Railway Roundabout 1959 'The Closing Of The Wye Valley Lines'
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- čas přidán 20. 02. 2011
- Right then, onto the second year of Railway Roundabout - 1959, starting with the closing of the Wye Valley lines.
The Wye Valley Railway opened on the 1st November 1876, linking the south-east Welsh towns of Chepstow and Monmouth (then both in England) via stations serving the villages of Tidenham, Tintern, St Briavels and Redbrook. The line was 14¾ miles long. At Monmouth Troy station passengers could change for trains serving the towns of Pontypool (15 miles south-west), Ross-on-Wye (10 miles further north) and, from 1883, the town of Coleford, 5 miles to the east in the Forest of Dean.
Footage owned by their respective owners
Wonderful footage...
I visited the area in 1957 and 1958 on cycling/hosteling holidays. We left our bikes at Welsh Bicknor Youth Hostel and walked, returning by train As the film shows the auto-train "pushed" from Ross to Monmouth but it was only a single carriage. An extra one had been added for the enthusiasts. Later we were charmed by this train; one departure from Momoutn at 18.05 we called the "Six-Five Special" - Six-Five Special was the BBC's first attempt at a rock-and-roll programme, launched in February 1957. Its title was derived from its broadcast time, as it aired at 6:05 on Saturday evening.
However, the first time we saw it emerging from the tunnel at Symonds Yat we were delighted; We cried "It's one of the new diesels," then as the locomotive end appeared, "Oh it's just a steam train." Most trains in those days were steam hauled.
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The Ross - Gloucester stretch did make a profit, the only reason Ross was closed was because it was seen as a branch line, not a major line from Gloucester to Hereford, Ledbury saw less passengers, but stayed open because it was on the main Worcester - Hereford line
Superb record of our steam railway history and more especially of branch lines in particular. Great video and very enjoyable. :D
When the M50 was first built it was planned to go all the way to Newport via Monmouth, but due to expense was down graded to a dual carriageway from Ross to Newport, they wouldn't of known that in 1959
Thank you for sharing that historic film. I have tweeted it for others to enjoy, @UKSteamTrains . Cheers! Albert.
Soooo interesting! Great to see....
Lets take Ross on Wye as an example, if a carriage was full each day going to Gloucester, say 80 people, when that line closed 80 people had to find an alternative way of getting to Gloucester, that turned out to be the car or the bus, back then it wasn't so much of a problem, but with the population expansion since the sixties, those 80 people a day traveling to Gloucester and back is more like 800, so that's an extra 800 cars on the road,plus the freight.
@SteffanLlwyd I agree. where I live in the welsh valleys, going back 50 years you could have caught a train to ANYWHERE. now its one single track going to Cardiff only while the A470 is almost gridlocked at peak times. they call it progress.
How would rebuilding branch lines, which were mosdly out in the middle of nowhere, help road congestion, which is primarily in the cities?
Really interesting. But the comment about the M50 is incorrect. The M50 ends at Ross-on-Wye. The A449 is the Ross - Monmouth dual carriageway that this line followed.
The commentary is excrutiating. It was added when parts of the original TV series from the late 1950s was released on video. You are right that the M50 ends at Ross-on-Wye but even then the new road is not built on top of the former trackbed between Ross and Monmoth as the new road and the former railway are on opposite sides of the river!. The railway is south; the road north. The new dual carriageway is built on the former railway trackbed from about a mile west of Monmouth past Raglan and almost as far as Usk but that section closed in 1955.
The mass closures in the 50's/60's still makes me angry today. I know the wye valley line was never in profit but many branch lines were the same- they acted as feeder lines for the main line so contributed a lot more to the central coffers than beeching et al realised. the speed with which the line and the bridge at Tintern were ripped up was obscene and this attitude was apparent everywhere.
with our booming population today who is to know just how short sighted these closures were?
mrspivvy yes they acted as feeder lines, but the levels of usage were falling on most of them and had been since WW1. First the passengers moved on the buses, and the main reasons for this was convenience (the bus went from the village and more often than not the railway didn't (Kimbolton, Cambs, is a good example of this with the station being 2 miles from the village) and the buses ran at more convenient times to get to the bigger towns). The 1950s brought the next nail in the coffin for such lines, the increased motor car ownership, which raised the convenience to a higher level by freeing the owner from the tyranny of the timetable. The other issue was the freight from businesses on these lines moved from rail to road as although slower in journey times over long distances it also was more convenient and cheaper, keeping the costs and price down. BR (and the Big Four and their constituent companies before BR) had to provide a locomotive and crew(s) plus a guard or guards (depending on the length of the shift) even if there was no freight to move (the service had to timetabled, removing a pathway for a more profitable service). So overall these lines didn't contribute significant portions of the cost of operation and maintenance, and thus with the dire economic performance of the country in the 1960s, which followed the boom and bust economy of the 1950s, these lines were seen as expensive luxuries and thus they were cut.
