The Record Shot

LITTLEHAMPTON

(All 21.6.1986 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

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A succession of pictures taken on 21 June 1986 from the former footbridge at Littlehampton station. This was just before the NSE colours started appearing on trains, and this was just an everyday scene (repeated six times!) Much has now changed, 30 years on. The slam door trains of course have gone, the track layout has been changed and the footbridge has been removed, replaced by a far less photographer friendly one closer to the station.

These days I try to get a lot of atmosphere shots, in an attempt to set the trains within the context of the wider social scene. But I still take plenty of record shots as well. I find the more everyday and mundane the scene the more interesting they become as years pass. Far too many railway photographers take the same shots of steam specials, of the glamorous but slightly fake stuff. Or they pop along to a heritage line and take lots of 3/4 front view shots concentrating on the engine. All the time there are fantastic shots that never get taken!

I also hear a lot of complaints about 'railways not being as interesting as they used to be'. This has always been said, and probably always will be. It's true to an extent of course, but we are all affected by this feeling that we've just missed out. I did just miss out on everyday steam, at least for photos, but I did at least see real steam on action on the network - at Ryde, at Lyminster, at Waterloo. But I got to photograph the class 33s and 50s on passenger duties, the WR diesel-hydraulics on the sea wall at Dawlish, the Bridport branch, Swanage, Okehampton, Kemp Town and a good few other lines that have closed or become heritage lines.

Just get out there and snap and don't complain! Future generations will be grateful that you did, and envy what YOU saw ...

Bow 1977

BOW

(All 9.6.1977 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

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Five years after the Okehampton line closed to passengers I took these photos of Bow station.

I'd travelled on the route in the summer of 1972, just before closure to passengers. At that time the line was still double track and I'd managed to get the seat at the front of the DMU which gave me a view of the line ahead. It was impressively engineered and was clearly a former main line. The trains still stopped then at Bow, as well as the other intermediate stations at North Tawton and Sampford Courtenay. The whole trip up from Exeter had been steeped in Southern Railway heritage, despite the line being by then under the control of the Western Region. I was glad I got to travel on this lovely stretch of line as at the time it perhaps seemed that it was gone for good.

It isn't of course. Passenger trains run again - after a fashion - to Okehampton, at least in the summer. But the big development of course is the inevitability of the line's reopening through to Plymouth, inevitable because with sea level rise accelerating and storms getting worse the fantastic line through Dawlish is under a death sentence, although that may well be an extended one. The effect of storm damage to the coastal route is to effectively cut off much of Devon, including the resorts of Torquay and Paignton, together with Plymouth, plus the whole of Cornwall, from the rail network. This of course happened a couple of years ago, and the economic effects were dreadful. Each year the coastal route becomes more vulnerable and more expensive to keep open. A second route is absolutely essential and most of it of course is still there - the line to Meldon to the north of Dartmoor, and the line from Plymouth up to Bere Alston on the western flank, with reopening a further six miles to Tavistock in the pipeline. The stretch in between, only around 20 miles, is still there waiting for the tracks to be relaid.

Hopefully full use will be made of this asset in the future, with regular express and local services (plus freight of course) making full use of the brillinatly engineered ex-SR route between Plymouth and Exeter, feeding far more traffic on to the Exeter-Salisbury-Waterloo route. Capacity needs to be increased, but it's all possible with redoubling of the Exeter-Salisbury line now under way. And hopefully Bow station, and all the other intermediate stations along the route, also get their trains back. Let's do this properly!

Ilfracombe - I'll be back!

(Ilfracombe 1975 copyright Peter Brabham)

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During the insane rail closures of the sixties culling a few uneconomic branch lines wasn't enough for the people in London and their intentions soon switched to destroying main lines. Devon suffered a great deal from this madness, losing the main Bere Alston to Okehampton line, the branch to Bude (the last couple of miles were of course in Cornwall), the Kingsbridge branch, the Taunton to Barnstaple cross-country route, and, from Barnstaple Junction south and north to Torrington and Ilfracombe.

