Rob Coles

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

Bath's Robert Coles has died after a short illness. I recollect that at the time of the campaign to create Bath's Two Tunnels route from what was then two closed rail tunnels and several lengths of more or less disjointed trackbed he was most helpful. In the last years of that railway he had a lineside walking pass and was able to dig out various photos from his collection which, once physical work started, were of practical help.

I remember that he mentioned the odd encouragement of passenger traffic at a time that that tide was dropping to a low ebb. In particular - and this is a niche one - the utility offered by a dying steam age operation in an increasingly diesel-powered transport mode, if one just happened to be within reach of Midford at a certain time in the morning and needed a simple route to travel to the Midlands.

On the prospect of seeing Devonshire Tunnel (currently temporarily closed) open as a walking route, he mentioned that he'd be looking forward to that as despite his lineside walking pass he'd not walked through the tunnels.

Then, the following quote from Robert: very revealing of those times and the sense of abandonment felt by individuals and communities  when seemingly permanent features of the transport landscape were, despite their potential, lost overnight.

"I suppose the last time I saw the tunnel mouth was on the last day of the S&D^▸ (Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway), once the line closed I never went back."

Mark

[Richard Fairhurst]

Oh, that's very sad. He was our "eyes on the ground" for the western Kennet & Avon when I was editing Waterways World. Really lovely man. Thank you for posting this, Mark.