This is no to say that mistakes weren't made, but those mistakes are only visible with the benefit of hindsight. The current issue of how Brexit will affect the UK's economy is a case in point. Nobody is certain what will happen, will the economy tank or will it fly. The only think we can say with any certainty is that will will only know for sure is to wait and see. The same was true for Beeching and his predecessor and successors. They could only see what each line cost to operate and what revenue each line made at that time, they could not see that these lines would have a chance to recover and be more profitable in 20+ years and that long distance commuting would be considered normal.
I am a volunteer at a preserved line in Yorkshire and our line was one of the ones closed in the 1950s, in our case what had kept that line open was Burdale Quarry, when that closed there was nowhere near enough traffic to keep the line open. With regards to tracks being ripped up, although in an ideal world routes would have been mothballed in case they were needed again, it would have meant high maintenance costs of Bridges etc with no income from the line to help pay for it.
I’m from Australia so what would I know, I was told that Beeching saved BR as it was (apparently) a basket case at the time and if cuts weren’t made would have resulted in a bigger collapse in the late ‘60s. I was also told that the relevant minister of transport or his relative had links to road interests and thus a vested interest.
Personally, I regret the cuts happened and in the Beeching Wiki says that some lines were reinstated in the early ‘70s as populations grew.
In Victoria we had the Lonie report which recommended not just a lot of lines close but all country train services cease. The government knew that would be political suicide to cease all non suburban trains.
However nearly all recommendations of lines to close were accepted over a ten year period even by the Labor government who was in opposition at the time of the Lonie report. Later there was speculation that Lonie had links to the road industry.
Wye did they have to close them???
Author, Oliver and duck in one video
Hi! I am from Wanaque, there use to be a train that ran through Haskell in the 60's! Were had it been retired?
Hi it was good hearing someone from Wanaque! I couldn't find anyone from class of 1970? OK I lived in Haskel they retired train tracks, and Trussell,; the train, I do not know what happened to it, maybe retired it to. But thank you for your come it. You are my friend.
Hi! I do not knowwhere,but if they did;they took it to an abaned trian gerve yerd somewere,thanks for your commet.
Monmouthshire or the old county of Gwent was never really in England or Wales. Parliamentary legislation issued until 1971/72 (when we were sneakily annexed into wales in a midnight sitting of parliament) would always say England, Wales & Monmouthshire.
Monmouthshire now is just a small unitary authority, less than a third the size of the original
Panniers were fitted with auto apparatus.
I did not make up numbers, I used the words "IF" and "for example" which is what it was.
I am fast getting the impression that you are one of these people who hate anything that you cannot see the sense in, railways are mass transit, and are proven to ease congestion on roads, just as trams and undergrounds do, thats why cities develop them.
A bit short sighted a view, congestion is caused by those travelling to and from the city to work, not by those living in it,
It's Oliver guys
Edit and Duck
How would getting buses off rural roads help cut traffic congestion, which is primarily in urban areas? And, yes, you *could* catch a train almost anywhere. But the point was that almost nobody actually did.
You seem to be claiming that some of the cars in the traffic jam are "causing" the congestion, whereas others are presumably just participating in it. Even if that was true, how could you tell which is which? And you've not addressed my point about the overwhelming majority of people don't live in rural areas. Any serious attempt to cut congestion has to focus on people living in urban areas.
How on earth did the (pre-nationalized) train companies ever get the funding to build a line from Ross-on-wye to Chepstow via Monmouth in the first place? Even today and with advances in construction it would cost hundreds of millions? It can't all have been down to the potential earnings from freight as there was little in the way of industry in the Wye valley that couldn't have used other lines? If anyone reading this was lucky enough to have traveled on the line I am truly jealous of you.
