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A heretical notion

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Calthrop

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A recent surprising – for a nostalgia-inclined railway enthusiast with a particular weakness for the narrow gauge – train of thought, which lately came about. Looking for general-knowledge question material; I turned to Google to supplement dim memories of reading stuff about public transport in the Exmoor area, prior to the 1898 opening of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway. It emerged that that region was in those times, an anachronistic relic of the stage-coach era of most of a century earlier, in its romantic glory. A splendid article concerning same:

www.lerwill-life.org.uk/history/coaching.htm
.....They were grand days and grand people, but with the opening of the Lynton/Barnstaple/ Railway in 1898, the coach services on that route came to an abrupt, and almost overnight, end.

There was still very heavy traffic on the Minehead route, and right up to 1913, when some 30 horses were employed, the coaches ran to make connection with the London trains. The journey took three hours, and the coaches, Lorna Doone, Katerfelty and, later, Red Deer, were driven by William Vellacott, Edward and Tom Baker, John Curtis, Georgie Chugg, John Hussel and Noel Carey. The last named became a driver on the Cliff railway.

In all the years it operated (and even in winter the coach ran once a week) only once was the route impassable. Sometimes in rough weather, it was necessary to make a detour, but generally the coach got through. Two extra horses ridden postillion were hitched on at Lynton to get each coach up Countisbury Hill, but the average motorist is still amazed that horses were able to pull a heavy vehicle plus ten to twelve hundredweight of luggage up the incline at all......
Until the L&B’s opening, public transport between Barnstaple and Lynton; and Minehead and Lynton; was by stage-coach. This situation continued to obtain between Minehead and Lynton (no railway ever built over that route) until 1913. While I love rural narrow-gauge lines, and feel that the Lynton & Barnstaple must have been a delight to know, and mourn its demise in 1935: the linked-to article has me feeling that the stage-coach services were in their different way, perhaps equally delightful.

From a practical, as opposed to a sentimental, point of view: it is difficult not to consider that if the promoters (in Britain, and also further afield) of minor railways – standard- or narrow-gauge – opened around the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries, had had foreknowledge of how soon and how quickly, road motor transport would take off; they would probably have “stayed their hand” and let their railways not happen – with said railways to have too short a spell of being truly useful transport-wise, for their existence to be worthwhile. The author of the linked-to article allows himself a sly dig at the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway with its 37-year life-span, as a usurping “ ‘new-fangled’ invention which in time also ran its course”.

Delectable though the often short-lived light railways were, in their lifetimes – with the L&B one of the more delectable among them – I find myself treasonously musing on a possibly also very attractive scenario in which the L&B never was; and in which the stage-coaches continued to assure public transport on Exmoor (three hours by coach Barnstaple – Lynton; an hour and a half by “two-foot-gauge” train; so what, people in those parts aren’t usually in much of a hurry :)) for the decade or two until their displacement by the motor bus. Stage-coaches might even have continued beyond then in a restricted role (pace the issue of fitting them in with modern-day motor traffic), as summer tourist attractions – charging people far more than the bus fare for the journey, for the colourful “period” experience. I feel “torn” here, in a way in which I’m not used to.
 
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Cowley

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A very interesting article, thanks for posting that.
I must admit I didn't realise that the Minehead route ran so late on. It is ferociously hilly, I wouldn't fancy taking a stagecoach down Porlock or Countisbury, it must have been pretty daunting on an icy day! I suffered brake fade in an old 60s VW van going down Porlock once, it had original drum brakes and no servo and I remember pushing myself down against the roof onto the brake pedal trying to slow it down as one of the corners rapidly approached me.

I suppose that if the service had become 'preserved' so to speak then it could have run people around on local trips for fun, although obviously you couldn't replicate it as it was when it was operating as a proper service.
I guess decent bus services and improved roads came along and opened the area up for all not long after the railway opened, and that changed the area considerably.
 

