Did the Western kill the Southern?

Between 1950 and 1958 the Southern Region lines west of Exeter became part of Western Region for commercial purposes but Southern Region continued to operate them with steam engines based at Exmouth Junction shed. It’s claimed that the WR failed to promote the SR lines during this period and that this was the beginning of the end.

In 1958 the Southern Region got back complete control until the end of 1962. From 1st Jan 1963 all lines west of Salisbury became part of Western Region. The 1962 British Transport Commission Annual Report heralded this review of regional boundaries. The intention behind this was the elimination of dual administration at Birmingham and Exeter - the only railway centres remaining where two regions had separate offices in the same city. In the West Country where the Southern and Western lines were intermingled the decision was taken to transfer the whole of the Exeter division of the SR (including their main lines in Devon and Cornwall) to the WR. A new south-west division of the Western Region was established in Plymouth taking over the Exeter and Plymouth WR districts and the SR Exeter operation. It was based in the new (recently completed) nine storey office block at Plymouth North Road station. But why was the decision reversed in 1958, changed again in 1963?

The railway literature contains a number of suggestions. In his West Country Railway History (1960), David St John Thomas claims the two regions failed to liaise over for example a joint plan to serve north Cornwall and the introduction of diesel multiple units with each working on schemes for south and east Devon in isolation. He also cites a dispute over goods traffic from the Ambrosia Milk factory at Lifton once the old GWR Launceston branch closed in 1962. Apparently the SR prevaricated about taking over the parallel tracks into Tavistock delaying closure of the GWR line. David St John Thomas suggests the GWR route into Launceston might have been better than the longer SR route through Halwill. He also points to the SR jealously retaining its own independent route into Plymouth North Road from St Budeaux Victoria Road through Devonport Kings Road and over the Ford viaduct when making use of the 1941 connection to the GWR line at St Budeaux ( as operated today) would have been more economic. The SR Devonport station closed on 7 September 1964 and trains were finally diverted to the former GWR route from St Budeaux into Plymouth.

Holsworthy Station seen in 1985

The areas served by WR and SR were quite different and the economic changes witnessed in the 1960s affected them in different ways. The first railways to open in Cornwall served the south coast and the tin and clay mining districts. Truro, St Austell and Penzance together had a population of almost 40 thousand people in 1901 (80,000 today) while the combined population of the main north coast settlements of Bude, Holsworthy, Wadebridge and Padstow totalled less than ten thousand (24,000 today) Railway historian Andrew Roden says that Bude and Pa

dstow were among the last places in Cornwall (and indeed in the UK) to get a rail service because of their low population and ( I would add) their lack of natural resources – if you exclude fish. In Victorian times, the railway provided the only alternative to walking or taking a horse and cart for both goods and passengers but the writing was soon on the wall for the train when lorries became available after the first world war and motor buses started running in competition. The massive increase in car ownership in the 1950s gave people independence and reduced the need for public transport. Private vehicle mileage grew at a sustained annual rate of 10% between 1948 and 1964. By 1963, one in nine families owned a motor car and another eight were saving to buy one. In the consequences of such an interest, the number of journeys taken by train were equal to only 10% out of all modes of transport. Most of them were long distance. (On the wrong line by Christian Wolmar; 2005).

Gunnislake train at Bere Alston in 2018

There was still fierce competition on those long distance services like for example London to Exeter. The SR‘s Atlantic Coast Express was fighting for trade with the WR’s crack trains like the Torbay Express. In 1955 journey times were similar with the trip from Paddington taking two hours and fifty five minutes to St David's at best while the SR’s fastest service to Exeter Central took three hours and five minutes. But this was all to change as the cold economic reality dawned.

In the autumn of 1963 a new General Manager took over Western Region at Paddington. Gerry Fiennes’ task was to eliminate the Western Region's large financial operating deficit. Net losses were cut from £20.4m in 1962 to £6.9m in 1965 – a reduction of 66% according to by T R Gourvish in a publication called “British Railways 1948-1973 a business history”. Fiennes came from Eastern Region where he had demonstrated that large savings could be made on unprofitable lines by use of the idea of a basic railway with less costly infrastructure, utilising track singling, unstaffed stations with larger car parks and fares collected on the trains.

It wasn’t just Western Region in financial difficulties. The whole of British Railways was losing money (£87m in 1961, £104m in 1962). This led the Minister of Transport Ernest Marples to appoint Dr Richard Beeching from ICI as Chairman of the Railways Board.