+revol148 An excellent online history of the line covers this in detail, essentially the prospectus promised the world to potential shareholders, with little or no reality in terms of actual traffic, plus the line cost far more to build than expected. Divis were only paid out once, before the line was completed. The line never properly reached Monmouth due to lack of money, etc.. The article says
"There are lies, damned lies, statistics and then there are railway prospectuses, "
to add to a famous quote from then Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The shares were sold for £20 each, in batches of 5, so £100 per batch; by 1904 the report to the shareholders revealed that this had fallen to £12 10s 0d for the £100 of shares, or £2 10s 0d per share. The shareholders lost 87.5% of their original investment." Clearly it was a non-starter. Yet Britain was still populated by people who thought money could still be made from new railways, all and anywhere, and apart from the ludricous forecasts of the prospectus, who could they ask ?.
+RockinRedRover well I suppose the early investors had no idea of the onset of the internal combustion engine and the competition they would face by the supposed great car economy and later investors probably thought there would always be room for a massive rail network.For a small overcrowded island mass public transport makes sense - sadly the British mindset is to love cars with the devotion almost as bad as the average American and to hell with the consequences.
So it was the right thing to do, then? selling off former railbeds for building, so lines could never be re-opened regardless of future demand was ok?
do you think a town the size of Corby or Dudley would see such little rail useage had they been allowed to keep their rail connection? Besides which, it most certainly was not ALL about lack of use. ever heard of Ernest marples?
14xx!!! :)
Ha what a laugh, Ross has more than doubled in size in my lifetime !
I agree these lines should have never been closed. I know they leaked money like water going through a sieve. However I can not help thinking that now they could be made to pay with tourist trains as well as everyday passenger trains
Cardiff to Ebbw Vale line was reopened a few years ago, it was so successful that the bus service was taken off. The railways could be so much cheaper... with poor roads in places and heavy traffic in most cities... I quite like the idea of the train.
+falcons1988 Agreed, but to be fair the Valleys such as Ebbw no longer has much employment to speak of, so lots of residents commuting into Cardiff, which has blossomed in recent years, which I guess itself creates a commuter's paradise of cheap housing in the otherwise dying valleys, needing the train ? . When I was at college in Pontypridd in the 80s we used the trains everyday then too, it was easier & quicker than driving and affordable, as the new line prob is nowadays compared to car ownership into Cardiff. However such an example is not necessarily transferable across all the UK. Plus of course, and in contrast to views of many of the "revitalise old railways" lobbies of the last 10 years or so, sadly for them many of those "disused lines" have long been built-over or otherwise cut. Beecham was pro-car ownership/roadbuilders, and the UK was still broke from the War, as was our knackered old railway system. It's incredible to think that the country who invented railways were building NEW steam engines decades after they'd been ditched elsewhere.
We still are building new steam locomotives. Tornado, Prince of Wales, LMS Patriot - Unknown Warrior. I was at crosskeys college and used the line when I didn't have the car. It was really easy and quite cheap. Like you say, it wouldn't necessarily work in other parts of the UK and old lines have been built upon.
I think there are two main obstacles facing Britains Railways.
The current price of crude oil, motoring costs have come down a bit. So, I suspect that the railways may take a hit. The most concerning thing for the railways is that I can fly from Bristol - London (via Amsterdam) cheaper than travelling from Temple Meads.
Probably rambling a bit now, hopefully, when we break free from Brussels. We can invest properly in the Railways, at the moment we can't renationalise (not sure if that would be a good think anyway), or go for a 1923 style grouping.
falcons1988 There's only a handful being built by enthusiasts and at vast uneconomic cost. There are pollution issues. Steam is not the future. It would be best if all remaining locos were melted down.
We will be staying in the EU so don't get your hopes up. The railways will stay privatised and hopefully we can get rid of some more loss making lines.
+heelfan1234 You really do NOT like steam locos do you ?!. Thank goodness there are many thousands of people who do, and will gladly pay for them to operate on tourist lines throughout the world, paying their way without you or governments having to foot the bills. And of course it's nuts to build new ones except for these tourist lines. BUT look abroad and state-owned/subsidised modern railways can and do work very well, which is better for everyone including road-users. BTW, I cannot quite make out your icon image thingummy but it looks like a bulldozer or similar; you're not a road-builder by any chance ?