Calthrop

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I don’t drive – but have long been aware of Porlock and Countisbury Hills and their fearsome reputation: owing to our family’s having had the board game “Touring England” (by road), and much playing of it as a kid – those Hills (miss a throw if you land on one) feature in said game. (The game contains only a very few such “steep hills”, the great majority of which are in one corner – Exmoor, and Dorset. Re this and other things -- I feel that its makers followed the maxim “less is more”, to an excessive degree.)

A couple of years ago, my brother and I – him driving – made a day-trip from south Devon to Exmoor; including my first – and so far only – visit to Lynton (long dreamt-of – but with its losing its railway thirteen years before I was born...). He was bent on going further east to traverse Porlock Hill, extremely well-known to him from “Touring England” -- which we duly did. It’s a brute, for sure.

On reflection: there really is no way that a stage-coach service could work, on modern main roads. Had our fantasy happened in real life – that as a “preserved” thing, would have had to come to an end main-road-wise in the 1960s at latest: if happening in any way nowadays, it would indeed be reduced to tootling around on minor roads, not going anywhere with authentic seriousness.

Recalled from reading long ago: a book which light-heartedly narrated a European tour, including Britain, by the family to which the American author – then a teenager – belonged, in the 1920s. She told of a return trip from central London to Hampton Court which the family took – then run as a regular, basically “fun / tourist” thing, by stage-coach, recreating something of the coaching era. The coach drivers and guards were male scions of the English aristocracy, who did this on a voluntary basis. Not too far-fetched, perhaps, to see this – allowing for context – as a kind of distant precursor of the railway-preservation movement?
 

Busaholic

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The only time I have ever been on a motorbike on a public road was as a pillion passenger going up Porlock Hill, and I came off the bike. Can't remember whether I had a helmet on, it being 1966 or 1967, but the indignity! Walked the rest of the way.
 

Bevan Price

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In practice, many "working class" people would not have been able to afford to use a stagecoach. Many would never travel much beyond the boundaries of their local village or town. Some might ride a horse, but for others, the only option would be a very long walk....
 

Cowley

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In practice, many "working class" people would not have been able to afford to use a stagecoach. Many would never travel much beyond the boundaries of their local village or town. Some might ride a horse, but for others, the only option would be a very long walk....

Good point. All your family would probably have been in your own town as would your work etc unless perhaps you had to travel to other markets.
Perhaps if you were a bit higher up the ladder you would travel to other towns on business etc.


Calthrop - Thinking about that game and the other hilly area on it, Dorset. Reminds me of an old boy called Brian who used to work the night shift in the BRS garage I worked in after leaving school in the 80s (I've just been out to see a couple of old mechanic friends from back then who I haven't seen for 20 years and that also reminded me).
Anyway, Brian was well known for the fact that he lost the already not very good brakes on the BRS wrecker (an old, maybe even wartime, Scammell) while descending the hill into Lyme Regis one night in the 1970s and driving it into a shop (luckily closed) rather than picking up any more speed and destroying himself and who knows what at the bottom of the town.
Only I've been having slightly disturbing thoughts this evening of a carriage full of American tourists heading towards a towering precipice backwards at great speed because a horse had got shoe fade (is that a thing?) half way down a 1 in 4 hill and it was either them or it... :|
 
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Greenback

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In practice, many "working class" people would not have been able to afford to use a stagecoach. Many would never travel much beyond the boundaries of their local village or town. Some might ride a horse, but for others, the only option would be a very long walk....

This very true. The majority of people would have had no reason to leave their own village very often. I know that my ancestors on Gower were extremely self sufficient, though they did not have what we would consider a comfortable life by today's standards.

From what I've been told and researched, my great great grandparents on one side would have considered a 15 mile trip to Swansea to be a rare adventure, perhaps only undertaken two or three times a year. I believe that they would normally have been able to hitch a lift with more affluent neighbours who had a horse and cart to take stuff to market once a week, but most of the stuff they ate and used they provided for themselves, or got through the exchange of vegetables they grew.

There were no railway lines near where they lived even after the dawn of the railway age. I think the nearest stations would have been Llanmorlais, Gowerton or Mumbles Road (different branches of the family lived in different places down the years). I don't think passenger services on the Llanmorlais branch lasted long.

