The Greatest Show on Earth!

MIDSOMER NORTON SOUTH

The Jinty arrives (all via Somerset and Dorset Railway Facebook)

Also in steam - the SDRHT's very own Sentinel (via Somerset and Dorset Railway Facebook)

The last Jinty at Midsomer Norton - July 2005 (pic copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

FACEBOOK - FRIENDS OF THE S&D

The S&D just keeps getting better and better. The next two weekends will be celebrations up and down the line of the original (and now quickly being forgotten!) closure. Midsomer Norton will be leading the way with two engines in steam, the Gartell will be operating 2 foot gauge versions of the last trains and the last Pines, Shillingstone will be showing off its two steam locos and Spetisbury has a small display. Let's see how many of you can visit all four sites (with a stop off at Midford as well of course, with big news from there being announced after all this is over!)

I shall be going down to Midsomer Norton on a sunny day (if available) or a gloomy one if not! There's no way I'm missing this. I was there for thr 2005 visit of a Jinty and it was an amazing experience. I seem to only have the one photo of that event though, it was the year before I switched to digital!

needed!

(All copyright Kevin Mitchell)

The restoration at Spetisbury (and to a lesser extent Midford) is throwing up lots of bits and pieces from the original line. We are also getting a lot of historical enquiries about the old line. We'll also need extensive records of buildings and infrastructure of the original line as we start to rebuild.

I suspect that these strands should be brought together in the person of a HERITAGE OFFICER. The heritage officer's role would be to store and identify artefacts safely, to answer enquries about the original (as opposed to the new) line and to build up an extensive archive and record of the route.

Does this appeal to any New S&D members? If you are interested please email leysiner@aol.com or telephone Steve Sainsbury on 0117 3738973.

s & d lives

David Milton and Paul Fry: Loss Of Two Somerset and Dorset Railway Greats

The deaths of two of Somerset and Dorset Railways greatest champions were announced with great sadness recently; to lose any one person who supported the cause and stuck with it from the beginning is always incredibly sad, but to lose two within a few weeks of each other is devastating. Here we recall the lives and work of David Milton and Paul Fry.

David Milton

David Milton was well known to rail enthusiasts in the South West as the “Voice Of Dorset” and lent his voice to commentating on rallies within the county, most famously at the Great Dorset Steam Fair, which is one of many such events held throughout the southern half of the country.

Perhaps his most noted achievement was the salvage and upkeep of the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway 2-8-0 Locomotive Number 88 which was rescued at a cost of £2,500 from Barry Scrap yard, and originally used as a haulage train for coal and heavy goods and to collect parcels and deliver them to their rightful destinations. The train was finally released in July 1970.

David also held the distinction of being one of the only remaining members of the Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust (when it was originally names the Somerset and Dorset Railway Circle) who had been there since it’s incarnation in 1966. He at one time held the three positions of Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer. A well respected author of some note, he wrote many articles for the Trust’s Bulletin. He also produced a book entitled “A History of the Somerset and Dorset 7F 2-8-0s”. In the mid 1970s, David also worked with Donald Bradley on a publication entitled “Somerset and Dorset Locomotive History” and in 1975 a collaboration with RS McNaught brought forth the book “The Golden Age of Steam Locomotives of The Great Western and Somerset and Dorset Joint Railways”, which is still available for purchase from Amazon, link here.

It was during the 1980s at the time when the Great Dorset Steam Fair was held at Stourpaine Bushes that David was asked if he would consider commentating on the event, organisers were thrilled when he agreed and the tradition carried on along with colleagues Malcolm Fleet and the late Gerry Burr.

That David should have had an interest in the railways was of little surprise to anyone. His father was FW Milton who had himself spent his entire working life on the Somerset and Dorset Railways working most assiduously on the line between Evercreech Junction to Burnham-on-Sea, eventually becoming the Supervising Goods Foreman in Glastonbury.

David chose a career in Engineering and at one time owned his own steam locomotive engine. He was a popular and well respected member of the Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust and will be missed by all his friends and colleagues there.

He died at the age of seventy eight in Yeovil Hospital and leaves behind his wife, Barbara and daughter Jenni. His funeral was held in Yeovil on 4^th April 2012 at St Leonard’s Church, Butleigh, near Glastonbury.

Paul Fry

It is also with sadness we report the death of Paul Fry, who also passed away at the age of seventy eight this year. Also a notable author on railways and locomotives in Somerset, he wrote a book called “Railways Into Wells”, again which is still available for purchase from Amazon here, and is dedicated to the memory of his late father GWC Fry (known as Bob) who worked as a Guard on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. He also, like David contributed many articles to the Bulletin journal and was a very well respected member of the Wells Railway Fraternity. He was also a trained member of the St John’s Ambulance and noted for his first aid skills.

