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BRITAIN’S LEADING HISTORICAL RAILWAY JOURNAL
Vol. 30
•
No. 5
MAY 2016
£4.40
IN THIS ISSUE
SWINDON RAILWAY WORKS
THE CLOSURE OF THE SOMERSET & DORSET LINE
THE RAILWAY REGULATION ACT 1844
BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS AND THE WARTIME BLACKOUT
PENDRAGON
PUBLISHING
CAMDEN SHED IN COLOUR
HOLIDAY LITERATURE FOR SCOTLAND
RECORDING THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS
GREAT BOOKS FROM PENDRAGON
RAILWAYS IN RETROSPECT No.6
EAST COAST MAIN LINE
DISASTERS
By ADRIAN GRAY
£17.50
POST FREE
The East Coast route from London King’s Cross to Edinburgh Waverley is one of Britain’s
premier main line railways. Once the scene of the Victorian-era ‘Race to the North’, of
the ‘Flying Scotsman’ and epic feats of performance by Mallard and the famous ‘Deltic’
diesels, it has also been the scene of some of Britain’s most memorable rail disasters. This
book tells the story of how these disasters shaped the improvement of railway safety as
attention focussed on human error and design failure so that travel became both safer
and faster. The book provides powerful accounts of well-known disasters such as the
multiple collision in the snow at Abbott’s Ripton, the collision at Dunbar and the high-
speed derailment at Morpeth and shows how the type of accident changed over time
with thematic coverage of aspects such as problems with signalling or with pedestrians,
carriages and cars at crossings, culminating in the worst recent disaster, at Great Heck.
This is a book as much about people as it is about trains, for every ‘accident’ originated in
a mistake or a flawed design. There are also the innocent victims, the heroic rescuers and
the painstaking investigators from the Board of Trade who together told a story which led
to lessons being learned and improvements made.
96 pages, card covers. • ISBN 978 1 899816 19 4
Index to locations and names is
available on the website
Compiled by Paul Chancellor. Captions by Ron White.
A COLOUR-RAIL JOURNEY
Colour-Rail has been known to transport enthusiasts for over thirty years and has amassed what
is probably the most comprehensive collection of colour images of railway motive power in the
country, with the aim of preserving as many of these images for posterity as possible and making
them available to all enthusiasts, either to purchase directly or to see them published.
Now, in association with Colour-Rail, we are pleased to present this very special compilation of
some of the choicest gems in the Colour-Rail Collection – most of which have never been seen
before. Over 200 pictures have been carefully selected to offer a geographical tour of Britain,
including many unusual subjects and locations. The photographs have been chosen by Paul
Chancellor, the present owner of Colour-Rail, and have been characteristically captioned by Ron
White, founder of Colour-Rail and its previous owner.
£30.00
POST FREE
128 pages hardback ISBN 978 1 899816 18 7
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Vol 30 . No.5
No. 301
MAY 2016
RECORDING THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS
Lost and Found
Last year I wrote about ticking-off the treats I wanted to enjoy on my
‘railway bucket list’ – riding on the Welsh Highland line, taking afternoon
tea at the top railway hotels and so on. In a moment of idle reflection
you can, of course, compile for yourself a ‘fantasy list’ of things you
can’t
do (because the chance has long gone) but wish you
could.
On such a
wish list would be lines closed years ago but on which I’d like to have
travelled and one of those is the subject of an article this month – the
fabled Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway.
The S&DJ often comes with the description ‘much loved’ – and so it
apparently was, particularly by those who had no occasion to regularly
use it. This therefore invites consideration of why it was ‘much loved’ to
the extent it was and into the mix you can put the general quirkiness
of a formerly jointly-owned railway, long holiday trains being double-
heading up gradients, round curves and along single line sections
– all requiring operational organisation and skill, miles of delightful
countryside and perhaps not least a struggle for survival which was
inevitably doomed in the railway world of the 1960s.