By the time the Ilfracombe line was closed in 1970 the heart had been ripped out of Devon's railways, particularly the ex-Southern routes. The Ilfracombe line was a sad shadow of itself; once the busy terminus of two routes from London in its last years it was a long single-track siding with a DMU shuttling between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe, its previous passengers forced off onto far less glamorous and efficient transport - cars, buses or, increasingly, aeroplanes taking holidaymakers off to the sun.

Even in 1970 it was clear the closure was madness and that the line needed reopening quickly. The track stayed in place for 5 more years and a preservation group was soon set up, a group that pretty much everyone assumed would easily succeed, but it wasn't to be. Financial shenanigans and outright fraud destroyed the new baby, and the line was lifted, leaving Ilfracombe stranded from modern transport. 

And that remains the situation to this day. Except of course things are stirring everywhere, people are shouting for their railways back. A Facebook group has grown enormously in recent weeks and the members are about to set up a real functioning restoration group. Forty years on from the collapse of scheme I scheme II is about to launch into a very different world, where trains have never been as busy, roads are failing and people want their communities back.

Ilfracombe is part of a much bigger thing, it can be both part of that and a leader in rail restoration. I recommend everybody join as soon as the group is launched (which will of course be announced on here!)

 

(Barnstaple Junction 30.8.1972 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

(Barnstaple Town copyright Rail Thing)

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The Ilfracombe Branch of the London & South Western Railway (LSWR), ran between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe in North Devon. The branch opened as a single-track line in 1874, but was sufficiently popular that it needed to be upgraded to double-track in 1889.

The 1-in-36 gradient between Ilfracombe and Mortehoe stations was one of the steepest sections of double track railway line in the country, and was most certainly the fiercest climb from any terminus station in the UK. In the days of steam traction, it was often necessary to double-head departing passenger trains.

'Named' trains like the Atlantic Coast Express and the Devon Belle both started and terminated at Ilfracombe.

Despite nearly a century of bringing much-needed revenue into this remote corner of the county, passenger numbers dropped dramatically in the years following the Second World War due to a massive increase in the number of cars on Britain's roads, and the line finally closed in 1970.
Much of the course of the line is still visible today, and sections of it have been converted into public cycleways.

History

On 20 July 1874 a railway link was opened between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe. The line was originally laid as a single-track light railway, which restricted the type of trains that could use it.
Popularity led to expansion, and much of the line was converted to double track between 1889 and 1891. This was a major exercise, requiring the rebuilding of most stations, and cutting a second bore for the Slade tunnel.

The line was mentioned as a candidate for closure in the Reshaping of British Railways report (The Beeching Axe) review, in 1963, but it was not closed by British Railways until 1970. Indeed, steam-hauled passenger services and freight operations ceased on 7 September 1964 (with one special running on 3 October 1965), and the rationalisation of the line began. DMU services began, the Waterloo through services were stopped, and the line was down-graded to single track on 25 November 1967.

It was in May 1967, that the Network for Development Plans were issued by Barbara Castle, the then Labour Minister of Transport following a study. Where lines were at the remunerative end of the scale, such as the main trunk routes and some secondary lines, these would be developed. But those that failed to meet the financial criterion, but served a social need were to be retained and subsidised under the 1968 Transport Act. The problem would be for lines that were not in the above mentioned categories could be candidates for closure as they did not form part of the basic railway network. The Ilfracombe line was one of those that fell into this category. It was a line that may well have carried considerable traffic, and perhaps made a small profit, but it did not meet the Government's social, economic and commercial criteria for retention.

The line was closed on 5 October 1970 the last train being on 3 October. The final train, an 8-car Class 118 DMU, was packed to bursting point.

There was an abortive attempt at saving the line, in the early 1970s, but the preservation movement was in its infancy and the project was to founder as it could not raise the required sum to purchase the line outright. This was because BR had valued the line at £410,000 in 1974, and certainly BR was criticised for charging market values for a potential heritage railway that wanted to preserve it. It must be appreciated that the BR board was under instruction from the Ministry to fix the highest price possible in an attempt to recoup funds to offset the deficit that the line produced.

