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Guide To Britain's Steam Railways Steam Into the Seventies Brian Hollingsworth
A Guide To Britains Steam Railways Steam Into the Seventies by Brian Hollingsworth Soft Cover 1976 192 Pages A history of Railways Magazine Special FRONT COVER is close to being totally loose from the book.
THIS BOOK is about Britain's steam tourist railways. If you have seen some of them, it will be a splendid souvenir; otherwise it is hoped it will serve as an introduction and guide and encourage you to ensure their survival by your patronage. Whilst the greater part of the book deals with the principal lines, an attempt has been made to make it as comprehensive as possible by mentioning, at the very least, all the places in Britain where one can regularly ride behind that most evocative of man's creations, the steam locomotive. With 195 locations at which this is possible, it may be that you will be surprised how near some of them are to you.
Thirty years ago the normal way to travel in Britain was by steam train, 'the way nature intended' as Punch put it. There were then 7000 railway stations to travel from and more than 20,000 steam locomotives in use. Nowadays rather mundane diesel and electric trains serve less than one-third of these stations. All the lest is history. Whilst practically all railways exist entirely to take people or goods where they want to go, there were always, even from the day the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened, more than 150 years ago, enthusiasts who travelled on them purely for the enjoyment of the journey. That is to say, they took pleasure in the steam railway as an art form; the gleaming, panting engine up ahead, the smoke curling past the carriage windows, the curves of the line and their relationship to the scenery, often with mighty works of engineering skill. To this must be added the strange appeal of the fundamental orderliness of the iron road, with its movement on fixed lines controlled by points and signals.
Amongst those who used to enjoy railways in this way were some whose sense of deprivation at the disappearance of the trains they loved inspired them to take up the idea of trying to preserve something of the atmosphere of the old days. Previously it had only been done statically in museums, although the essence of railways is movement; or, in miniature with models, but, there again, trains are essentially things of size and power. So there remained the heroic task of trying to preserve the real thing, the pioneers hoping that others would be drawn by nostalgia or curiosity to join them directly or, failing that, would come as customers to support the efforts being made.
Just a hint of the possibilities could be found in the existence and survival after the war of a handful of pleasure railways from before 1939. British Railways' own 1903 Vale of Rheidol line had survived exclusively on what might be called 'daisy-picking' traffic ever since the Kaiser's war. The Ravenglass and Eskdale, perhaps the very first 'A-to-B' pleasure line, opened in 1915 and the purpose-built Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch has run its magnificent miles of double track.across Romney Marsh ever since 1927. It is good to record that these three are still amongst the top ten and, of course, covered in detail later in the book.
The present era of railway preservation began in 1951, when some enthusiasts took over as a going concern (a barely going concern, anyone who was involved might wryly add) the narrow-gauge Talyllyn Railway in North Wales. This was followed in 1954 by the revival and restoration of another Welsh narrow-gauge slate-carrying line, the Festiniog Railway, which had lain derelict for eight years.
In 1960 the opening of the Bluebell Railway in Sussex marked the first closed British Railways' standard gauge branch to be reopened as a tourist line. A whole new dimension of difficulty was added by the legal problems of transferring the statutory powers needed to operate from a -nationalised industry to a private company; but goodwill on all sides evolved a procedure that has been the model for subsequent cases, although none of the orginators of the legislation could possibly have imagined the present situation.
To the amazement of informed onlookers and, indeed, of some of the participants themselves, all three pioneering ventures became successful. The Bluebell line particularly inspired imitators and emulators during those dread years of the Beeching axe. The Keighley and Worth Valley line opened in 1968, the Dart Valley in 1969, the Severn Valley in 1970 and the North Yorkshire Moors informally in 1971. Lastly, the Dart Valley took over a second line in 1973, the Torbay Steam Railway. These eleven main tourist railways form the principal matter of the first ten chapters of the book.
Another very evocative aspect of the old-time railway was the steam locomotive depot and a number of them have been adapted or converted to museums of steam. These, together with a few other locations, form the starting points of forays on to British Railways' main lines by giants of the steam age, which, by accident or design, have survived into the diesel age. These, in general, are too big and heavy to run on any of the preserved lines, at least at more than a fraction of the speeds they used to attain whilst in normal service. This return to steam is described in chapter eleven.
Regarding the smaller steam railways, the final chapter deals briefly with twelve, chosen for their interest or variety. They range from the full-size Middleton Railway, old when the Stockton and Darlington was new, down to the Forest Railway in Cornwall, which handles 100,000 passengers annually on a gauge as small as 7 in. Actually, public passenger hauling is possible on even smaller gauges than this and; in practically all the places where it is done, operation is on the tracks of model engineering societies, there being some 100 in Britain today. On these lines, the members not only drive their locomotives, they build them too. Finally, as an appendix, there is a comprehensive list, illustrated by a map, of 104 steam railway and museum locations in Britain.
