Preservation Stories

When Tom Rolt and his fellow preservationists met at the Imperial Hotel Birmingham on October 11 1950, in a bid to save the ailing Talyllyn Railway, little did they know the chain of events that they were about to set in motion. That meeting created the embryo for the birth of a whole new industry in Britain, an industry which would gather momentum during the next fifty years and create a phenomenon unparalleled anywhere in the world. From fifteen thousand passengers and traffic receipts of £695 in 1951-its first year of operation- the railway preservation industry has grown to encompass more than one hundred operating railways and sixty steam centres, which together attract nearly eight million visitors a year and produce a combined turnover of around £43m.

Carving out its own piece of railway history because of the Birmingham meeting, the Talyllyn history goes back to the 1860’s when the plan for a railway to move stone from the slate quarries at Bryn Eglwys was hatched. The Talyllyn was different from other quarry lines as it was designed to operate with steam from day one, whereas other systems were gravity, rope worked or used horses to haul wagons. Construction of the eight mile line from Tywyn Wharf started in 1864 under the guidance of James Spooner, brother of the Ffestiniog Railway Engineer Charles, but it was hardly a major engineering feat, with 2ft 3ins gauge, a maximum of 1-in-60 gradient, 7 bridges and a 3 arch viaduct. It had been intended initially as a private railway, but a decision was made to operate it as a passenger-carrying line, and so an Act of Parliament was sought and passed by the time the track had been laid to Abergynolwyn.

At the opening in December 1866, the passenger coaches were operated locked because of tight bridge clearances-something the Board of Trade was not totally happy with. All station platforms were on the north side of the line, so the south side of the spartan workers coaches had no lettering. After years of profitability, the TR suffered when it was hit by a general decline in the slate industry, and in 1911, the quarry and railway were bought by prominent landowner and MP Sir Henry Hayden Jones, who wanted the line to continue for the duration of his life time. The writing was on the wall after locomotive Tal-y-llyn was withdrawn needing major repairs, leaving Dolgoch to soldier on. If that wasn’t bad enough, the quarry closed in 1947 and when Sir Henry died in June 1950, the line faced its biggest crisis. Services on the TR, 2 trains in each direction, terminated on October 6 the same year.

The Management kept a summer service running after Sir Henry’s death, a record 5235 passengers were carried that year. As the only share holders were his widow and daughter, they were advised to seek an abandonment order and sell the assets for scrap. It seemed as though the end was nigh. In the normal course of events, that’s what would have happened had it not been for the persistence of Tom Rolt. Rolt had written to the Birmingham Post, as had others, raising concerns over the future of the TR with the aim of prompting a meeting of like minded people intent on not only on saving the line, but running it. It was new and uncharted ground, full of pitfalls, but the meeting was attended by as many as 70, doubtless boosted by the Post front page story. The meeting which was attended by the Railway’s General Manager, Edward Thomas, was told that the track needed renewing, the locos needed major repairs and that the line lost money.

Facing the impossible, but undaunted and seeing the potential, Rolt said he hoped there would be sufficient interest from those in the room to form a working committee, leading to the acquisition of the line, its locos and rolling stock, along with a supporting society to keep it running. Backing Rolt were Bill Trinder, Patrick Whitehouse and Pat Garland, who was an accountant by profession. He also had experience of liquidating companies and felt such expertise might just be needed! Despite the sceptics, the first meeting of a committee was held on October 23, at which the name The Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society was adopted, even though the intentions were to carry on running it rather than to preserve it.

At more or less the same time as the Tallyllyn was getting under way, efforts were being made forty miles further north along the Cambrian Coast to try to re-open the Ffestiniog Railway. The Ffestiniog was another slate carrying line, operating from Blaenau Ffestiniog, where there were several slate mines, and descending seven hundred feet to Porthmadog Harbour, where the slate was transported onwards by sea. The line, which had also run passenger services, had closed in August 1946 after 110 years of operation – basically a casualty of the cessation of trains during World War 11, the service never reverting to pre-war levels as passengers drifted away.

Behind the plan was a teenager, Leonard Heath Humphreys, who, having learnt about Welsh narrow gauge lines, had plans to begin fund raising to prevent the FR going the same way as the Welsh Highland. As a 17 year old, Heath Humphreys was said to be unaware of the Tallyllyn developments. He visited some of the Welsh slate quarries, called at Porthmadog, known in those days as Portmadoc and left believing that amid the five years of rot and decay there was something worth saving. He followed that up with a letter to the Railway Gazette in July 1951.

Despite the initial interest and a meeting in Bristol in September 1951, it was not until Leonard met Alan Garraway, a Tallyllyn member and a railway engineer, and a number of others at the Old Bull pub in Barnet on October 8^th that the first signs of a Preservation Society began to form.

The old Ffestiniog Railway Company was still in existence, but unlike the owners of the Tallyllyn, the FR’s owners felt that re-opening the line and resuming passenger services using one of the original Double Fairlie locos was not within the capabilities of volunteers. Without the purchase of the shares of the FR company, which was beyond the means of the Group, there was little that could be done to save the railway and its assets. Substantial help was required, it was provided be Retford business man and enthusiast Alan Pegler. A meeting at the Great Northern Hotel, Kings Cross, in January 1953 led to Alan providing an interest free loan to buy the shares, placing them in a Trust, and creating a holding company to take control of the railway in June 1954. Alan Garroway quit his job with British Railways and became General Manager and Engineer of the FR in June 1955 as the transition from volunteer to permanent employee became a necessity.