Interestingly, I believe that Col Stephens had plans for a light railway to Port Eynon which never materialised!
 

Calthrop

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In practice, many "working class" people would not have been able to afford to use a stagecoach. Many would never travel much beyond the boundaries of their local village or town. Some might ride a horse, but for others, the only option would be a very long walk....

Things are relative, I suppose: as posters have replied, those on the lower branches of the economic tree wouldn’t have had much pressing need (as opposed to “it would be nice if...”) to travel out of their immediate local area. At all events, these folks’ deprivation in that respect would have lasted only a couple more decades, even if the late 19th / early 20th century light railways / latecomer branch-lines, had never been: after that, rural bus services burgeoned (helped by the boost given to road motor transport, by World War 1 – ill winds, and all that).

It would seem hard to deny that, in practical terms, public passenger transport needs in the depths of the countryside are / were more conveniently met by buses, than by Colonel-Stephens-esque light railways of the kind which people like us, passionately love. So much investment / equipment put into the light and narrow-gauge railways, often for such a pitifully short working life: I find it difficult not to reckon – as per my OP – that if folk had had a bit of a gift of reading the future, these lines would just “never have happened”. As a species, we seem to have a big tendency to just blast ahead and do what seems a good idea at the time – not considering very carefully, the wider picture and future possibilities.

Calthrop - Thinking about that game and the other hilly area on it, Dorset. Reminds me of an old boy called Brian who used to work the night shift in the BRS garage I worked in after leaving school in the 80s (I've just been out to see a couple of old mechanic friends from back then who I haven't seen for 20 years and that also reminded me).
Anyway, Brian was well known for the fact that he lost the already not very good brakes on the BRS wrecker (an old, maybe even wartime, Scammell) while descending the hill into Lyme Regis one night in the 1970s and driving it into a shop (luckily closed) rather than picking up any more speed and destroying himself and who knows what at the bottom of the town.

The fearsome Trow, and Chideock, Hills -- and is the hill into Lyme Regis, yet another one? -- I've travelled that route a couple of times in recent years, but seemingly don't have my head fully around its hilly hazards.

Only I've been having slightly disturbing thoughts this evening of a carriage full of American tourists heading towards a towering precipice backwards at great speed because a horse had got shoe fade (is that a thing?) half way down a 1 in 4 hill and it was either them or it... :|

Given this horrid situation: knowing Americans' litigious tendencies (much though I on the whole like the USA and its people) -- the potential lawsuits from the victims, or their heirs, would be fearsome to contemplate...

There were no railway lines near where they lived even after the dawn of the railway age. I think the nearest stations would have been Llanmorlais, Gowerton or Mumbles Road (different branches of the family lived in different places down the years). I don't think passenger services on the Llanmorlais branch lasted long.

Per my "go-to" work on these matters, Passengers No More by Daniels and Dench, the Gowerton -- Llanmorlais branch lost its passenger service at the beginning of 1931: quite early in the era of "rural bus displacing rural rail".

Interestingly, I believe that Col Stephens had plans for a light railway to Port Eynon which never materialised!

There's fascinating stuff on the Net about this project -- which if it had come about, would likely have been interestingly complex, possibly piggy-backing to some extent on the already-existing Swansea & Mumbles line. I'd hoped to be able to provide a link; but am not too good with computers, and "the thing wouldn't play". If one Googles "Port Eynon light railway", the first several "hits" are potentially full of interest.
 

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On reflection: there really is no way that a stage-coach service could work, on modern main roads. Had our fantasy happened in real life – that as a “preserved” thing, would have had to come to an end main-road-wise in the 1960s at latest: if happening in any way nowadays, it would indeed be reduced to tootling around on minor roads, not going anywhere with authentic seriousness.

Recalled from reading long ago: a book which light-heartedly narrated a European tour, including Britain, by the family to which the American author – then a teenager – belonged, in the 1920s. She told of a return trip from central London to Hampton Court which the family took – then run as a regular, basically “fun / tourist” thing, by stage-coach, recreating something of the coaching era. The coach drivers and guards were male scions of the English aristocracy, who did this on a voluntary basis. Not too far-fetched, perhaps, to see this – allowing for context – as a kind of distant precursor of the railway-preservation movement?

