Finn and I took a visit to the North Dorset Railway Trust at Shillingstone Station today, 8th March 2020.

Work continues apace here restoring the station and environs. A longer term aim is to relay track north to Sturminster Newton and become a proper heritage railway.

The volunteers here are a friendly bunch, happy to chat and explain the work going on, and to inform of the history of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway.













Finished our trip with a coffee and a bacon bap and had the cafe carriage to ourselves.

 
I was down there before Christmas. They've done a great job there.  Looking forward to seeing the line running north and south of the station in due course.

 
Good to see the old Broadclyst station shunter DS1169 is stil in existence!

 

I slightly disagree that the S&D didn't have any local traffic and that the timetable wasn't degraded. A freind of mine Mother lived at shillingstone and used the train for shopping in Blandford Forum. Originally ther were several trains she could catch both ways with varying time to shop in Blandford. Gradually these trains were reduced and you either had 5 minutes or 4 hours in Blandford. So the train became unuseable.

I do agree with you that on most local lines up to Beeching that timetables had hardly changed since grouping. The other thing was where there competing routes the services were still for instance still GN. GC of  Midland eg up the Leen Valley which resulted in all three lines being closed North of Annersley apart from a stub of the Midland to serve a couple of collieries. Cutting Mansfield off from Nottingham and Worksop and the rest of the pasenger network. However the good news is the route has been restored using parts of the GN and to link the Midland lines North of Annersley and serve Mansfield.

My big argument with Beeching was that each line stood alone. Very little thiught was given how competing routes could be amalgamated and links put in place to allow lengths of one line to be used and the other closed. Istead of closing both lines..

I blame to cost of Leeds rebuilding it put BR off trying to rationalise/combine any more stations or lines. Although there was a link put in at Netherfield to link the Midalnd line to Lincoln with the GN to Grantham. Thus diverting GN services from Grantham to Midland and helping close Victoria. One other comes to mind Barnsley. However i am sure there were more that could ahve been done and saved services.

However BR freight were more successful managed to single serve all the remaining colleries in East Norttinghamshire with a East to North Spur at Shirebrook  and a link at Rufford.  BR freight alss built several links in South Wales and the Yorkshire coalfield enablinling lengths of line to be closed.

 

You write a lot that I can agree with. There is however this: 


There are few things I enjoy more than testing anecdotal evidence, especially when it’s third hand. So I dug out the Bradshaw reprint from 1922 and the 1959 and 1965 WR timetables to see what the evidence was to back it up. There was a minor issue that, in 1959, the S&D timetable in the WR book only gave full details as far as Templecombe, because beyond that was SR territory. So what I had  to do there was look at the 1959 WTT which shows trains arriving and departing Templecombe to the south, and extrapolated the times for Shillingstone and Blandford (not that there was much extrapolating to do because the times were all identical within 8 minutes).

Draw your own conclusions


The only caveat I would throw in is that in 1965 there were two trains (0953 ex-Bath down, 1140 ex-Bournemouth up) that were semi-fasts and didn’t stop at Shillingstone. Both called at Blandford, but the 1140 up was non stop between Blandford and Evercreech Junction.

Personally I can see no evidence to fully support your friend’s mother’s assertion of five minute or four hour waits (unless of course she was going down on the 0935 and couldn't get back for the 1032, but that in itself would not render the whole service unusable for the journey she wanted to make)


Note to mods - as this has absolutely nothing to do with Gloucester to Hereford can some of it be split into a new topix, especially if the discussion develops further?

 

Split off from http://www.passenger.chat/23538  .  Perhaps I should also move it from the "Campaigns for new and improved" services board to something more historic?

 

Like what - "Campaigns for old services"?

 

Dunno ... I really doing want to suggest too much fragmentation but I come across certain topics and wonder about
... "History Corner" - the way it was, but not looking to get it back
... "Passenger Experience" - taking some topics from "across the west" that are passenger facility based
... "Crayonist Central" - silly way out speculation - we know it will never happen, but ...

 

I didn't reply straight away because I was thinking about it.

It doesn't easily fit into any of the other categories and, IMHO, the last thing this forum needs is yet another bloody sub-heading!

So, bearing in mind that there is at least one outfit out there who seem to think reopening the S&D could be a "runner," it is probably best to leave it here and see if any of them crawl out of the woodwork... 

 

Not the last thing, Robin ... I can think of several other thing we need less.     We *have* combined board in the past  so it's not all branching ... and there are one or two quite ones which I can see combing in due course.  Ears and eyes always open.  Sometimes not much comes back out; at other time it rather floods.

 
Is a new "Mr Beeching" thinking of closing branches!

 

 

As an example, with through services from London to Cheltenham Spa being dominant through Kemble, there may be sense in merging London to Bristol and Swindon to Cheltenham Spa into "London to places in England via Swindon".

 
The North Dorset Railway at Shillingstone gets permission to become an operational heritage line.

 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev2v1pxnmlo

 
With many thanks for your post, bradshaw, I've merged it with an existing topic here, purely for continuity and ease of future reference.