Paul’s father “Bob” held the distinction (along with David Milton) of being one of the passengers on the last train from Glastonbury to Wells, the journey of which took place in 1951.

Just as with David, Paul’s contribution to the upkeep, promotion and support of The Somerset and Dorset Joint District Railway should not be underestimated. Both these characters will be very sadly missed and our thoughts and best wishes are with their families and friends at this sad time.

Article kindly supplied by Anna Redding.

templecombe 1967

Yet another great shot from Picasa (source here) showing Templecombe, looking south towards Henstridge, possibly in 1967 - the photographer isn't sure.

Some one has over-ridden the interlocking and pulled off both pegs - for the road into Templecombe station and the road onwards to Henstridge and beyond - it doesn't matter because no trains had come this way for years and nothing ever will ever again ... it was eupemistically called "The Reshaping of British Railways" but all it meant was one third of the network trashed and thousands of dedicated railwaymen and women lost their livelyhoods.

Accompanying text (above) yet again displays that 1970s hubristic certainty about the future that has already been proved wrong in so many places, as it will do here. This may well be the last part of the S&D main line to be restored, but it will be restored and trains will run here in numbers not seen before, this becoming a very busy route to the south coast from Bath, Bristol, the Midlands, the North and Exteter and the west country. I'd be very much surprised if it will stay single for long!

henstridge 1969

An excellent Picasa shot of Henstridge, published here.

This is three years after closure and there's an eerie stillness, magnified by the fact that soon this section of track will be lifted, not to return for perhaps 50 years or more!

midford 1972

Original here.

New S&D webmaster David Bailey has tracked down this excellent shot of Midford in 1972, taken a few years after tracklifting.

This looks very much like the station does now, though soon the buildings will return.

Lovely touch of 1970s style pessimism (already proved wrong thanks to the Tuckingmill Tramway) in the blurb which accompanies this picture. It does seem odd that just 40 years ago people really believed that this line would not be rebuilt!

Hard to imagine that we used to get off the train here and all the countless thousands of people that passed this spot on express trains from the frozen North to balmy Bournemouth ... all passed into history! Nothing passes this way anymore and nothing will ever again only the leery personal chariots making for the pub on the road down below ...

a new S&D - an unstoppable force!

This has come in through the comments section and I felt it needed a wider audience!

Further to comments of yesterday, I have watched my DVD (The Somerset & Dorset railway) where it shows clips of the past and the state sponsored vandals of 1967 (How I hate that era)destroying the S& D and interviewing the former staff, it showed how we have as a society really lost the plot when we allowed Beeching to destroy this wonderful line along with a good many other lines. The staff were not well paid however they had that family pride in what they did and there was none of the dreadful dehumanising of society that we read about today where it seems that is is me me me then me again to make sure and s@@ the rest of you Jack. Also the point that one lady came about living in Henstridge she now has to rely on someone to drive her about plus it takes 3 buses to go from Evercreech to Bath, some progress or what!!! This country needs to stop funding overseas aid, the EU and getting involved in other peoples wars and our so called leaders need to grow one, listen to the people and act accordingly. That way this country will become prosperous again with a happy population. I live in Torpoint in East Cornwall and have learnt that it can take a resident up to one hour to bus into Plymouth from Tavistock for work/shopping school etc, The faster steam trains could do it in half the time. So much for petrol heads etc! and their stupidity of the 60,. I was born in 1963 the tail end of the baby boom, did no one ever ask of the future twenty years later when we would all be left school etc. Thanks Beeching and Marples for the destruction of a proud line and system and society that was just and fair and decent. I look forward to a ride on the legendary S& D at Midsomer Norton, Gartell and one day Shillingstone and hopefully other locations as well. Compulsory purchase boy needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history like a dinosaur. To those of you who go out to these lines and voluntarily give up your precious time thank you for what you are doing, I hope it will fire up the younger generations into giving up virtual worlds and the shllow culture of celebrity that we seem to have to day. The real heroes to me are that generation who lived through two World Wars and endured the most appalling sacrifices and then had to rebuild our country 1946 onwards. People like the late Ivo Peters who must have spent considerable time and money with capturing the memories and images of the line and of course the S& D staff like the late Donald Beale. We owe it to them to rebuild the S& D and many other lines like it.

broadstone meeting

(All copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing 28.4.1977)

This via Geoff Newman -

I thought you might like to let people know that there is to be a meeting of the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society next Monday, 19 March when there will be talk on the Broadstone Railway Accident of 1890. It’s to be held at the Allendale Centre in Wimborne, tickets £3.00 by ringing 01202 888368. Unfortunately I can’t go but I thought some of the local members might be interested.

