singleton

Before opening.

The subway in 2002.

(Copyright Chris Bedford Dumpman Films)

How it is now.

FACEBOOK - FLASHBACK SUSSEX

Nestling in a gap in the South Downs a few miles north of Chichester is one of the most fascinating closed stations of all.

Singleton's a small, fairly quiet village, but it holds a secret! A big closed station, now masquerading as a vineyard. 

If you're driving up from Chichester there's a clue as to why Singelton had such a big station Goodwood Race Course, which sits high on the Downs to the east of the village.

Singleton was on the Chichester to Midhurst line, opened in 1881. Traffic was always fairly sparse, but Singleton was different. It was designed as the station for Goodwood. It had four platforms connected by a subway, buffets, holding sidings for trains, a large goods shed and TWO signalboxes!  Whilst popular with King Edward VII the hoi polloi preferred Chichester station as the walk to Goodwood was easier!

Other stations on the line were far more basic with single platforms, but all sported elegant tile hung buildings in a similar style to those on the Bluebell and Cuckoo lines. Passenger trains finished in 1935, freight on this section continued to 1953 and the final section (south of Lavant) lost its trains in the late 1980s.

But the stations are still there (apart from Midhurst) although serving very different purposes these days. I never had the guts to sneak into Singleton and take pictures unfortunately, but Lavant was a regular haunt for me in the early 1970s. This was a fantastic line cutting as it did through the Downs. Hopefully it will return in the future.

Film of the route (plus loads of other great Sussex stuff!!)

More info (via Wikipedia) 

Singleton railway station served the village of Singleton in the county of West Sussex in England. The station was on the former line between Chichester and Midhurst. It was opened on 11 July 1881.
The station, designed by T. H. Myres, was built in a grand way by its owners the London Brighton and South Coast Railway, which included four platforms, with a subway linking them and the 'Country House' style station building, buffets, long sidings for awaiting trains, a large goods shed for dealing with freight, and two signal boxes to control the station. The main reason for this large building was to deal with visitors to the Goodwood Racecourse, but passengers preferred to use Chichester Station mostly due to the walk uphill to the course from Singleton. It was one of the most visited stations by the LBSCR Royal train as the prince of Wales (later Edward VII) used to 'weekend' with the James family at West Dean House. Little other traffic was ever found, and despite all of the grand hopes, passenger services were withdrawn on 6 July 1935. Freight services remained until these were withdrawn on 28 August 1953 by British Railways. The station is now in use by a vineyard owner.

trains at the pub

(All 24.4.2011 - copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

FACEBOOK - MINIATURE RAILWAYS

Until a few years ago the Hunter's Rest pub near Clutton had an attraction almost unique in the UK, if not the world - its very own miniature railway!

We visited just the once, planning to make it a regular trip. But sadly a short while after the one trip the line was suddenly closed. No idea why, perhaps the pub changed hands, there were insurance issues or they found a busier site.

But I did manage to get some photos on the day and caught it in the sun with trains running. No steam sadly, but at least I have the evidence that it did exist and it wasn't just some weird half remembered dream!

Website.

Out of date info!

by train in the road to the airfield

Copyright John McIvor

In the street!

FACEBOOK - FARNBOROURGH RAE RAILWAY

I first heard about the RAE railway at Farnborough from an old Railway Magazine, typically a few years after it had closed. It seemed almost mythical as there were no photos to hand back then. A steam loco pulling a few wagons down a suburban street as late as 1968? Seemed unlikely.

Nowadays with the help of the internet it's been a little easier to get info and pictures, though they are still pretty rare! The line ran from Farnborough station goods yard for about a mile to the RAE establishment (still famous for its annual air show). As you can see from the photos it had a fair stretch of real street running. As late as 1967 you could have followed the steam train up the street to the station, then watched steam expresses roaring through.

Street running isn't quite as rare as we sometimes think. Everyone knows the Weymouth Tramway of course, but a fair few towns had industrial lines that used street running for short distances, especially in dock areas. I'm still finding out about new ones most weeks. We do of course still have a street running line in Bristol, which still uses steam.

Video!!

Excellent article on the line.

