(All copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing 4.2.1973)
A few more shots from my trip to Itchen Abbas on the last day of the Mid Hants Watercress line.
I still feel guilty to this day that I never actually paid for this journey! I had a ticket to Eastleigh but tight connections meant I couldn't get to the ticket office there to pay for the onward journey! Of course from that point the train was so packed that there was no chance of buying a ticket on board.
It was one of those dull February days which, back in 1973, pretty much guaranteed that your photos would come out overexposed or hazy or generally flat. For some reason these seem to have captured the sombre atmosphere of the day and didn't come out too bad either, so 42 years on I'm still quite proud of them as I'd only been taking pics for about 18 months and was just 16.
Itchen Abbas must miss its railway, and look jealously at Ropley and Medstead and Alresford that still have trains, albeit steam ones. I do think this piece of the route will eventually reopen, it's far too valuable a route to lose and it certainly would never have closed had it lasted a few years longer. But for now it's a backwater, stuck in a sort of transport limbo for a while longer.
A few years later - 24.6.1976 (copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)
brilliant record of a old line and station
ReplyDeleteThank you for this narrative! I only travelled on it once in 1966 on a late Saturday night W'lo to Weymouth diversion. I have a couple of Itchen Abbas platform tickets that were pre-nationalisation in late 60's. Sunday 30 April '17 An Illustrated Talk on the railway by Peter Clarke 2.30pm in Itchen Stoke church
ReplyDeleteA lovely record. I was too young to travel on this section but am a member of the MHR so travelled between Alresford and Alton on many occasions right from 1977 when Ropley was the terminus. Unfortunately the site at Itchen Abbas as well as parts of Alresford and Kings Worthy have been built on now as well as the M3 cutting it. Can't see this section ever re-opening but we can but hope.
ReplyDeleteNo the railway sold the cutting west of Alresford to the school. They filled it in and it's now the school playing field and of course the new houses built on the railway course at Itchen Abbas station. Line will never go back to Winchester. They should have brought the line to Itchen Abbas in 1975 and not just from Alton to Alresford
ReplyDeleteAt the time they could not raise the money to buy Itchen Abbas Station
DeleteGreat pics, I visited in April 2022 to see the remaining bits of platform and film between Winchester Junction and Alresford.
ReplyDeleteSorry should have identified myself, it's Chris of Dumpman Films :)
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