complex junction arrangement round Yeovil and a seaside resort as a destination. The Bridport branch left this line at Maiden Newton.

I've dug out some old photo albums, much more to follow including Broadstone and Wimborne with track - the closest I got to seeing the original S&D as a railway rather than an empty trackbed!