Trainbits article.

on the frontline

Dawlish 50 021 10.9.1984

Dawlish 47 353 10.9.1984

Dawlish 10.9.1984

2.9.2014

2.9.2014

4.9.2014

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143 621 4.9.2014

Dawlish Warren 10.9.1984 

 

31.8.2014

Dawlish Warren 10.9.1984

FACEBOOK - TRAINS ON THE SEA WALL AT DAWLISH

I took my first ever railway photo (indeed photo of any kind!) at Dawlish 

Warren on 9 July 1971. We were staying at Warren Sands campsite just along the way and the railway was an inevitable draw to a 14 year old with the beginnings of an interest in railways. I've been back a few times since on day trips, but got to spend a whole week there last week.

The line has been in the news recently and it certainly has an atmosphere of being in the front line in the coming 'war' against us and climate change. There are now strong moves to get a diversionary route or two in place in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the disgrace of last winter's inevitable six week closure.

I think we all need to visit this line as much as we can and record it in all its moods. It's now probably the only railway in the UK that may close in the future. That would be a tragedy.

We're planning to buy a caravan in Dawlish Warren (safely up on high ground and well away from any cliff edges of course) in 2016. My plan is to visit regularly and record the last decades of this line. 

My first railway interest was stirred by the Gothic remains of recently closed railways in Sussex - Fittleworth, Bramber, Lavant. And then I got deeper in, visiting the Selsey Tramway and others. Holidays took me further afield and I got to see lines in their last years - Kingswear, Okehampton, Yarmouth to Lowestoft. Dawlish was an eye-opener, an interesting (and open!) main line! Of course in the 70s it was Westerns and Peaks and class 47s, with first generation DMUs filling the gaps, plenty of freight etc. There were even still semaphore signals, and the line was haunted by the recent passing of steam, exemplified by the postcards being sold at Dawlish Warren, many of them featuring classic steam on the sea wall.

Steam has now returned of course, and we got to see the double headed Atlantic Coast Express on the sea wall. Most of the rest of the trains seemed rather dull with the occasional HST adding a touch of flair and history, and an image of the future, amongst the Voyagers and modern DMUs.

So expect a lot more from me on this stunning line over the coming years (and the next few days).

Tavistock Ho!

(Bere Alston 29.8.1972 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

FACEBOOK - EXETER TO PLYMOUTH

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 .....

Rails Around Chichester

(All copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing, 15.8.2014)

We had a big family wedding last weekend, all centred around Chichester cathedral. I managed to wangle a quick trip to the station and took the photos above.

This whole area is where I grew up and many of my early photos were taken on the Coastway line between Brighton and Portsmouth. I often visited Chichester to walk up the old Midhurst line to Lavant and down the old Selsey Tramway to Hunston. I first visited Lavant in 1971, just a year after the regular sugar beet trains finished, but I do remember track at the station and beyond, where a buffer stop in the long grass marked the end of the Midhurst line. As the years passed the track was lifted as trains only ran as far as the gravel works near Brandy Hole Lane. Eventually even this short stub closed and the track was lifted - when I moved to Bosham around 2000 the line had gone. 

(Both Chichester station 21.8.1986 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

Lavant 24.6.1976

Above both 15.5.1977 - top shot shows the end of the line by Brandy Hole Bridge. The lower picture shows Lavant, now trackless of course. I never got to photograph the track in situ here.

The other branch from Chichester was the Selsey Tramway, a Colonel Stephens' line, and often claimed to be the most ramshackle of them all, which is saying something! The top shot must be very near the line's opening, or possibly the opening day itself, when the line took delivery of  its lovely new carriages. The bottom shot is more typical, with one of the petrol railcars waiting for passengers. Both lines from Chichester closed to passengers in 1935. There are often rumblings in the city and Selsey for the tramway to be reopened, it would be a most useful (and cheap to run) line today. The line north to Midhurst would be a spectacular 'heritage' line, cutting as it does through the South Downs and serving the racecourse at Goodwood. It may well be that both lines reopen in the coming decades, and Chichester regains its status as a junction.

Bristol's secret heritage line

Henbury from across the water.

Street running.

The Ruston (called The Bug on the railway).

Double slip.

Retro.

Portbury on shed, repositioned for work!

Tracks and cranes.

(All pics copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing 6.8.2014)

FACEBOOK - BRISTOL HARBOUR RAILWAY

It was my birthday today (again). Normally we go on a rail trip but the weather forecast for today was so awful we went to see the first showing of the new Inbetweeners film instead, followed by a trip into Bristol for a meal and many cocktails at Las Iguanas. The weather was actually fantastic, the forecast rain coming through overnight rather than in the morning and as we came out of the restaurant we decided to go for a walk along the harbourside.

