The mind (and thread) wanders in the middle of the night. Is Alton unique in the South East in loosing 75% of its lines ... four directions - to(wards) London, Winchester, Portsmouth and Basingstoke. Just London remains, with a heritage branch to a teminsua at Alresford. Adding - no, not unique - I can think of another with similar stats.
grahame must of course be referring to the terminus of my local line - Carhaix.
So what does Carhaix's situation have in common with Alton? Well, Carhaix was once the main hub of the Reseau Breton, with five of its lines converging on the town, all built to the metric gauge:
These lines were:
Carhaix - Guingamp
Carhaix - Morlaix
Carhaix - Ch?teaulin
Carhaix - Rosporden
Carhaix - Loud?ac
In 1966, as a response to the depopulation of the countryside and a significant increase in motor vehicles, the Reseau Breton became the subject of its own version of the Beeching Report. This plan provided for an increase in road funding for Central Brittany, the upgrading to standard gauge of the Carhaix-Guingamp line, and the closure and bustitution of the other lines.
Between February and July 1967, the Carhaix-Guingamp line was set to standard gauge. For this operation, nearly 200 workers from the Reseau Breton were mobilized. They laid nearly 44 km of rails, 9,750 sleepers and 100,000 tonnes of ballast. On the equipment side, four tampers, a dresser and a leveller were used. The gauge change required the reconstruction of 16 bridges. The operation often reminds me of what happened on the Isle of Wight, when its network was reduced to just one line between Ryde-Shanklin, which was then remodelled and transformed into an electrified railway during almost the exact same time period.
The other lines closed to passengers on 9 April 1967, and to freight on 30 September 1967. This has effectively left Carhaix at the end of a long branch line from Guingamp - via my home station of
Callac - ever since:
There is currently no heritage branch into Carhaix, but the hope is that there will be in the not too distant future, as the line from Carhaix-Loudeac is being gradually revived on that basis. The section from Gouarec-Bon Repos has already been completed, with extensions west towards Rostrenen and east towards Mur-de-Bretagne via the iconic Bon Repos viaduct next on the radar.
The trackbeds of the other lines have been preserved as Greenways, for the benefit of the walkers and cyclists of today, but also explicitly with the aim of keeping them available to be reopened as railways if and when this becomes viable. The restoration of the Gouarec-Bon Repos section was a successful example of how this will work in practice. There was no competition between the modes for who should get priority - The restoration of the railway and the renovation of the existing Greenway were planned jointly, and a parallel road improvement scheme was specifically configured to ensure enough room for both restored railway and renovated Greenway alongside.
The way many Reseau Breton stations were designed, with station buildings separate from island platforms, has aided this process by allowing the Greenways to follow the original rail alignments even though the original station buildings have often been sold into private ownership.
I have extensively surveyed all of these routes as part of my work over here, and have taken shedloads of photos as a result, which I will put online as and when I get the opportunity. In the meantime though, I have put together a selection of photos which give you a flavour of what the former Reseau Breton lines out of Carhaix look like today. You can find these
here.You will note that a photo of an Intermarche supermarket features in the Carhaix-Rosporden section. This was built on the site of the former Gourin station, and a condition of planning permission was that they keep a line of route clear should the railway ever be reopened. This has happened in the
UK▸ as well, an example being the agreement between Sainsburys and Tunbridge Wells Borough Council to leave a corridor to allow Tunbridge Wells West station (and thus the Spa Valley Railway through to Eridge on the Uckfield line) to be reconnected to Grove Junction and Tunbridge Wells Central should this be proposed in the future.
Finally an honourable mention should go to the excellent Reseau Breton museum housed in the restored station building at Guiscriff on the Carhaix-Rosporden route, which really brings the history of the lines to life, and is well worth a visit.
I will now let you get back to guessing the name of the station that grahame
actually meant
Click on the map to explore geographics
