Great Western Coffee Shop

These days of you want to travel from Bath to Cole, you take the Heart of Wessex to Bruton. From Bath to Poole, the Heart of Wessex to Dorchester and change there.  From Highbridge to Bournemouth, or Radstock to Templecombe, you take a look at the rail map and despair!

In the olden days, it was the "Somerset and Dorset" for these journeys ... and I'm a sucker for old timetables.  From the summer of 1963.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/sandd_south_63_1.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/sandd_south_63_2.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/sandd_south_63_3.jpg)

Yes you do at one of the worst acts of vandalism that has ever taken place in this country.

A trip to Poole for cycling today reminded me of this post when it passed the branch to what was the S&D terminus at Bournemouth West.
Part of the route south of Bath Green Park is now part of a National Cycle route, with hopes to extend further down the former line. Would there be demand all the year round? My alternative trip for cycling this weekend could have been Portsmouth and the Hayling Ferry, which is saying it doesn't cover its costs in winter. When I grew up on Hayling most of the local businesses were not viable out of season, so they shut until the following Easter (did require you to have a good income during the season).
Is a seasonal railway viable? This presumably is the ultimate question for the Swanage extension to Wareham.

Undoubtedly a seasonal railway is viable - look at just about every heritage line.  Whether a link into the national (Network Rail, nationalised) network can pay all year is much more questionable - Grosmont to Whitby is a case to look at.    All the more interesting is whether a Heritage / specialist line that depends on tourist can run an all year service for the communities it passes through and the people who live there all year.  I believe that the "Ratty" - of all lines - used to have a single daily train all year; not sure if it still runs.

Bournemouth and Poole are a massive all-year economy.  And they are disjoint, public transport wise, with the rest of the South West.  Radstock and Shepton Mallet are major residential / commuter towns for Bath and the Bristol area. I suspect that a good service along the line, with strong commuter at both ends, would put certain other lines to shame.

I don't think there was any chance of the Somerset & Dorset surviving Beeching. Perhaps if it had been an early proponent of dieselisation and the 'basic railway', but not otherwise. On the face of it, it might seem surprising that the Heart of Wessex survived when the S&D served the large conurbations of SE Dorset, but the following were against it.

1. The S&D had terrible connections for interchange. No physical connection at all to the ex-GWR route at Bath or at Cole / Bruton. A very over-complicated arrangement at Templecombe with a time-wasting reversal (a Tamworth style high and low level might work today).

2. The S&D was pretty much self-contained from Bath to Poole and didn't carry any other services. The Heart of Wessex is essentially only on its own between Dorchester West and Castle Cary, and arguably on the Frome branch. Otherwise it shares infrastructure with the Weymouth-Waterloo, Exeter-Paddington, Portsmouth-Cardiff and Paddington-Bristol routes.

3. The S&D was built on a shoestring (which exhausted the owners). The Heart of Wessex was built by a company supported by the powerful GWR. The S&D featured long steep gradients over the Mendips, the longest unventilated tunnel in the country at Combe Down, sharp curves and a maximum speed of 60mph. The HoW was built for faster running. Whilst the maximum speed between Dorchester and Castle Cary is 75mph, I suspect this is to save cost and due to the elderly condition of some the track - it looks as though it could easily support faster running if there was the budget for higher maintenance costs. The S&D also needed double heading for many services which wouldn't have helped the accounts.

4. The biggest intermediate population on the S&D was I think Blandford. The HoW has Yeovil, Frome and Trowbridge in the middle, all of which provide a reasonable amount of traffic.

I think commuter routes from SE Dorset-Blandford and Radstock-Bath might thrive (although maintaining Devonshire and Combe Down Tunnels for rail traffic would be expensive), but I can't see any likelihood of the through route coming back. Within Dorset a far bigger loss is the line from Poole to Broadstone, Wimborne and Ringwood - 'Castleman's Corkscrew'. With Ferndown as well, a through service into SE Dorset would be very popular and very competitive with the roads especially at peak time.

 Whilst I don't doubt there's a demand for Bristol-SE Dorset travel, it could probably be met by using the Wessex Main Line via Salisbury and Southampton. A curve over the Itchen at Redbridge could avoid the need for a reversal at Southampton - although that would be very expensive and I doubt (the modern) GWR would want to miss out Southampton. Even without that, it should be possible to run Bristol - Bournemouth in about 2 hours if there was a real demand for it and sufficient capacity over the Bath-Westbury section. If the Heart of Wessex linespeed is ever increased between Yetminster and Yeovil from the current 45mph and the points speeds increased above 15mph at Yeovil Pen Mill, Maiden Newton and Dorchester West then that could also be a potential route for a Bristol-Bournemouth service - but that isn't likely before the life expiry of the infrastructure, and I don't know how likely it is then.
 

This is the second time in a week I have had to be pedantic about the same subject :)
But it is the River Test at Redbridge, the River Itchen is on the east side of Southampton and goes towards Eastleigh and Winchester. The River Test is on the west side and goes towards Romsey and Andover.

It must be very Testing having to put up with us northerners from Wiltshire ...  ;D

Quite right. Considering I lived in Southampton for 3 years, I ought to have remembered that.

It's worth remembering that Dr Beeching only recommended closures.

In 1964 Labour came to power with Harold Wilson pledging, in the run up to the election, to halt the closures. Labour actually accelerated them and added further line and station closures not recommended by Beeching.

Barbara Castle is the real villain. She signed the S&DJR closure order.

So much excellent and logical comment there ... and Heart of Wessex itself only survived south of Yeovil by the skin of its teeth.