There was also a revival in road coaches in the Victorian era when they would be driven down the old coaching roads for a bit of nostalgia. Driving four-in-hand horses was also a bit of a thing for the aristocracy and I believe it still exists as a posh person's sport today, practiced by Prince Philip among others.

In fact, most of the mail coaches in museums today are in replicas from this revival period rather than vehicles that were built during the commercial heyday of the mail coach. Arguably the first in a long line of transport preservation efforts in this country.
 

Calthrop

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There was also a revival in road coaches in the Victorian era when they would be driven down the old coaching roads for a bit of nostalgia. Driving four-in-hand horses was also a bit of a thing for the aristocracy and I believe it still exists as a posh person's sport today, practiced by Prince Philip among others.

Ah, yes, I've heard of this -- I gather that in Windsor Great Park one sometimes encounters the Royals and friends engaging in this pursuit.

In fact, most of the mail coaches in museums today are in replicas from this revival period rather than vehicles that were built during the commercial heyday of the mail coach. Arguably the first in a long line of transport preservation efforts in this country.

One wonders whether some enthusiast purists would therefore consider the replicas from the Victorian period less worth saving, than original coaches from circa two-centuries-plus ago? I have a railway-enthusiast friend who rather eccentrically takes this kind of "purist" attitude to the length of feeling lukewarm about -- and considering less preservation-worthy -- preserved rail material which contains little or none of what it physically comprised when first built. Most folk, one gathers, would disagree here -- holding to the "William The Conqueror's Penknife" principle: as with a living creature, a loco or other vehicle keeps its essential identity regardless of how much its physical makeup may change over time.
 

Welshman

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It would seem hard to deny that, in practical terms, public passenger transport needs in the depths of the countryside are / were more conveniently met by buses, than by Colonel-Stephens-esque light railways of the kind which people like us, passionately love. So much investment / equipment put into the light and narrow-gauge railways, often for such a pitifully short working life: I find it difficult not to reckon – as per my OP – that if folk had had a bit of a gift of reading the future, these lines would just “never have happened”. As a species, we seem to have a big tendency to just blast ahead and do what seems a good idea at the time – not considering very carefully, the wider picture and future possibilities.

To return to your original citing of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, L.T.Catchpole in his history of line [Oakwood Press -ISBN 0 85361 363 X] suggests the line faced problems almost from the very beginning. The geological strata of Exmoor was making it difficult to maintain, the original construction estimates had over-run and so it began its life in debt, and the folks of Lynton were soon regretting having a station 250ft above the town.

Also, of course, the line carried no industrial traffic [unlike the light railways of North Wales], and relied solely on local and tourist use. As you say, it seemed a good idea at the time, but disillusionment and dissatisfaction quickly set -in.
 
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Shimbleshanks

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Ah, yes, I've heard of this -- I gather that in Windsor Great Park one sometimes encounters the Royals and friends engaging in this pursuit.



One wonders whether some enthusiast purists would therefore consider the replicas from the Victorian period less worth saving, than original coaches from circa two-centuries-plus ago? I have a railway-enthusiast friend who rather eccentrically takes this kind of "purist" attitude to the length of feeling lukewarm about -- and considering less preservation-worthy -- preserved rail material which contains little or none of what it physically comprised when first built. Most folk, one gathers, would disagree here -- holding to the "William The Conqueror's Penknife" principle: as with a living creature, a loco or other vehicle keeps its essential identity regardless of how much its physical makeup may change over time.

I think also in the case of the mail coaches, there are very very few 'real' ones left. At the time, nobody thought to preserve an aspect of transport that was fading into history, I imagine. In the same way that there are only a very, very few examples of railway coaching stock from the 1830s-1860s.

As to whether it is worth preserving an item because the original has been replaced, I think if you took the 'purist' view hardly anything would be saved. After all, this is working machinery designed to have its vital components replaced on a regular basis.
 

