LAST TRAIN FROM EVERCREECH JUNCTION
Memories of the S&D
with John Alves #2
A New Generation
My own first vivid recollection of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway is from when I was six or seven years old (which was in 1928 or 1929). I remember seeing a blue train leaving Glastonbury station over the level-crossing going through Evercreech Junction. Even at that childish age I felt that blue was an unusual colour for a train. Alas! The S&D was about to lose its distinctive livery. I was often taken to Glastonbury (by car) but I never again saw one of those blue trains. The next S&D train that I saw had a black locomotive lettered ‘LMS’.
The S&D had always fascinated me, no doubt an inherited interest. As an older schoolboy I was living in Taunton. Burnham-on-Sea was a nearby seaside town and also the terminus of the S&D line from Glastonbury. Burnham railway station was close to the foreshore, but the track continued westward and then plunged into the sea. I never saw just how far the rails extended beyond the shoreline, and an immature mind enjoyed the notion that they went all the way to the clearly visible coast of South Wales, for the use of submarine trains. In fact it was all to do with the landing stage for the long forgotten steamer services to Cardiff operated by the railway company from 1858 to 1888.
Another favourite railway expedition from Taunton was to take the GWR branch to Yeovil and then go by Southern Railway through Yeovil Junction to Templecombe. Here one could admire the unusual arrangements devised by the S&D to bring its trains in and out of the Southern Railway station.
Little use was made of the the S&D’s own small platform at the point below the Southern station where the Bath to Bournemouth trains could have passed. Instead, S&D trains from the north would run up the connecting curve into a platform at the higher level. To continue their journey to Bournemouth, these trains had to back out from Templecombe on that same curve for three-quarters of a mile until they had cleared the junction and could proceed southbound.
My day at Templecombe might include a sighting of one of the long-distant trains using the S&D line to link northern and midland cities with the south coast. I would not be there to see the Up ‘Pines Express’, Bournemouth to Manchester, but the Down train would sweep in to Templecombe (and then creep out backwards) towards the end of the afternoon.
On summer Saturdays, except during the war years, the train service was much more hectic. I have a 1955 list of the destinations of Up through trains from Bournemouth. It includes Sheffield (Midland), Liverpool Lime Street, Bradford Foster Square, Manchester London Road, Manchester Victoria, Cleethorpes and Birmingham New Street.
The best way to round off my day out would be to travel homewards on lines originally built by the Dorset Central and the Somerset Central so that I could catch a GWR train at Highbridge to take me back to Taunton. To do this way was to enjoy the S&D at its quietest, using trains that stopped at every station. The ten miles to Evercreech Junction from Templecombe took 25 minutes on a Bournemouth to Bristol train that would need another 90 minutes to complete its journey after I had left it. The branch train from Evercreech Junction then took an hour to cover the 22 miles to Highbridge.
Humble but Useful
So far we have said nothing about the humble but useful Bridgwater branch which the S&D for many years refused to build, since they already had a connection with the Bristol & Exeter/GWR at nearby Highbridge. Eventually the citizens of Bridgwater promoted their own line, from a separate station at Bridgwater, to join the S&D at Edington Junction seven miles away. Financial aid came, rather improbably, from the L&SWR, and the line was opened in 1890. Naturally it was worked as part of the S&D.
There was never any quick from Glastonbury to Taunton by train, but the most direct route was over the Bridgwater branch, with a walk through the side streets of that slightly uninspiring town to the GWR station for a fast train to Taunton. Unfortunately the connections at Edington Junction were not always good. I was once stuck there for 40 minutes during a war-time journey from Taunton to Glastonbury
Edington Junction was an eerily quiet spot with few spots of human habitation; nothing to watch but herons. Suddenly I realised that the station might provide a neat design for a model railway. I had a notebook with me containing other sketches of stations and track plans made from the same motive. As I began to pursue this useful way of passing the time an elderly porter came out of his lair.
“Seeing that there’s a war on, might I enquire why you are sketching a plan of this railway junction?”
“I just like to do so” I said. “Here are some other station plans in this notebook that I have sketched recently.”
“Oh well, that’s perfectly all right then.” End of inquisition! Scarcely ‘positive vetting’ but perhaps positive for somewhere as unimportant as Edington Junction.