 

blandford interloper

(Photo courtesy Jim Type, copyright C L Caddy Collection)

When the Western Region took over the northern end of the S&D in 1958 the locomotive variety increased even more!

I'm still surprised to find a pannier tank this far south at Blandford, pulling what is clearly a rake of southern region coaches, which must have made an odd sight!

I particularly liked the lines of the pannier tanks despite being GWR! Remember that if you're modelling the S&D, or even if you're a locomotive owner itching to run over the S&D in the future, we can get away with almost anything - and still be authentic!

the S&D community

There are rumours - probably apocryphal - the an 'important member' of the S&D community recently refused to give an interview with a video company about the S&D because 'everything that could be said about the S&D has been'.

This highlights two big points. The first is that the potential interviewee clearly considers that the S&D exists purely in the past. This is the big fracture between the nostalgists who knew the old S&D and the far bigger demographic that see the S&D as primarily a present and future thing. There is of course a third group, people like me who see the S&D as a phenomena of the past, present and future.

The other point is the ease that somebody like me, who normally detests the PC, modernist and rather lazy use of '(insert anything) community' finds it so easy to use in this case. Because there really is an S&D community, and it's a growing, very cool and dynamic thing. It is very much an idea of the future more than anything. And I suspect that everyone that reads this blog is very clearly a member of it.

There are some VERY silly differences between people currently restoring the S&D. As the New S&D we have kept very firmly apart from this, and always intend to do so. We are a unifying rather than dividing force. We quite simply want to see the whole S&D restored, both as a linear work of art and as a modern, forward-looking, transport system. We can clearly see the benefits of restoring the bulk of the 1950s/60s S&D infrastructure - it will encourage steam specials on the route, will give the whole line a human scale, will increase the potential employment prospects of the line, will allow us to sieze a myriad of profitable opportunities and make people like us! But we also see the absolute necessity of being an economically viable, super efficient common carrier for freight and passengers in the 21st century. As the road network fails we need to be in place, as simple as that. If for the next couple of decades we can ride on the back of the heritage movement as we restore sections of the route then that will help all of us.

You can see where this is going. The New S&D has something for the WHOLE S&D community. Not only can those who love steam and loved the line as it was see that what we will do will appeal to them but also the people who live along the line - who really just want their trains back - can see that we also want to give them that, a super efficient, cheap, climate-friendly and sustainable way to keep moving as the oil age collapses.

The S&D community is HUGE, certainly numbering in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It embraces the original S&D community - the workers who knew the original line. It encompasses a good proportion of railway enthusiasts who loved this line, whether they knew it or not when it was running (and where of course I originally came from!). It includes all those people working towards making the UK a sustainable economy. It also includes all of those people in the railway industry who are developing our primary transport system in the 21st century. But the biggest tranche of members come from those hundreds of thousands of people that live along the route and will be the main users of the trains when they return.

before closure

A couple of excellent shots from Adrian Vaughan. He has sent us around 100 pictures of the old line so I'll be loading these to the website in the stations section and also the fledgling loco section over the coming weeks. Eventually we will offer these on CD as a collection once we have more dates from Adrian.

new year surprise

Whilst out and about on the southern end of the line Paul Beard found this interesting survivor at Corfe Mullen.

This is the one place where I remember seeing the S&D with track just before this section closed to freight traffic in 1969, sadly a few years before I started taking photos. It's nice to see that there is still a pretty obvious S&D presence here. Of course in a few years time trains should be running through here again, giving the residents of Blandford a high speed modern transport link into Poole and Bournemouth.

(Photos © Paul Beard Corfe Mullen 1.1.2010)

thanks Adrian

Adrian Vaughan has very kindly allowed us access to his excellent collection of S&D photos. These will be utilised by this blog and of course the New S&D website and also selected ones will be available to purchase as quality prints over time, raising funds for the route.

It is very important that the history of the S&D, which many thought ended in 1966, is a living and developing thing! Whilst our prinicple aim of course is to restore the railway we are also very aware of the hugely important historical significance of our line, both to railway enthusiasts and people living along the route.

We are always happy to accept offers such as Adrian's, and it is a way of securing your valuable photos so that they can be enjoyed by generations not yet born, who as well as being able to travel on a reborn S&D will also be able to see how it was in the past, both before and after its temporary closure.

then, now, and the future

I received this card from a friend today, which is particularly appropriate as our next meeting will be on the right of this scene. This is of course classic Pines Express at Blandford. The photo below shows the amazing 'progress' made at this site!


Mmmm. From heart of the community to a bland and characterless corner of a dying town.

If you ever doubt or misunderstand what we are about, it is to switch this scene back to how it was - but with modern fast passenger and freight trains serving a thriving community, interspersed with steam specials bringing even more trade to our busy line!

