All of us know that road traffic is becoming increasingly hellish on this overcrowded island, and that in ten years from now there’ll be three times as much traffic on English roads as there is today. What will the West Country be like then? How will we get anywhere in summer, except by railway? How will we see any country, except from a train? I think it’s more than likely that we’ll deeply regret the branch lines we’ve torn up, and the lines that we’ve let to go to rot.Imagine a letter Y leaning leftwards, say between ten and eleven o’clock. The base of this Y—simplifying somewhat—is in Bournemouth, the left fork points to Burnham-on-Sea (think Bristol Channel) and the right fork points to Bath. This is the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, or the S&D for short. In truth the Y is more complicated, because the left hand fork had two further lines that branched off to Wells and to Bridgewater. John Betjeman journeyed on part of the line in 1963, making a case for its retention, but the railway closed in March 1966.
John Betjeman, Branch Line Railway, BBC, March 1963.
‘Most railway lovers have their favourite line, but the Somerset & Dorset (S&D) somehow seemed to be everybody’s favourite’ [1]. I know it's that cut off point for people's attention—trainspotters—but then train-spotting is largely taking down the numbers on locomotives. This is geography, (social) history, engineering, architecture and whatever is in the mind of the person taking an interest.
The line dates back to the 1850s when track was laid by the Somerset Central Railway between Glastonbury and Highbridge, and then Burnham-on-Sea. Imagining our Y again this section forms well over half of the left-hand fork. By the middle of the next decade the railway had extended in the opposite direction towards the Y’s base, joining with the Dorset Central Railway’s line between Blandford Forum and Wimborne much further south (Wimborne is about five miles from Poole and the South Coast). Finally came the connection with Bath in 1874, creating the right-hand fork of the Y [2]. The railway now connected Bath and the Midlands with the South Coast and allowed through running trains between Bath and Bournemouth (extended to the same year). Almost straight away interested parties noted the line’s potential for holiday traffic to the South Coast, carrying people from the industrial Midlands and also Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Liverpool [3].
All the golden days of the British holiday apply here, with out-of-all-proportion holidaymaker trains appearing on the line on summer Saturdays right up until the middle of the 20th Century. It would take two engines to pull all the extra carriages and passengers north of Evercreech Junction (where the two forks diverged) and over the Mendip Hills to Bath [4]. Depending on which book you read, teenage culture was in various stages of its infancy at this point, and the country’s motorways and bypasses were still works in progress, if that. Either way, a lot of people would have gone on holiday as a family and travelled by rail. Should they have been going to the West Country these families would also have been willing to get on a train and travel for hours through sleepy parts of Dorset, Somerset and Devon to get there.
Despite that thousands of people still enjoy British holidays around the countryside and in the longstanding seaside resorts (now perhaps enjoyed more by car) this type of holiday has become fresh meat for new-meets-old television, or perhaps something like Holiday Showdown. They’d get one of those prescriptively typical modern families who are always poised to tear themselves apart in any filmed situation. We’d see them put on a train and left to swear profusely at the unforgiving rudimentary experience—the stultifying, stupefying, denied freedom-ness of it all. They’d have dad (clearly a nerd) loving it, mum would mutter FFS at everything while the kids would be bored out of their tiny minds, despite the phone-based Internet browsing and music available to them to soften the culture shock of their own country.
TV wants you to see a modern family get rubbed up the wrong way by the polite, wholesome 1950s. Well, for a start the 1950s were years rather than attributes, and in 2010 you can no more find the 1950s in a British West Country holiday than you could in a Sushi Bar or at a JLS gig. The country changes, so let’s think about the Somerset and Dorset with the changes.
In 1966 things looked quite different. Car ownership was increasing and making everywhere equally accessible, tiny villages became much easier to get to and the under-used railway lost its role as the sole link to civilisation - in many places the railways closed. Then house builders started to realise that people capable of driving are also capable of moving to those nice little villages without feeling isolated. Housing estates appeared in places that hadn’t really developed for much of the previous half-century or so, and people came by car to buy the houses, and more houses were built. Consequently, there are lots of places that have now grown so big that it seems bizarre that they don’t have a station.