The motorways are under stress big time, we should have at least mothballed these lines..
Chris Quinn at what cost? And for how long? Two questions that no one would be able to answer in the 1960s. Hell, they couldn't tell in 1982 that in 2018 the GN-GE joint line from March to Spalding would be needed and would negate the need to dig the Werrington dive under. And that was less than 40 years.
Wait that is oliver
They should have kept the line
Oliver
And duck... SLIP COUCHES!
OK but 90% of Britain's population lives in urban areas. That means that, even if you provided so many branch lines that nobody living or working in a rural area ever used a car or a truck again, you couldn't cut congestion by more than 10%. The effect on urban congestion would be even less. And that's under the ludicrously optimistic assumption that everybody used the trains all the time. In reality, the effect would be far less than that: it's hard to imagine even a 1 or 2% difference.
You say this based on what evidence? And you still haven't explained how rebuilding rural branch lines would cut urban road congestion.
Unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to bore you with the whole algebraic equation with which to work out the projected growth in road traffic since the slashing of the railway services in the country, suffice to say that where countries have a large and efficient rail network, their roads and cities are far less congested.
Graham Walters 06’97(
Graham Walters but the populations of any country need to be willing to use their public transport infrastructure, which since WW1 the population of the UK has not been as willing to do. Since the 1950s car ownership and journeys have risen. The housing estate I live on was designed for 1 car for every 2 households and that wasin the 1970s (after 20 years of growth in car ownership); today it is more like 2 cars per household. The bus service during the day starts at around 06:30 and is timetabled to run every 10 minutes until after the evening rush hour (as are most of the buses in this city), but still many of the buses are not fully utilised. London, with its integrated public transport, and highly utilised public transport, still needs congestion charging to free up road space.
all these lines should have been kept. Total vandalism
+mrstaffytoots WHY ?, be realistic !; Do you never travel by road, do you never buy or eat etc goods shipped by road ?. I love scenery, nature, etc and believe strongly in rail transport over road, where possible and practical. However, as this film clearly states, this railway never ever paid for itself, a white elephant. The trackbed was used for the M50, which is used ever since it was built. Sadly this line was always a White Elephant. And btw I was born and grewup nearby in the Forest of Dean.
RockinRedRover Lets be realistic. The M50 is hardly a motorway, more like a glorified A road, but it has opened up business and tourism in the Ross and Monmouth area.
The decision to lift the rails and *cut the locos up for scrap* was a good one.
+heelfan1234 Begging your pardon, I thought my post WAS accurate and realistic, hey ho..... Ah well, sorry for calling it the M50 - isn't that what the signs say ?. I actually still call it the Ross spur, I'm that old.
RockinRedRover I didn't say it wasn't a motorway, I said it was *hardly* a motorway. I think your name of the Ross spur is more accurate!
+heelfan1234 And I, who you deliberately tried to antagonise by telling me to be realistic, did NOT even suggest it was, or was not, a motorway. I merely referred to it by it's official formal title. France, as just one example, is full of two lane autoroutes, or motorways if you like, not my preferred style but they seem to work and are a dam site better built and maintained than our cart tracks !. But hey you can call it a low-volume-mass-transit-vehicular-link if it makes you feel better, you're obviously an opinionated person who likes to upset the applecart.
They weren't feeding anything. They were closed because they lost money; they lost money because very few people used them. The least used *half* of stations in the country were only contributing 2% of the fare income to the railways. That's a staggeringly small amount of use. Many of the stations that closed were used by less than ten people a day.
Fool
Where was the coal stored in those engines?
So, basically, your argument is that if you pull out of thin air a number of people who travel from Ross to Gloucester, and then pull out of thin air the idea that there are now ten times as many people who want to make that journey as there used to be, you could cut congestion in Gloucester by 0.67% (800 people coming into a city of 120,000). That's not very convincing.
An argument that goes "If X then Y" is meaningless unless X has some basis in fact. Otherwise, it's just wishful thinking.
Oh dear the concept of mass transit really does go over your head doesn't it, Ross is just one town which fed commuters to Gloucester, Beeching was as narrow minded as you are, if they had poured the money into rail, that they have poured into the roads, cities would be a lot less congested, you are obviously an advocate of the motor car, and cannot see the benefits of mass transit, have you seen how full the trains are that run into London every day ?