I never knew the Somerset & Dorset but I
do
know that I’d have loved
to ride over it for all those reasons, though I suppose it’s no different to
many others which had their fine scenery, interesting working practices
and – harsh reality check – large areas with sparse populations. I would
suggest that we all have our own favourite lines whose loss we lament
and perhaps even resent. The question at hand is whether the S&D could
or should have survived and whether its closure was not only inevitable
but also the
right
thing to do.
Some might think that arguing against the S&D is akin to standing
up in church and arguing with the vicar during his sermon – but
someone has to do it and
Backtrack
has never shirked from giving a
platform to a reasoned controversy. Our author, coming from a career in
railway management, contends that the S&D, however irresistible it was
to enthusiasts and photographers, had long been an economic basket
case and that its closure in 1966 didn’t, in the great scheme of events,
make much difference to anything.
I’m sure there’s something in contrasting the winding and
undulating country railway, the peaceful rural stations adorned by
colourful gardens and the leisurely stopping trains, with the long goods
trains assisted by banking engines and above all those heavily loaded
through ‘expresses’ from the North (the ‘Pines Express’ from Manchester
daily) and from Yorkshire and the Midlands on summer Saturdays which
have lodged the Somerset & Dorset in railway lore. And yet, though the
diversion of those through trains to other routes has been condemned
as a betrayal of the S&D which precipitated its downfall a few years later,
in fact they made very little practical
local
contribution to the line. If you
wanted to go from, say, Midsomer Norton to Sturminster Newton the
‘Pines’ was of no use to you since it didn’t stop at local stations; it merely
passed that way. The authorities concluded that the through passenger
and freight trains could be operated more economically via other routes
without any disadvantage to their users; should they
not
have done
that? What was then left was just a country branch line – a lengthy one,
admittedly – facing the cold climate of the Beeching era and beyond.
Doubtless this article and the stance it takes will raise a few hackles,
but history is often not simple when it comes to identifying problems,
their origins and solutions, and therefore is not always comfortable when
it comes to understanding or accepting how events unfolded.
*****
Not all secondary railways went the way of the Somerset & Dorset;
the so-called ‘Beeching Report’ had a depressing catalogue of lines
proposed for closure, not all of which were set in a pastoral paradise.
A good many were in industrial and suburban areas where the case for
their continuance would seem, on the face of it, stronger than that for
the S&D. Amongst them were several in the Manchester area and the
industrial towns of Lancashire and Cheshire.
Two which might have fallen in the onslaught are those from
Manchester to Bury via Prestwich and to Rochdale via the Oldham
Loop. In the end they didn’t, but they did spend several decades in the
doldrums of under-investment, with ageing electric and diesel units
running on worn-out track and calling at neglected stations. Forward to
the 1990s and beyond when we can see how the Manchester Metro has
revolutionised much of the urban transport scene with the conversion
of existing lines to light railways and street running to connect the
networks north and south of the city. Since the Bury and Altrincham lines
in 1992 the Metro has continued to add to its mileage and a few years
ago the ‘Oldham Loop’ joined the ‘tram’ system.
During March I revisited the Oldham Loop for my first journey over
it by tram and it’s a route I can certainly recommend, especially if you can
bag yourself a front seat. Once you’ve put outer Manchester behind you
there’s some fine Pennine moorland to appreciate and, for the industrial
enthusiast, no shortage of old cotton mills with uplifting names and
with their chimneys still standing in defiance of the late, great Fred
Dibnah. Business appeared steady, as it did on the new Ashton-under-
Lyne service, and the Manchester Metro has proved one of the greatest
success stories of municipal transport in the north of England. And oh
yes, I ticked off another bit of missing track on my ‘wanted’ list: the ‘Irk
Valley curve’ in Manchester, abandoned since 1966 but reopened for
the Rochdale trams and scene of a calamitous steam v electric collision
in 1953 which I wrote about in
BT
Vol.5 No.2. Now for the ‘Todmorden
curve’ on a run to Blackpool this summer!
Contents
Observations at Bentley Heath
................................260
The Railway Regulation Act 1844
...........................