In his book “By train to Okehampton – the Southern Way”, Colin Henry Bastin says the WR started to plan to close the SR lines as soon as they took over. It started with the removal of all fast and express workings and the closure bit by bit of each line. Mad timetables were drawn up. On one working from Plymouth to Exeter he claims passengers were required to get off at Bere Alston while the train went to Gunnislake and back before getting back on half an hour later. Another service from Exeter stopped at Tavistock and ran empty to Laira shed in Plymouth. In “A regional history of the railways of Great Britain” Volume 1 edited by David St John Thomas and C.R.Clinker (1960) it’s claimed at journeys along the SR lines in Devon and Cornwall (known as the withered arm) were nigh interminable. Here the authors claim geography was always the great difficulty. The GWR line from Exeter through Newton Abbot to Plymouth and on along Cornwall’s south coast was a trunk line with branches while the SR route splits after Exeter into a series of semi-main lines none warranting fast or frequent trains. The authors also point to the fact that restaurant car facilities on the SR’s Atlantic Coast Express ended in Exeter while the WR expresses had dining all the way into Cornwall. Writing in the journal on the South Devon Railway Association (Summer 2016) former BR driver the late Dave Knowling talks about the effect of the boundary changes. He lived in Tavistock in 1964 and used to get home by travelling on the SR line from Exeter to Tavistock via Okehampton. He says once the SR lines were transferred to WR he had to go via Plymouth and catch a bus “as they made everything as difficult as possible at Exeter. There you got a dmu to Okehampton and after a 30 minute wait another dmu to Tavistock. They simply wanted passengers to go away”

And go away they did. Eric Sheppard’s notes (now held in the South Devon Railway museum) paint a dismal picture. On 23rd April 1962 he reports having “the train to myself Holsworthy to Bude”. On 23rd Jan 1964 “I was the only passenger on the train between Halwill and Okehampton apart from railwayman out of uniform. At Halwill no passengers about – the train continued to Bude” On 29 March 1966 Mr Sheppard watched the 3:05pm to Halwill arrive at Egloskerry – “single car dmu – no passengers. Crossed 3.04 pm to Wadebridge – 3 car dmu with 4 passengers”.

Egloskerry Station in 1985

Dr Richard Beeching’s report - the imfamous “Reshaping of British Railways” reflected this scene noting that that half of BR route miles were not worth modernising as they carried only 4% of the traffic with 1/3 of the rail network carried 1% of total passengers miles (British Railway Board 1963). Beeching recommended a reduction of passenger stopping services and a substantial decline in number of small passenger stations. “Instead of looking for other, more profitable solutions like for example de-manning stations, on-train ticket sales or simplifying signalling, the decision-makers believed so blindly in car transport which supposed to represent the future” (Woolmar 2005).

Objecting to Beeching the NUR said that replacement buses are no substitute for trains especially in rural areas. They have no real capacity for packages, parcels, livestock etc. They wind slowly from village to village doubling time mileage and fares. They are the victims of bad weather and their capacity is strictly limited. It will punish the aged and infirm and people who cannot afford a car.

In the light of this and despite Gerry Fiennes’ views on cost cutting, the new management team in Plymouth proposed closing some lines including the route from Okehampton to Wadebridge. On 7th September 1964 they withdrew the goods services from Okehampton, Wadebridge (North Cornwall Line) and Padstow and re-opened the Lifton-Launceston line for goods traffic only, with goods running to Wadebridge from Bodmin Road on the WR main line.

Soon most ex Southern Region passenger services from north Cornwall and Devon to Waterloo only ran to Exeter St Davids where they connected with trains to Paddington (though for a while Bude had a through Saturday service to Paddington).

On 1st January 1965 the line lost all its steam power as services were handed over to single coach diesel railcars, by this time working just three or four services per day with no Sunday service.

On 28th February 1966 the Launceston goods services were withdrawn again, and the line to Lifton was lifted, which was the precursor for all traffic being withdrawn, and the line closed, from Meldon Junction to Wadebridge on 3rd October 1966, leaving just the Wadebridge-Padstow portion of the old North Cornwall Railway open to traffic from Bodmin. This remaining portion of the line from Wadebridge to Padstow was closed completely on 30th January 1967, having seen its last passenger train (from Bodmin Road) two days previously.

Old and new at Bodmin Road Station (now Parkway) 2018

By the summer of 1966 services on the two main lines from London to Exeter had changed markedly. No longer was there a choice of two three hour expresses as there had been just three years earlier. Now the Cornish Riviera took 2 hours 39 minutes to reach Exeter non- stop while the fastest service on the SR line from Waterloo took 4hours and five minutes. The 1100 departure from Waterloo that had been the Atlantic Coast Express from 1926 to 1964 now only went as far as Salisbury and didn’t run at all on Saturdays in the summer!! (that used to be its busiest day with up to four relief services). A year later this had been changed in so much as you could reach Exeter on the 1100 by changing in Salisbury onto the Brighton to Plymouth train which ran until May 1968 (thereafter ending in Exeter)

The SR line from Okehampton (Meldon Quarry) to Bere Alston closed to passengers on 6th May 1968 although it was given a short lease of life six months later when a goods train used it when the line through Dawlish was blocked by a storm. Just a few weeks later the lines were lifted although there’s some confusion over who gave the order for this as apparently the WR offices in Bristol and Exeter had ordered that a single track be maintained between Meldon and Bere Alston for at least five years for emergency use. What a shame this didn’t happen – the debate we’re having today about a Dawlish avoiding line could itself have been avoided.