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Portrait of the Atlantic Coast Express By Stephen Austin Hard Cover 1997
Portrait of the Atlantic Coast Express By Stephen Austin Hard Cover 1997 112 Pages
London's Waterloo station has been chiefly associated, throughout the mid-20th century, with the necessity of workaday travel. With County Hall, St Thomas's Hospital, the Palace of Westminster, New Scotland Yard, Whitehall and the Temple fanned out around it, it sat at the heart of the British Empire and was the staff entrance to what was, proportionately speaking, the greatest concentration of administrative power the world has ever known. Twice every day a human tide surged through Waterloo, in the service of that machine of government.
However, when the commuters had dispersed, the station took on another theme, echoing the ebb and flow of more distant tides. The Atlantic Ocean beckoned, and on the huge wooden destination indicator facing the middle of the concourse the names of suburbs were replaced with those of West Country villages.
At about a quarter past ten an empty train, 13 coaches long, would ease into the platform, bringing to sooty, stuffy London a promise of another world in its name. At the same time, a modest three-coach train is heading upstream
beside the River Tamar, passing beneath Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge; another is pulling up the Slade Valley with a view of the Gower coast at its back; a still more modest outfit drawn by a four-coupled tank engine is trundling over the rippling, tree-hung River Torridge; at Halwill Junction a two-coach set is backing unhurriedly up to another one, while a small group of people waits for it to draw into the platform; and at Exeter Central a restaurant car chef and attendant are busy stocking their pantry.
Shortly before three in the afternoon, passengers from that long train are alighting on the quiet platforms of North Tawton in sight of Dartmoor, or at Eggesford beside the River Taw where salmon leap; while the coaches from out of those deep country byways are joined together, behind the most modern express engine in the country, roaring along the four-track main line through Basingstoke at 80mph.
All these images belong to the 'Atlantic Coast Express'.
To describe the 'ACE' as the mid-morning train from Waterloo to the West of England is to understate it, for it was more than a train - it was a great institution. Firstly, instead of merely racing from one city to another, it was a direct link between London and a whole host of country towns and villages.
Secondly, for those interested in railways, it embraced the busiest railway in the world, with 1,238 trains a day, and a peaceful single-track route with four passenger and two goods trains a day.
Thirdly, it was not a train but a whole plethora of trains. Like a tree, its coaches branched out from the Waterloo-Exeter trunk route to travel to and from Ilfracombe, Torrington, Bude, Padstow, Plymouth, Exmouth, Sidmouth, Seaton and Lyme Regis. Shortly before midday every day there would be five trains called 'ACE' on the move, heading up towards London, then in mid-afternoon up to seven portions of what left London as one train would be making their separate ways down the branches. The excellence of planning and performance which achieved it was found throughout the railway service in the period under consideration, but this was the masterpiece.
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