Great Western Coffee Shop

Readers may be interested to see how the Cardiff - Portsmouth service has improved over 55 years.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/portsmouth_cardiff_1963.jpg)

Note how the South Wales services called at Stapleton Road Junction for South Wales. yes it really was.

In pre-1963 days I as a child would travel on the equivalent service to that calling at Bathampton at 7:56 back from my Aunts in Warminster, that was the last train of the day to call at Bathampton and it was the train guards duty to extinguish the gas platform lights before departing.

I could never understand why when visiting Aunties that we didn't travel all the way to Warminster on the train rather than leaving the train at Trowbridge and getting the Wilts and Dorset Trowbridge to Salisbury service  bus (painted Red as opposed to Green as the Bristol buses were) to Warminster.  When I eventually got round to asking why dont we go all the way on the train the answer was that we could get a cheap day return to Trowbridge but not to Warminster although Auntie could get a cheap day return from Warminster to Bristol. Adding the two tickets, rail and bus together, it was cheaper. See even back then in 1963 we had split ticketing.

In the mid sixties I did a tour which involved catching the paper train from from Waterloo to Salisbury the 3.05 am to bristol, the first train to Bath Green Park followed by first train Bath to Evercreech Jn. Then a trip to Highbridge and back and then Evercreech to Bournemouth West and back to Waterloo.