There are some very difficult problems involved in preserving and running a full-size railway. They divide best, perhaps, into legal, physical, financial and personal ones. The legal problem is the first hurdle which has to be jumped before one can have a railway at all. With the others it is possible to solve a problem partially and still have a line, albeit not such a good one. The previous owners of the line, usually British Rail, normally have powers to operate a particular line through the original Act of Parliament made law at the time the line was promoted. These powers can only be transferred to someone else by a fresh private Act; in practical terms, with our legislators fully occupied making new public laws for our 'benefit', this is no longer a real possibility for a small organisation.
The solution lies in a statute known as the Light Railways Act of 1898, whereby it was made possible to obtain powers to run what is legally known as a light railway' (which may not necessarily be physically distinguishable from an ordinary one) through a statutory Order granted by the Ministry concerned with railways, at present the Department of the Environment. In a case of preservation, BR first applies for new powers to run the line as a light railway, that is, a Light Railway Order. When these are granted, the preservationists apply in their turn for another order transferring the new powers to themselves from BR.
Objections can be made at either stage and are frequently sustained following public enquiries. A principle seems to have been established that, where road improvements are contemplated, no public money should be spent on crossing a merely tourist line. This, as we shall see later, has caused serious trouble for several schemes, both the Dart Valley and Severn Valley amongst them. In any case, the time taken by the whole procedure is almost always lengthy, measured in years rather than months, and numerous projects are currently becalmed in these doldrums as a result. Most of them, however, have obtained some kind of a foothold at one of the stations on the line in question and offer there occasional steam happenings even if of a rather homespun nature. Details are given in the appendix.
The physical difficulties of restoring a railway stem mostly from its large size and the quantity of its components. Take the most fundamental component as an example; i.e., a rail. In standard gauge one rail weighs about a ton, costs perhaps as scrap and well over new. A six-mile railway, single line, needs about a thousand of them, so repairing it would prove very expensive.
It cannot be said that the technical problems in restoring the track itself are usually very great; it simply requires down-to-earth hard work with rail-tongs, pick and shovel, bar, axe, jack, auger, spanner and saw; a kind of king-size gardening, in fact. Similarly, the domestic handyman does not find himself too far out of his depth when carriages need restoration. On the other hand, the know-how gained from tinkering with motor cars and lawn mowers, even when allied with passionate enthusiasm, is not a great deal of help as a basis for learning how to repair steam locomotives. The latter is an art rather than a science; the parts are large and difficult to obtain and unskilled attention often creates additional work. However, twenty years ago Britain was full of practitioners of this literally black art and, surprisingly, a few of them like to keep their hands dirty at it in their spare time as a change from more humdrum jobs they have had since. Amateurs working under these men have now begun to absorb their craft in the traditional manner and so this most intractable of problems comes nearer a solution.
Finance is another obstacle to be overcome. In the first golden years of railway preservation, the pioneers were able to finance the restoration themselves on the basis of 1 annual subscriptions plus such bucolic enterprises as raffles and jumble sales. Now, twenty years later, even a short line needs a six-figure sum to make operational. It is enough to say that railways, being both capital and labour intensive, are very difficult to run profitably, and gone are the days when sums of the order mentioned could be raised without hope of profitable return. To begin with staffing is, perhaps, a lesser problem. People like working on little railways and are prepared to do so either as volunteers in their spare time or full-time for much less than their market value in the rat-race of industry. The lines described have staff situations which vary from one where the entire line is worked without one penny in salaries being paid, to others where every single member of the staff is a paid employee
In the pages to come, readers will find out how individual lines have overcome their legal, physical, financial and human problems. Their success in doing so is measured by the many steam railway locations that exist, entertaining some 1,200,000 visitors each year with 200 miles of track and 700 steam locomotives quite apart from countless large-scale models. On a typical summer Sunday afternoon there will be perhaps four hundred of these in steam. Is there any further to go? This, of course, is showbiz, not transport, and it is not surprising that there are two completely opposed schools of thought. Those in the first school moan loudly at every new project proposed, on the grounds that support and custom are finite and, consequently, the resources will be spread much more thinly over existing lines. Those in the second admit the principle of a finite limit, but say that the 'daisy-picking' railway has a long way to go before the limit is reached, citing, amongst many examples, the immense development of other obsolete means of transport, such as the sailing ship and the horse, after they had ceased to be of any real practical use. The writer feels personally that Britain could do with more good lines and fewer indifferent ones. With this in mind the locations listed in the appendix have been awarded one to five 'puffs of steam' on the AA hotel guide principle; one puff means it is worthwhile getting out of the car, whilst five indicates that the location in question merits a long special journey to see.
In the end only time will tell where the progress being made will lead, but it is the authors' hope that, in its small way, this book will do its part in helping the more optimistic prognostication come true, by introducing the pleasures of steam railways to a wider circle of admirers.
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