creekmoor

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

Today's look back is at Creekmoor Halt, just north of Poole. This (like Shoscombe and Single Hill) was one of the later additions to the route, the platforms being classic Southern Railway precast concrete sections made at Exmouth Junction.

This will become a busy station in the future serving this built up area and will doubtless see shorter commuter workings (perhaps ex Wimborne, Ringwood or Blandford) as well as main line trains.

shoscombe

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

Shoscombe and Single Hill Halt lay between Wellow and Radstock and was, surprisingly, one of the busiest stations on the S&D. The reason for this was that roads to the village of Shoscombe were difficult to negotiate, a problem to this day.

This was one of the hardest stations to find any photos of, this is aparticularly nice example!

This section of line was double track and always busy (at least up to 1958!) There is already some support for the line to return in Shoscombe but we haven't had any real look at the area yet. Of course with Radstock to Bath being a stage one reinstatement (along with Blandford-Poole) the people of Shoscombe shouldn't have too much longer to wait for their trains to return, a day I suspect will be long remembered in the village as they are reconnected to the outside world by a form of transpport that DOES have a future!

not just the future

It's been such a busy year for the S&D with a focus on the future of the route, from building the organisation through to acquiring Midford, that perhaps the history of this fantastic line has been overlooked.

Part of the New S&D remit is to completely record the history of the route, not just the nuts and bolts of operation etc, but perhaps even more importantly the memories and experiences of people who knew the line - a history of course that is now getting its second wind as the line starts to reappear after what will, in future decades, be seen as a rather odd temporary closure of a major trunk line with a fantastic future.

Most of you will have seen the stations section on the website but David has just added a 'memories' feature for each station. The first is this gem from Anthony Chivers regarding Shoscombe and Single Hill -

I was born in 2 Railway Bungalows, Shoscombe in 1945. The two semidetached bungalows were situated some 200 yards west along the track from the Halts booking office. Initially my grandmother had the tenancy due to the fact that my grandfather Archibold Tapper, who worked as a ganger on the line, was killed whilst crossing the line at the Stonelittleton road bridge. Later when my grandmother died my mother was allowed to take on the tenancy.

When the Halt was opened my auntie Rene Tapper took the position of booking clerk. After a few years my mother Margaret Tapper took over as booking clerk and continued for 40 years until the line closed. Rene Tapper married William Beeho, who was the signalman at Writhlington collery until the line closed, and my mother became Margaret Chivers after marrying my father Richard, a miner at Writhington collery.

My mother walked to the booking office 8 times a day Monday to Saturday arriving 10 minutes before and leaving 10 minutes after each stopping train. The first west bound train from Bath arrived at 07:25h and the last east bound train from Templecombe arrived at 19:40h. My mother therefore only worked a total of 2 hours 40 minutes each day.
If any of you reading this have memories of any of the stations on the route - whether from the first opening period to 1966, the lost years up to 2000 or thereabouts or from the slow rebuilding of the route at Midsomer Norton, Gartell, Shillingstone and Midford - please email me at leysiner@aol.com and we'll add them to the website.

The Shoscombe entry is also here.

a very sad story

When the original S&D closed 'replacement' bus services were implemented as a sop to those who rightly lamented the end of modern transport along the route. These services didn't last long as they obviously couldn't begin to offer the speed and comfort that the trains had - even in pre-modernisation days.

Wellow, which once had a superb rail service (along with Shoscombe and Single Hill to the south) was thrown back into the transport dark ages with villagers having to either move back to civilization (ie to somewhere with a train service!) or, horror of horrors, having to buy a car to keep themselves mobile. Because of the lie of the land and roads the replacement bus services couldn't begin to compensate for what the villagers had lost. This is what passed for progress in the horrible sixties.

When the replacement bus services inevitably stopped the villagers came up with an idea - to buy their own bus and keep some semblance of belonging to a wider world. This was four years ago. Today that bus (or more correctly minibus) hit the road.

This was featured on the local TV news. It was one of the most achingly poignant pieces of reporting I'd seen for years.

Poor Wellow, once a stop on the world famous S&D, with regular local trains connecting with expresses to the south coast, Midlands and north, site of numerous heavy freight workings, was reduced to relying on a tiny, uneconomic toy bus to keep their foothold in the 21st century.

But of course it won't be that many years before Wellow gets its trains back. With regular PPMs and electric units once again connecting at Bath, the villagers of Wellow (and Shoscombe and Single Hill) will once again be able to get where they want to quickly, cheaply and cleanly. This brief few decades where they were abandoned by the rest of the world will soon be forgotten. Roll on the New S&D! Perhaps we'll even nab that minibus for our museum of transport!

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!!