Soon I thought I heard a diesel horn but put it down to the cocktails. Then across the water we saw activity on Bristol's secret heritage line, and it was indeed a diesel shunter. The two steam locos, Henbury and Portbury, were out too. I'd never seen the harbour line operating other than on occasional weekends. Problem was it was the other side of the water. Luckily, being an honorary Bristolian now, I knew there was a ferry up by the SS Great Britain that would get us across. Amazingly there was a ferry waiting and we quickly made the short trip across the water. We followed the railway along the street section and I just caught the Ruston diesel pass and then vanish up towards the Create Centre.

We chatted to a couple of the blokes working on the line to get the story. Henbury was just out of ticket and they'd been cleaning her boiler out. Same with Portbury who will now be pulling the trains for a while. The locos also needed repositioning so that Portbury would be at the front of the loco shed, with Henbury behind. Luckily we also got to see the two steam locos in the shed and I got to take a few photos.

The Bristol Harbour Railway is a real gem, but seems little known outside of Bristol. It links three major tourist attractions (one of national importance) - the SS Great Britain, The M Shed (free Museum of Bristol) and the fantastic Create Centre, which looks at sustainability, climate change, peak oil etc, all the stuff that's so important now. It's not a long line but it has a lot of variety including a fair stretch of street running, a harbouside stretch, a 'country' stretch, a run along a river and some urban bits as well. Highly recommended! Passengers also get to sit in open wagons ...

For those of you interested in disused lines there are plenty of them on both sides of the harbour and at each end of the Harbour Railway. The current terminus of the railway at Create is only about 300 metres from the (soon to be reopened to passengers) line to Portishead. You won't be stuck for things to do and see if you visit!

More info

Website

Wikipedia

The Bristol Harbour Railway is a preserved railway in Bristol, England operated by Bristol Museums Galleries & Archives. It runs for about a mile along the south side of Bristol Harbour, starting at M Shed (the former Bristol Industrial Museum(51.4483°N 2.5969°W)), stopping at the SS Great Britain, and ending at B Bond Warehouse (home of the Create Centre), one of the large tobacco warehouses beside Cumberland Basin (51.4466°N 2.6213°W).

The original Bristol Harbour Railway was a joint venture by the GWR and sister company the Bristol and Exeter Railway, opened in 1872 between Temple Meads and the Floating Harbour. Its route included a tunnel under St Mary Redcliffe church and a steam-powered bascule bridge over the entrance locks at Bathurst Basin. In 1876 the railway was extended by ¹⁄₂ mile (0.80 km) to Wapping Wharf.

By Act of Parliament of 1897, the GWR was authorised to make an eastwards connection between the BHR and the Portishead Railway, and then create the West Loop at Ashton Gate which would face south towards Tauntonand Exeter Central. This connection would allow a doubling of BHR rail access capacity to the Great Western main line. In 1906 this authorised extension was constructed, with new branches from the south via the Ashton Swing Bridge were built to: Canons Marsh on the north side of the Floating Harbour; and to Wapping via a line alongside the New Cut.

The Temple Meads connection was closed and the track lifted in 1964 (the bascule bridge engine survives in Bristol Museums). The Canons Marsh branch closed the following year, with the Canons Marsh goods shed is now the home of Explore At-Bristol, a hands-on science centre. The Western Fuel Company continued to use the branch from the Portishead line and Wapping marshalling yard for commercial coal traffic until 1987.

In 1978, the preserved railway was established as an element of Bristol Industrial Museum using locomotives built in Bristol and formerly used at Avonmouth Docks. At first, it connected the museum with the SS Great Britain, but when commercial rail traffic ceased in 1987 the museum railway expanded to use the branch alongside the New Cut. When the Portishead Railway was relaid the connection at Ashton Junction was severed.

Today the railway operates on selected weekends on standard gauge track over 1.5 miles (2.4 km). The railway is currently in use as far as B Bond Warehouse (home to the Create Centre and Bristol Record Office), a mile from the museum. On the south side of the harbour the railway crosses Spike Island, the narrow strip of land between the harbour and the River Avon, and clings to the side of the river as far as the junction with the northern branch at the Cumberland Basin. The former route east over the Swing Bridge is now the Pill Pathway rail trail andcycleway.

In 2006, Bristol Industrial Museum was closed and the site redeveloped into M Shed Museum of Bristol. The railway continues to operate between SS Great Britain Halt and the Create Centre, and in 2011 the railway became part of M Shed's working exhibits.