ChiefPlanner

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Retention of the line was not helped by the disclosure of a party of local grandees etc who went to plead their case to Southern Railway management at Waterloo , who admitted they had come up by motor car.
 

Calthrop

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To return to your original citing of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, L.T.Catchpole in his history of line [Oakwood Press -ISBN 0 85361 363 X] suggests the line faced problems almost from the very beginning. The geological strata of Exmoor was making it difficult to maintain, the original construction estimates had over-run and so it began its life in debt, and the folks of Lynton were soon regretting having a station 250ft above the town.

Also, of course, the line carried no industrial traffic [unlike the light railways of North Wales], and relied solely on local and tourist use. As you say, it seemed a good idea at the time, but disillusionment and dissatisfaction quickly set -in.

One does get the feeling that England’s always rather few “true” narrow-gauge lines were overall, ill-conceived / of doubtful usefulness – or plain unlucky. (I’ve always felt that the Southwold deserved a better fate, than that which it got: have “heard tell” from one source that its 1929 closing was an attempted ploy on the part of its owning-and-operating company, which misfired – they’d hoped that threatened closure would get them more money and a better deal from local-government authority, which in a pinch, would reckon the railway’s services worth keeping; but as things worked out, the company’s bluff was called in this.)

I think also in the case of the mail coaches, there are very very few 'real' ones left. At the time, nobody thought to preserve an aspect of transport that was fading into history, I imagine. In the same way that there are only a very, very few examples of railway coaching stock from the 1830s-1860s.

Yes -- figurably, it took time for people to get the idea that utilitarian transport-type artefacts might be worth preserving -- plus, for enough of a sub-set of society to emerge, with the money / leisure / interest to accomplish stuff of this kind.

As to whether it is worth preserving an item because the original has been replaced, I think if you took the 'purist' view hardly anything would be saved. After all, this is working machinery designed to have its vital components replaced on a regular basis.

My friend the "purist" on this matter, tends to be a bit of a professional contrarian: I'd be willing to bet that if the prevailing view were that parts of the original should still exist, for preservation to be worthwhile -- he'd be a "Will The Conq's Penknife" proponent !

Retention of the line was not helped by the disclosure of a party of local grandees etc who went to plead their case to Southern Railway management at Waterloo , who admitted they had come up by motor car.

Ah, that famously farcical and deplorable episode -- which I feel our American friends would label as "Shooting Oneself in the Foot, 101".
 

Cowley

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I wonder out of all the narrow gauge lines that existed in the UK which one would be considered the most successful? Going on the money they earned/ length of time they served a useful purpose/ amount of goods or passengers they shifted etc.

I've also wondered whether the Lynton and Barnstaple, if gradually modernised over the years, including modern DMUs or even cheap electrification and EMUs, maybe a bit like a Swiss style railway. What it could have ended up like? (I'm slightly going on the Southern Railways keenness to electrify route miles here and also many other circumstances being different), would it have been competitive with the bus services or even driving a 1950s car between the two towns?

Or perhaps the L&B survived, was electrified and ended up being similar to the Ferrocarril de Soller route in Majorca?
With little green electric trains rattling through Exmoor, cheap return tickets and maybe some way of getting passengers up to Lynton station easily might have been devised over the years (redundant stagecoaches!).
 
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Welshman

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I wonder, in my wildest fantasies, that if the L&B had survived into the 1970s, it would now be a mecca for tourists.

And even more so, if electrified on the Swiss model. Not for nothing was the Lynton area known as "Little Switzerland"

Regarding the climb from Lynton to the station, a cliff railway, similar to that between Lynmouth and Lynton, would have been perfect.
 

Cowley

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I wonder, in my wildest fantasies, that if the L&B had survived into the 1970s, it would now be a mecca for tourists.

And even more so, if electrified on the Swiss model. Not for nothing was the Lynton area known as "Little Switzerland"

Regarding the climb from Lynton to the station, a cliff railway, similar to that between Lynmouth and Lynton, would have been perfect.

It would be a very nice thing and as you say a cliff lift (water powered of course), to get passengers up the hill.
Pay extra and you can travel in a stagecoach (with improved brakes) down/up the hill too (he says pretending that he's not forgotten the original topic ;)).
 