Looking back at that first picture you do wonder how people were so short sighted that they allowed the S&D to close. Blandford station was close to the centre of town, even with closure of the rest of the route this section survived for another 3 years for freight - how did locals and rail enthusiasts allow it to go?? Surely it didn't take a lot of thought to understand that this section would have provided an excellent service into Bournemouth and Poole for the large town of Blandford, particularly taking into account the poor state of the roads in the area. Still, this is the 21st century, not a couple of bland and characterless decades in the 20th, and we won't ever make the same mistakes again.

I get a feeling that this will be the first part of the old S&D to be restored for real trains. I'm itching to announce wonderful news about a location on this section of our route, but I have to keep it under my hat for a little while longer!

Binegar 1967

Another interesting shot from the Geograph site. This is Binegar station in September 1967 after closure and before track ifting.

Image Copyright Tudor Williams. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

prepare the stocks

(Evercreech Junction 1968 Jeffery Grayer)

I was leafing through a copy of Colin Maggs' 'The Last Years of the Somerset and Dorset' and found the chapter on the run down of the line really interesting. The S&D was closed despite an assurance from the (surprise surprise!) Labour government of the day that no major railway closures would be implemented without a review of the Beeching Report. Evil witch (surely an oxymoron?) Barbara Castle went ahead and closed the line anyway, making it the longest line closed under Beeching. The bits about the poor people of Wellow and Shoscombe (in particular) having to cope without their trains was heartbreaking. At one point a minibus was put on to replace the trains! Nobody on this side of a lunatic asylum could ever claim that was progress. From having fast modern transport using a dedicated right of way they were suddenly thrown back a hundred years and forced to crowd into a six seater bus that was expected to crawl along little single track roads and then fight its way through the Bath traffic. (This is starting to sound like the Cambridge Guided Busway LOL!)

This madness needs to be dissected in the 21st century to find out what really inspired the closure of the original S&D. Perhaps a few of the perpetrators are still alive and can be called to account. The deliberate switching of freight to less direct routes, the deliberate running down of stations and rolling stock, the dreadful timetable that made almost every journey unbearable if not impossible, the refusal to consider track rationalising or using DMUs - the whole thing was a national disgrace.

It merely confirms to me that the S&D should never have closed, which basically means that there is now no reason for it not to be rebuilt.

Next year the new limited company charged with rebuilding and operating the line will be born. Hopefully the board will, as well as including prominent local businesspeople, have the Chairs of Midsomer Norton, Shillingstone, the New S&D and Washford as members.

At the same time I'll be working on 'The Case for the S&D' taking an incisive look at the hard-to-believe mischief used to deprive hundreds of thousands of people of their trains. And the now unarguable case for bringing them back.

I'm glad I'm on THIS side of the fence and not theirs!!

beauty in the built environment

Two (deliberately non railway) shots snapped as we drove through Barrow Gurney the other day. This is the view from alongside the road and it got me thinking why every bit of roadside isn't like this. Okay, it needs a bit of effort to maintain, but does it cost any more than the alternatives? If anything (using propagation) this would cost far less than a brick or even block wall.

My point? The S&D always seemed to fit so snugly into its environment. It actually enhanced the scene. Think of Midford. Imagine Midford with a motorway through it! The S&D made Midford an even more magical place than it was before the rails came (and after they left!)

My wider point is that we could, if we choose, make all our built environment attractive. I'm sure that once we no longer have oil we will have the time to make the places we live in artistic and attractive and on a human scale. Slums, high rises, shopping malls, ring roads and railway stations with bus shelters will all become things of the past. We will have made genuine progress.
This informs my view of the New S&D. That the stations should be in the classic style, staffed, with full facilities. That signalboxes and lineside buildings will be appropriate to the wider scene, and not knocked together with no aestetic considerations but just done on the cheap.

Rail has one other huge advantage over roads. On roads there is a constant stream of traffic and noise, but even the busiest railways have long stretches of calm between trains. Between the trains the careful blending of track, buildings and scenery is actually life enhancing.

the secret garden

(18.2.2009)

Under where the Shillingstone road branches off from the A350 to Blandford there is, if you know where to find it, a secret bit of the S&D. There's a short stretch of cutting then a long (and very well preserved) underbridge. In common with many other engineering features on this section of the route (which was always single track from Templecombe to Blandford) it is only wide enough for one track. This is probably the reason this section was never double-tracked - although I suspect that eventually it will be!

It seems amazing that this quiet, rural and almost totally hidden part of the S&D once rang with the sounds of 9Fs, 7Fs, long express passenger trains and heavy goods twenty four hours a day. Let's hope it's not too long before modern transport returns to this corner of Dorset.