262
Past and Present Track Formation – Part Two
...
266
Holiday Literature for Scotland
LMSR and LNER
..............................................................
272
Class 47s Stratford Style
.............................................
277
Bullion Thefts from the Railways
...........................
278
Following in the Footsteps of
Flight Lieutenant Aidan Fuller
................................
283
In the West of Wales
....................................................
286
Visiting Camden Shed
.................................................
288
Swindon Railway Works
.............................................
290
“Through a Glass, Darkly . . .”
...................................
296
The Closure of the Somerset & Dorset
Joint Line – Part One
...................................................
304
The Slate Quarry Engines
...........................................
311
B1 Experiences
...............................................................
314
Wings over Cambridge
................................................
316
Readers’ Forum
.............................................................
317
Book Reviews
.................................................................
318
Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway
7F 2‑8‑0 No.53807 heads away
from Wellow station with a
freight for Bath in 1961.
(D. R. King/Colour-Rail.com 315055)
Publisher and Editor
MICHAEL BLAKEMORE
•
E-Mail
pendragonpublishing@btinternet.com
•
Tel
01347 824397
All Subscription Enquiries
01778 392024
(see inside back cover for details)
•
Trade Account Manager
Ann Williams
Design + Repro
Barnabus Design in Print
• Typesetting
Ian D. Luckett Typesetting •
IT Consultant
Derek Gillibrand
Printed by
Amadeus Press, Ezra House, West 26 Business Park, Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire BD19 4TQ
Newstrade Distribution
Warners Group Publications Plc • Tel. 01778 391135
Contributions of material both photographic and written, for publication in BACKTRACK are welcome but are sent on the understanding that, although every care is taken, neither the editor or publisher can accept responsibility
for any loss or damage, however or whichever caused, to such material.
l
Opinions expressed in this journal are those of individual contributors and should not be taken as reflecting editorial policy. All contents of this
publication are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers
l
Copies of photographs appearing in BACKTRACK are not available to readers.
All editorial correspondence to:
PENDRAGON PUBLISHING • PO BOX No.3 • EASINGWOLD • YORK YO61 3YS •
www.pendragonpublishing.co.uk
MAY 2016
©
PENDRAGON PUBLISHING 2016
259
PENDRAGON
PUBLISHING
OBSERVATIONS AT
above
:
‘King’ power – their long reign on the Paddington–Birmingham–
Wolverhampton expresses was drawing to its end but on 15th June 1961 No.6008
King James II
was in supreme command of the 7.25am from Wolverhampton Low
Level, clear signals speeding it towards Knowle and Dorridge station.
below
:
For several years around this time LMS locomotives were not unusual on
BENTLEY HEATH
Before his departure from the scene
a couple of years ago our good friend
MICHAEL MENSING
sent some colour
features including this set at Bentley
Heath, south of Solihull on the Great
Western’s Birmingham main line.
fitted freights to and from the Derby direction. Saltley-based Class 5 4-6-0 No.44920
approaches Bentley Heath crossing with a short down goods on 23rd July 1962.
The Metro-Cammell ‘Blue Pullmans’ had a brief life in the spotlight; five trains were introduced in 1960 with
three going to the Western Region which initiated a Paddington–Birmingham–Wolverhampton service pending
electrification of the West Coast route. The down ‘Birmingham Pullman’ (4.50pm from London) streaks over the
crossing on 25th June 1963.
BR Standard motive power
appeared in the years after
the London Midland Region had
taken over the area. Class 4 2-6-4T
No.80072 is in charge of the 5.38pm
Birmingham Snow Hill–Lapworth
commuter train on 27th May 1964,
being overtaken by No.D1683 with the
2.35pm Birkenhead–Paddington.
For use when a ‘Blue Pullman’ was unavailable a set of ‘traditional’ loco-hauled
cars was maintained, seen behind ‘Western’ diesel-hydraulic No.D1002
Western
Explorer
on the down evening train on 6th June 1963.

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