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I suspect most "lesser" railways, including all those under the 1896 Light Railways Act, never repaid their investment. Anyone investing to obtain a return would have been well advised to look elsewhere.

This doesn't necessarily mean they should not have been built. A lot of branches were promoted by the local land and mill owners who benefitted from better transport for their raw materials and products even if the finances of the railway itself were rather poor. As long as the receipts exceeded the operating costs the local main line company could probably be persuaded to take on the operation and the shareholders' original capital was essentially sunk. Perhaps they would have repaid their capital eventually had road transport not provided a more cost-effective alternative within a few decades, but even then would never have had an attractive rate of return. The modern equivalent is public investment that is justified by socio-economic benefits even if it generates no financial return.

On the question of the most successful narrow gauge railway I'd nominate the Ffestiniog. It provided an economical way of getting the slate from Blaenau to market for the best part of a century, and managed to survive long enough to enter the preservation era without ever officially closing. Since then it has been one of the few heritage railways to extend off its original route, and has led to the reconstruction of the much larger Welsh Highland.
 
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Cowley

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I'm inclined to agree Edwin m although I'm not an expert in such things, I suppose that a hundred years of commercial operation before the preserved era is very successful, more than a lot of standard gauge lines in fact.
 

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I wonder out of all the narrow gauge lines that existed in the UK which one would be considered the most successful? Going on the money they earned/ length of time they served a useful purpose/ amount of goods or passengers they shifted etc.

Predominantly industrial lines like the Ffestiniog were outstandingly successful for long periods, often being the key factor to allowing a particular resource like slate to be exploited to the extent it was. Eventually improved roads and lorries were able to supplant them, just as buses and eventually cars supplanted so many rural passenger dominated lines.

I've also wondered whether the Lynton and Barnstaple, if gradually modernised over the years, including modern DMUs or even cheap electrification and EMUs, maybe a bit like a Swiss style railway. What it could have ended up like? (I'm slightly going on the Southern Railways keenness to electrify route miles here and also many other circumstances being different), would it have been competitive with the bus services or even driving a 1950s car between the two towns?

Or perhaps the L&B survived, was electrified and ended up being similar to the Ferrocarril de Soller route in Majorca?
With little green electric trains rattling through Exmoor, cheap return tickets and maybe some way of getting passengers up to Lynton station easily might have been devised over the years (redundant stagecoaches!).

In light of LSWR and Southern preferences elsewhere on the main line, they might more likely have adopted a 3rd rail solution like the metre gauge Ligne de Cerdagne - the 'little yellow train' in the French Pyrenees, or Saint-Gervais–Vallorcine in the French Alps!
 

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A good book I got at Xmas, The Trains Now Departed by Michael Williams, has an interesting chapter about the L&B.
 

Calthrop

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The notion of an electrified (whether overhead, or third-rail) L & B had never entered my head, prior to this thread -- it's taken a bit of digesting. Well, I've always loved the Manx Electric -- though that was electrically-worked from the outset...

I suspect most "lesser" railways, including all those under the 1896 Light Railways Act, never repaid their investment. Anyone investing to obtain a return would have been well advised to look elsewhere.

This doesn't necessarily mean they should not have been built. A lot of branches were promoted by the local land and mill owners who benefitted from better transport for their raw materials and products even if the finances of the railway itself were rather poor. As long as the receipts exceeded the operating costs the local main line company could probably be persuaded to take on the operation and the shareholders' original capital was essentially sunk. Perhaps they would have repaid their capital eventually had road transport not provided a more cost-effective alternative within a few decades, but even then would never have had an attractive rate of return. The modern equivalent is public investment that is justified by socio-economic benefits even if it generates no financial return.