On the Bournemouth to Bath route there were 23 stations on the stretch from Bailey Gate to Midford. Judging by the 1961 and 2001 censuses, 18 of the places served by the line have had their population increase by 25% or more since the railway’s last days (and I couldn’t find figures to check Masbury and Midford). 12 of these have had their population increase by 59% or more. Of course, despite the percentages this will mean smaller figures for some places. It took 40 years for Durweston’s population to increase by 88 people and reach 428 inhabitants, and for Shoscombe’s population to increase by 49 to 462. But there has been larger population growth. For Flanders and Swann fans, Blandford Forum has increased by 5,179 people to a population of 8,745, while Midsomer Norton has gone up by 5,945 (since 1971) to 16,049 [5].
Surely these extra commuters and shoppers would use the train to get to the bigger towns if they could. And that quiet little line between Evercreech and Burnham-on-Sea? Travelling on it and getting off at Pylle or West Pennard stations would be handy for Glastonbury festival; both are less than two miles from Worthy Farm, easily halving the distance from Castle Cary (currently the nearest station).
Whatever happens in the long term, track has been re-laid at the stations at Midsomer Norton (Somerset and Dorset Railway Heritage Trust) and Shillingstone (North Dorset Railway Trust), and there is also the Gartell Light Railway (narrow gauge) south of Templecombe. Additionally, many other groups exist to preserve the remaining trackbed, bridges and buildings. The Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust has been around for about 44 years, sharing and preserving information about the railway, and collecting and restoring rolling stock, locomotives and other railwayana connected with the line. With so many people interested in preservation, who knows what may happen with the line in the future.
‘The New Somerset and Dorset Railway was formed on 6 March 2009, 43 years to the day since the original S&D closed to passengers.’ It’s in its infancy and I love it. They have no trains, no stations (though they plan to remedy that soon), and not all that much money. There’s 114 miles of trackbed to purchase, some of which has been built on or severed by roads, but they are still able to get excited at reaching 50 members (people who have paid £5 for a membership card and its associated perks), a landmark reached on the 15th of December 2009. The New Somerset and Dorset Railway want to reopen Bournemouth to Bath and Evercreech to Glastonbury and Wells, running a railway with modern trains and ‘well-built stations rather than 'bus shelters.’’ Steam engines will run on the line as well of course; the New S&D state their support for the other groups’ work:
Our aim is to use a mix of lobbying, strategic track-bed purchase, fundraising and encouragement and support of groups already preserving sections of the route, as well as working with local and national government, local people, countryside groups and railway enthusiasts (of all types!) To restore sections of the route as they become viable [6].It’s a nice community to be a part of, and sitting this side of the fence is good from time to time. Two rails can thread places together in a reassuring way. They may have granted the liberation of your youth, when a car was a future 17th birthday present. If you had a station the train was the start of a day out. It’s community, infrastructure, environment…it’s all the buzzwords and taglines from the rhetoric of our world. Traffic off the roads, long-term solutions to fuel and energy usage, and isolated communities connected again. Indeed, connected by a mode of transport that is itself communal, for better or worse. You actually get to see other people through your own mobility, and pass through where they live. And as Betjeman noted, all without neurotics hooting at you from the car behind.
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[1] Michael Welch, Southern Branch Lines, (Harrow: Capital Transport Publishing, 2006), p.73
[2] Kevin Clapcott ‘History’, The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, <http://www.sdjr.net/sd_history.html> 10th August, 2007
[3] The Railway Magazine: The Southern Issue, Nov. 2008, p.13 & Nick Howes, Somerset and Dorset Railway Heritage Trust at Midsomer Norton South Station, <http://nickhowes-sdjr-midsomer-norton.fotopic.net/> 16th July 2005
[4] Welch, p.75
[5] For 2001 population data a simple Google of a town name should get you there. A Vision of Britain Through Time was very useful for the 1961 data (search for the place name and then click on ‘Historical Units and Statistics’). The 1971 figure for Midsomer Norton came from here: <http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/BathNES/councilanddemocracy/statisticsandcensusinformation/default.htm>
[6] 'About Us', The New Somerset and Dorset Railway, <http://www.somersetanddorsetrailway.co.uk/about-us/> 29th October 2009
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