The Final Years of the S&D
Death spread from the extremities. In 1951 passenger services were withdrawn from Highbridge to Burnham-on-Sea, which meant the S&D passenger trains no longer had to cross the main line from Bristol to Taunton on the level. The S&D station was renamed ‘Highbridge and Burnham-on-Sea’, which fooled nobody. Next to go was the very quiet Bridgwater branch, from which passenger services were withdrawn in 1952.
Ten years later, after the Western Region of British Railways had taken over the S&D lines, the through trains from the north and midlands to the south coast were discontinued, together with most of the freight services. The Western Region had no use for a route that had traditionally been in competition with the former GWR lines.
The last ‘Pines Express’ to run over the S&D route to Bournemouth was on the last day of the 1962 Summer Timetable. From there it went through Oxford, Basingstoke and Winchester. The run-down of services continued, closure of the entire S&D system was threatened, then postponed, but finally occurred in 1966. Tracks were lifted, tunnels were sealed, viaducts were fenced off, and all was desolation.
From 1961 I was living abroad but making occasional visits to my parents, now living in Banwell, not very close to any S&D line. Nevertheless, I was twice able to make use of the S&D stations for the final stage of my journey home. On the first occasion I persuaded my father that he could drive to meet me at Binegar. I had to leave my train from Paddington at Bath Spa station, walk over to Green Park and catch the most improbable train - the 6.10 pm, all stations to Binegar. It then returned to Bath, again calling at all stations and giving Radstock folk the chance to spend two evening hours in the Georgian City before the last train back!
Two Good Jokes
My father thought it a good joke to be able to meet me at Binegar from a 3,000 mile journey from abroad. A year or so later he was quite dubious about a proposition to meet me at Shepton Mallet, off a train that did not call at Binegar. I had to suggest that he stay home until I telephoned him from Shepton to confirm that I had actually arrived.
When I left the train at Shepton Mallet the station porter, with typical S&D helpfulness, offered me the use of the station phone. He listened to my end of the conversation with keen attention.
“Coming from Banwell, is he? He won’t be here for half an hour, maybe longer,” Clearly he was beginning to feel responsible for my welfare and entertainment, as he led me out on to the station platform to explain to me the landscape of Shepton Mallet. “All the farm land you can see, all around, belongs to one or another of the Showering brothers, you know, the Babycham people.”
I was duly impressed but, on that cold Spring evening, eager to get back to the warmth of the coal fire in the waiting room. But he continued, without mercy. “Have you ever seen the lovely gardens that the Showering’s have made on the hillside behind the Babycham factory?”
I said that I had heard about them and understood that they were closed to the general public.
“Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. You can see the gardens perfectly well from the far end of the viaduct if you walk over there along the railway track.”
I was most reluctant: “It can’t be safe to walk along the railway across the viaduct. What would happen if a train came?”
“There’s no train due until eight o’clock, and anyway you have my permission!”
I had run out of excuses and had to set forth, picking my way over the ballast and sleepers, hundreds of feet above the town, utterly exposed to the cold wind blowing in straight from the distant Atlantic, miserable in my thin raincoat.
Certainly there was a good view of the Showering’s factory gardens. They looked starved, and was brown, as if it was mid-winter. I then stumbled back to the station without having been called upon to dispute the right of way with any unexpected trains. “Beautiful,” I said when I got back. “Really Beautiful,” and refused to move away again from that wonderful coal fire until my father arrived ten minutes later. That was the last journey that any member of my family ever made on the tracks of the former S&D railway.
Envoi
As the S&D line dragged out its final days it became ever more attractive to the railway enthusiasts. Everywhere else in the country steam locomotives were being replaced by diesel. Known to be destined for closure, the S&D was not considered for modernisation, diesels were rarely seen there and hard-working steam engines continued to emit photogenic quantities of smoke and steam as they struggled to cross the Mendip Hills.
Photographers swarmed around the dying railway like the bees in the Golden Syrup label. Although the ‘Pines Express’ no longer used the S&D line to reach Bournemouth, farewell trains, specially chartered by enthusiast organisations, brought many large, unusual steam engines to the S&D. Interest remained high, and many miles of photographic film were expended.
My absence abroad deprived me of the chance to participate in these last rites. I might well have been more saddened than entertained. As a true working railway it was already dead. The Western Region of British Rail obviously felt that it should never have been built, and perhaps they were right. The gradients over the Mendips were almost unmanageable and the narrow single-line tunnels were literally asphyxiating - ask the drivers and firemen! But the line served the local communities well, holiday-makers too, before we all had cars. The S&D was a railway of great character and it is greatly missed by those who once knew it.