I just find it difficult not to feel – especially with minor rural local lines built late-on (broadly, turn-of-19th / 20th-centuries period) – that these were characterised by setting about the undertaking involved, in a sadly “lame” way: yet still more, with the restrictions imposed by the 1896 Light Railways Act – some would express doubts as to whether these lines offered (save for a select few "land and mill owners") much of an improvement upon horses and carts. (And corresponding stuff which was then going on on the Continent -- in France, for example -- with the instituting in large quantity, of narrow-gauge roadside tramways: appears /appeared, even more “palsied” and of dubious usefulness.)

More than anything else – as I’ve touched on earlier in the thread – the inaugurating of these highly-rural lines seems pretty futile, in the light of how soon and how dramatically road motor transport would “take off” and render them nonsensical or not far short thereof -- particularly passenger-wise: some of the standard-gauge light railways continued to be of some use for freight, in times after their passenger services were withdrawn. It should be borne in mind, of course, that “hindsight is 20 / 20”: at the time, people don’t know what’s going to happen in the future – at best they can take note of the way that the wind seems to be blowing, and extrapolate; which they may do rightly or wrongly.
 

Bevan Price

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One wonders whether some enthusiast purists would therefore consider the replicas from the Victorian period less worth saving, than original coaches from circa two-centuries-plus ago? I have a railway-enthusiast friend who rather eccentrically takes this kind of "purist" attitude to the length of feeling lukewarm about -- and considering less preservation-worthy -- preserved rail material which contains little or none of what it physically comprised when first built. Most folk, one gathers, would disagree here -- holding to the "William The Conqueror's Penknife" principle: as with a living creature, a loco or other vehicle keeps its essential identity regardless of how much its physical makeup may change over time.


Traditional stagecoaches were made mainly of wood. Unless they were stored in dry conditions, they would soon deteriorate due to dry and / or wet rot.

The only chance of their survival in "olden times" would have been to be saved by a sentimental member of the "landed gentry" - few others would have had either the space or the finances.
 

bspahh

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I find myself treasonously musing on a possibly also very attractive scenario in which the L&B never was; and in which the stage-coaches continued to assure public transport on Exmoor (three hours by coach Barnstaple – Lynton; an hour and a half by “two-foot-gauge” train; so what, people in those parts aren’t usually in much of a hurry :)) for the decade or two until their displacement by the motor bus. Stage-coaches might even have continued beyond then in a restricted role (pace the issue of fitting them in with modern-day motor traffic), as summer tourist attractions – charging people far more than the bus fare for the journey, for the colourful “period” experience. I feel “torn” here, in a way in which I’m not used to.

In the summer of 1995, I was working in Bath, and my girlfriend worked at the Youth Hostel in Lynton. To get there, I used a mixture of routes - sometimes by train to Barnstaple and then on the bus, other times to Taunton and onwards on a community bus, other times by train to Bridgewater and then on to Lynton by bicycle, and a couple of times by bicycle for the whole journey.

The least slow was via Taunton, but the buses were not very frequent. Cycling was generally nice, although I always had to walk for Porlock Hill and for the climb out of Lynmouth as they are both 1 in 4. Countisbury Hill is an easier climb.

I don't like modern buses, so I don't think I would have used an old one, or a stagecoach if cycling was an alternative.
 

ChiefPlanner

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Much like many of the thousands of miles of French narrow gauge systems built under the Frecinet (sic) plans of the 1880's ad onwards , "chemins de fer local interet" - once the internal combustion engine appeared they were doomed and huge numbers succumbed in the 1930's (bar those that struggled on through WW2 - and fell in the 1950's)

Deeply rural location - and not competitive in the long term. Regretably.
 

Cowley

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Predominantly industrial lines like the Ffestiniog were outstandingly successful for long periods, often being the key factor to allowing a particular resource like slate to be exploited to the extent it was. Eventually improved roads and lorries were able to supplant them, just as buses and eventually cars supplanted so many rural passenger dominated lines.



In light of LSWR and Southern preferences elsewhere on the main line, they might more likely have adopted a 3rd rail solution like the metre gauge Ligne de Cerdagne - the 'little yellow train' in the French Pyrenees, or Saint-Gervais–Vallorcine in the French Alps!

I just looked those two up, I'd heard of the Little Yellow Train before but not the other one. Lovely little railways.
 