Volunteers came to the railway every weekend and by July 23rd 1955 enough progress had been made to begin services along the one mile long Cob between Porthmadog and Bostin Lodge using a petrol powered locomotive. By August, George England 0-4-0 ST No 2 Prince had been restored to work passenger trains, but the two Double Fairlies, Taliesin and Merddin Emrys, needed overhauls.

Even in those early days, there were strong intentions to re-open the full 13 miles of two foot line back to Blaenau Ffestiniog, but those plans were dealt a cruel blow a year after re-opening when the British Electricity Authority (later CEGB) took compulsory possession of the track bed beyond Dduallt with the intention of flooding it and building a power station. There ensued a long battle for compensation for the loss of the track bed, with the CEGB arguing that it was no loss as the line had ceased to operate years ago. In the end the FR was successful and won just over £100,000 in compensation, but this was far from enough to carry out the planned deviation from Dduallt to connect to the part of the track bed not under water. More of that scheme later.

The re-commencement of Ffestiniog services was followed a year later in November by the closure of the Welshpool and Llanfair Railway. Unlike the Talyilyn and Ffestiniog, that line was owned by British Railways, inherited from Cambrian Railways days.

Passenger services over the 9.5-mile W & L line had ceased in 1931 and it had eked out an existance until November 1956 almost exclusively for the benefit of the local hill farmers. It was in fact , the U.K.s sole surviving non preserved narrow gauge still carrying freight.

A Preservation Society had been established in the month the line closed, and a letter to the RM in October 1957 advised readers that the British Transport Commission had given assurances that no part of the line would be sold or demolished while the Society was in negotiations to buy it. The writer, a William Morris, also dispelled the rumour that one loco had been scrapped at Swindon and the second was to follow.

It transpired that negotiations with British Railways and the Ministry of Transport were painfully slow and drawn out, but in 1959 the Society was granted a concession for volunteer working parties to undertake certain work between Welshpool and Llanfair Caereinion.

One of the reasons for the protracted negotiations was that after leaving Welshpool Station, the 2ft 6in gauge line ran through the town and over several road crossings. Obtaining the necessary authority for passenger services proved difficult and such intentions were eventually abandoned, although it was used for works trains for some years. Instead, the Society took up a lease on Raven Square Station, on the edge of town, in 1962.

The following year, W & L passenger services started over the 4.5 miles between Raven Square and Castle Caereinion.

Madge Bessemer granddaughter of Henry Bessemer, who introduced his process for making steel from pig iron, lived at North Chailey, close to the East Grinstead-Lewis Line. An agreement dating from 1905 with the LBSCR permitted a private gate from the Bessemer house, which allowed easy access to the local station.

Deemed as a loss maker, the line was proposed for closure on May 28^th, 1955 – but BR and the BTC had not reckoned on a battle with the astute Miss Bessemer. For it was Madge who discovered in the original Act of Parliament that the line had to run four trains a day and could not be legally closed at the whim of the BTC.

Although services were withdrawn on the said day, the BTC was forced to reinstate trains which it did in August 1956. Predictably, the pathetic service, nicknamed the sulky service, ran at inconvenient times for connections at East Grinstead to and from London. BR then had to go through the statuary motions of getting the services withdrawn once more. This finally happened on March 16, 1958.

The debacle had attracted national media attention, and with the efforts of the Talyllyn and Ffestiniog in mind, three students discussed creating the Lewes and East Grinstead Railway Preservation Society and running summer weekend trains.

After a local newspaper had nicknamed the scheme the Bluebell Line, further local publicity about a possible re-opening led to a trackbed walk between Horsted Keynes and Newark and Chailey, followed by an initial meeting at Haywards Heath on March 15th 1959, chaired by British Railways (BR) employee, Bernard Holden, who was later to become Bluebell General Manager.

Raising £6 from a whip round for the Society’s funds, their next stop was a meeting with Southern Region Management at Waterloo. The line from Horsted Keynes to Culver Junction, was offered to the Society for £55,000, although the RM for August 1959 records that Horsted Keynes to Sheffield Park was made available for £34,000, it was the latter section which the newly formed Bluebell Railway opted for, leasing the line for five years at £2,500 per year.

In May 1960, the Railway acquired former LBSCR Terrier No 55 Stepney, which was delivered to Horsted Keynes, and with the arrival at the end of June of P Class 0-6-0T No 323, services started on August 7th, following the approval of a light railway order. Because there was no run-round loop, trains ran top and tailed. Incidentally, the cost of the two locos, together with two coaches from BR set the railway back the princely sum of £1783 and 17 shillings!

Initially, BR refused to let Bluebell Trains into Horsted Keynes platforms and so the Preservationists were forced to build Bluebell Halt, south of the junction to Ardingley, which was still used by trains, but was closed and lifted in 1963. BR did relent and allowed the Bluebell to use one platform at Horsted Keynes, but insisted on a pilotman between the Halt and the main station, which, not surprisingly, did not come free. The belief that volunteers could successfully take over the line was rewarded when at the AGM it was revealed that despite starting late in the season, 15,023 passengers were carried in just 3 months, bringing in £l,136. For the following season, four metropolitan railway coaches were acquired displaced from the Chesham Branch, and arrived at Sheffield Park in March, for the April 1st start to the new timetable, operating six trains a day, at weekends and Bank Holidays.

As time progressed and the popularity of the line increased, additional locomotives arrived, including ex-GNR J552 0-6-0ST No 1247, which had been bought by Captain Bill Smith from BR in 1959 and was the first locomotive to be preserved privately. Negotiations with the BTC were ongoing over the sale of Adams Radial 4-4-2T No 30583 and North London 0-6-0T No 58850 for which around £2,000 was needed to secure them. The lines that had been preserved so far, or schemes in their infancy, had all focussed on scenic lines, but in Leeds, that was about to change.