The last train was formed of a single inspection saloon hauled by a Class 25, 25 063, on Wednesday 26 February 1975. This carried engineers inspecting the condition of the track for possible reinstatement of services. However this was not to be and track lifting commenced in June 1975. The following link has a number of rare pictures of the last train on the line.

The distinctive curved steel girder bridge over the River Taw in Barnstaple was demolished in 1977, adding a significant cost to any future reopening scheme.

Tavistock Ho!

(Bere Alston 29.8.1972 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

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News just in is that the Bere Alston to Tavistock line will now be rebuilt. ('And about time'!) I suspect most of you are thinking.

Take a look at the rather dire picture illustrating this piece. I'd only just passed 16 and had only been taking photos for a year is my excuse, but in a way it captures everything about this line. It was a snatched shot taken from the Gunnislake train as it reversed at the station. There are a few passengers on the platform, which shows that even in the nadir of rail travel in the UK this line was still fairly well used.

There's a very evocative final paragraph in the seminal work on these routes - The Withered Arm by T E Roche. The book had described this network of routes, and the sense of shock that a MAIN line could be closed. The author takes a little walk beyond Bere Alston, just a short while after closure, and almost talks himself into believing the line is still open, because the exit to the north is on a curve (as can be seen in the photo above) and nothing seems to have changed. And then he suddenly chances upon the buffers and stares in disbelief at the empty trackbed beyond.

Like the Waverley route the main SR route to Plymouth once boasted a network of branches off it, and these all needed to be closed before the final axe could be yielded. But the Callington branch was different, road services could NEVER replace the trains because of the way the Tamar cut a meandering course, isolating village en route from easy road access. So the line remained, though spitefully the last few miles from Gunnislake to Callington WERE closed. What it meant was that a good few miles of the old main line, from which the Gunnislake line branched off also had to be kept open. Six miles north of Bere Alston was the large and important town of Tavistock, which once boasted two stations, but this short piece of the line also had to close, so fanatical were the axemen of the time. Further on, at Meldon Viaduct, the main line reappeared, freight for a few miles, then Okehampton was allowed a passenger service - but even this was closed (to passengers) in 1972. I was there a few weeks before this stretch of line also closed to passengers, approached from Exeter of course. Freight kept going, and in recent years passenger services have been reintroduced on a few days a year. The line lives on here as well, if currently truncated!

Of course back in 1972 many people seriously believed the railways were finished, a withering rump remaining for those too poor to afford cars. Things have changed completely now, with rail in the ascendent and busier than it's been for almost a hundred years. We feel sorry for those people that are still tied to their cars, and now it's roads that are in decline (terminal this time).

Yet we're stuck with a fragmented rail network, designed for a world that's gone, and we need to get our railways back as quickly as we can, before the roads fail completely. There is the additional problem of climate change or, as it's now being rebranded, climate chaos. We all saw the terrible scenes at Dawlish last winter, when we were hit by ten storms in three months thanks to the stuck jetstream, directly caused by rapidly rising temperatures over the Arctic. We may find that many future winters are as extreme or more so, coupled with rapidly rising sea levels this spells the slow end of the 'alternative' route between Exeter and Plymouth via Dawlish, and the rapid rise of the Okehampton 'alternative'. Whilst we may get away with closing the ONLY route to Torbay, Plymouth and resurgent Kernow for now, and for a few weeks, that won't be acceptable in years to come when the road option is no longer available.

This is the REAL agenda behind the reopening of Tavistock. It may be dressed differently for public consumption, but I think we all know what this is really about. With Tavistock back on the network that gap to Meldon will seem tiny - smaller than the Borders Railway that will reopen next year for example (and through more challenging terrain!) Within a few years no doubt a solid and financed plan to close the link and give the west a second route to Plymouth, Torbay and Kernow will emerge. 

But this is just one reopening. To build resilience and keep our economy moving as the oil age ends we'll need a thousand .....