I would agree that the Somerset and Dorset isn't going to be the English Border Railway cutting right across country to join two major centres which are otherwise linked 'around the houses'.   I could see improvements south of Yeovil ... but a triangle at Southampton or at Dorchester is improbable.  The HoW partnership has done so much for that line, though the growth has been pushed to the limit and the limit of capacity and frequency not raised so there has been some recent levelling out and I suspect frustration.

Grecian - you make no mention of Broadstone - Downton - Salisbury ... I suspect like most other ideas in this thread, unlikely in the foreseeable future.

I am Itchen to say that as a Sotonian I consider anyone from Winchester a northerner. :)  :D

There was a lower platform at Templecombe but I think it was only used in one direction at the time of closure by the last daily departure from Bournemouth which terminated there and the engine and coaches went on Templecombe depot. I don't know if there was a pedestrian access connecting the two. In the back of my mind I have a feeling the station on the Salisbury - Exeter line was specified as Templecombe (Main) and a footnote to the timetable indicated, Lower Platform, for the arrival time of that last service described above.

By the way the line closed in 1966, it was down to close on the 3 January 1966 but due to problems licensing and putting in place the replacement bus services a short reprieve was incurred and the shutters finally came down on the line on 3 March 1966 but there was an enthusiasts special from London that traversed the whole line on the following day, a Sunday, from Bournemouth to Bath and then via Bitton and Mangotsfield to Bristol and thence to Highbridge and then on the branch to Evercreech Junction and back to Bournemouth before returning to London.

Was there much protest at the time about the closure?

From the same 1963 timetable

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/pines_63.jpg)

Yes, by 1963 The Pines Express was no longer running over S&DJR metals. The last time it ran via that route was 8th September 1962.

Very much an organised rundown, with lots of other railways in the same period.   The Devizes line closed completely and the Melksham line to passengers the month after the Somerset and Dorset. The year also saw the end of passenger trains on the Waterside line, to Yeovil Town, at intermediate stations on lines which are still open (such as Wilton South station), Taunton to Barnstaple, the Cowes line, Wroxall and Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.

With so much going on, protests with regard any single line were in some ways "just another protest", though there were some lines threatened but survived through this period.  Without "online" and with just a handful of TV channels, the media and the voice of the individual had very different metrics in those days.

There is a great description of the last N bound run by the driver in his book 'Mendips Engineman'.  The train was hauled by Evening Star and was the heaviest, unassisted, load over the Mendips.

The last day of regular operations on the S&D was Saturday 5 March 1966 with the various specials operating on Sunday 6 March.

I was there on the final two Saturday afternoons/evenings as a mere 14 year teenager allowed to venture out on my own (not unusual for me!) all the way from Weymouth by rail to view the demise. I attended school in Dorchester on Saturday mornings. On 26 February, after returning home (by train, of course) and a hurried lunch travelled back to Templecombe, via all three Yeovil Stations, and then went north to Bath Green Park arriving around 6pm. The return train was almost immediate, with me eventually arriving in Weymouth, via Yeovil,  around 10.30. Weather was grim that day and I do not recall any enthusiast turnout so the trains were quiet. I do have photos of this somewhere but they are not great. In the 15 minutes I had in Bath I looked in vain for some food and also decided that this part of Bath looked pretty grim then! The southbound trip was very emotive on a quiet train stopping at very dark stations with the odd staff voice heard somewhere out there. 

On 5 March, I repeated the exercise but went south from Templecombe, arriving in Poole around 6pm. It was a fine day with a major enthusiast turnout. So at least the S&D final services went out with a smile.

I still have some of the tickets from that time and I was recently reminiscing on exactly which trains I did travel on. The joys of retirement! 

Having used the S&D to travel from Crewkerne to Bournemouth in the late 1950s for family holidays I was sad to see its demise but was able to travel on one of the last day specials.

There was one abortive attempt to connect to the GWR (Wilts somerset and Weymouth) at Wyke Champflower and the earthworks could be seen until recently. This was carried out by the Somerset Central Railway around 1861. The north to east junction was from the SCR to the WSWR. However the amalgamation to form the S&D seems to have put paid to it.

There is an interesting piece on p52 of the book 'Disconnected'byChris Austin and Richard Faulkner, OPC 2016.

May I presume from the Saturday morning school, WSW Frome, that you went to Hardye's School? I taught there in there from 1976-1988.

I don't want to get into a political fight here but I have looked at lots of Ministry of Transport files relating to 1960s closures and the view generally was taken that BR saw the line up for closure as a dead loss and wanted it shut so why should civil servants or the Government (who were not, of course, railway people) take a different view unless the TUCC said there would be hardship for a lot of people and keeping the railway was the only way of solving it.

Look up a guy called F J Margetts - he was the leading BR officer in charge of closures for the key time in the 60s and he pushed the Ministry hard to get the closure decisions BR wanted.

Much more of the non Inter City or London suburban network would have gone without the principle of subsidies for loss making but socially necessary services being introduced in the 1968 Transport Act.

The book by Charles Loft - Last Trains, Dr Beeching and rage Death of Rural England, makes interesting reading on the subject.
Also, if you get a chance to hear Colin Divall talk on the S & D, he has some interesting views.

Bradshaw is correct that I did attend Hardye's School in Dorchester 1962-69. A large contingent of boys travelled by train from Weymouth and intermediate stations (like Radipole Halt for me) to Dorchester West, and later South. This included Saturday mornings.

For most of the period these were specially-provided trains between Weymouth and Dorchester and in various years not shown in the public timetable. Having written my piece on the S&D I was speculating at what time was our return train on Saturday lunchtimes. I have timetables for the mid 1960s and it is not shown but the answer was probably 12.10 or 12.15! Of course, until mid 1967 nearly all these trains were steam-hauled and later by Class 33s.