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
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.
www.lerwill-life.org.uk/history/coaching.htm
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......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......
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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