Shimbleshanks

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Traditional stagecoaches were made mainly of wood. Unless they were stored in dry conditions, they would soon deteriorate due to dry and / or wet rot.

The only chance of their survival in "olden times" would have been to be saved by a sentimental member of the "landed gentry" - few others would have had either the space or the finances.

Plus probably a lack of awareness of their historic significance at the time.
Not many people would have realised or cared that the long distance mail coach was about to become a thing of the past. The sheer speed with which railways were adopted in this country must also have been a factor. We went from a situation in which long-distance rail transport didn't exist in 1830 to one in 1850 where it was the normal mode of transport.
 

Calthrop

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Much like many of the thousands of miles of French narrow gauge systems built under the Frecinet (sic) plans of the 1880's ad onwards , "chemins de fer local interet" - once the internal combustion engine appeared they were doomed and huge numbers succumbed in the 1930's (bar those that struggled on through WW2 - and fell in the 1950's)

Deeply rural location - and not competitive in the long term. Regretably.

These have very long been a big thing for me in terms of interest and sheer enchantment – to blame for which, chiefly Bryan Morgan and his The End of the Line: though by the time of publication of that masterpiece in the mid-1950s, the great majority of the intérêt local lines were gone. As you mention, they perished in great numbers in the 1930s -- a few, even earlier than that. World War 2 with its shortages and privations, gave a lease of life to many of those still running at the beginning of the war – some closed sections here and there, were even reopened.

I understand that as at the end of WW2, a remarkable large quantity of French light railways / “steam” (often by then, at least part railcar-ised) tramways – mostly metre-gauge – were still active: but an enormous amount of this which then survived, was abandoned in the half-dozen years immediately after the war. By the late 1950s / early 60s, the great majority of France’s remaining metre-gauge comprised lines / systems of intérêt general -- relatively substantial in length, and in infrastructure / initial building – there was only a small, ever-dwindling handful of intérêt local survivors.

As you say, re the shortcomings which did them in – “regrettably”, indeed: but I tend uncomfortably to feel that in their brief lifetime these lines – while a delight to those enthusiasts who revel in this kind of thing – must have been largely a misery to the poor folk who had to use them for getting from A to B. There comes inevitably to mind, the oft-told tale from that era: showing up in Ireland, France, the Iberian peninsula, and (I’d be willing to bet) a fair few other European countries. The rural roadside narrow-gauge line’s mixed train is pausing at a wayside halt, when a local farmer comes up level with it, driving his donkey-cart in the direction of the market town; which is the train’s destination also. Greetings are exchanged; the train crew ask him, “hey, Paddy [or Jean-Claude, or ‘whoever’] – clearly, you’re not using the train. Is anything wrong?”
“No,” the farmer replies; “It’s just that I’m in a hurry today – so I can’t be bothered with you lot.”

In light of LSWR and Southern preferences elsewhere on the main line, they might more likely have adopted a 3rd rail solution like the metre gauge Ligne de Cerdagne - the 'little yellow train' in the French Pyrenees, or Saint-Gervais–Vallorcine in the French Alps!

I just looked those two up, I'd heard of the Little Yellow Train before but not the other one. Lovely little railways.

To my shame, I'd been imagining that Saint-Gervais -- Vallorcine was "overhead wire", not "third-rail": this thread has set me right !
 

Cowley

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I've learnt a few new things too from this thread. Interesting stuff.
 

ChiefPlanner

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The Bryan Morgan book has a real air of dissapointment and decay in it right through - but then is was a miserable era.

Comparing the GWR and the Southern , both much admired by self.

The SR got rid of the L+B whilst the GWR invested in the Vale of Rheidol in the 30's and worked a rich sea of not lead , but tourism - helped of course by the great popularity of the Cambrian Coast region and access to South Wales the Midlands in less than 3 hours by road or rail. (Aberystwyth - "the Biarritz of Wales !) - the line had no real use in WW2 but was carefully mothballed and went from strength to strength in the "afflunet" 1950's.

The key being accessibility to a large and varied holiday trade , and dare I say it an enterprising management at Divisional and Local level.
 
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