Boat Trains

[30907]

Thanks for all the fascinating information. There's more than I realised! One port which hasn't featured yet is Plymouth. I recall that the LSWR ran boat trains to connect with Atlantic sailings - (no, I'm not that old, but I read about one of them being wrecked on the Salisbury curves in 1906). Did these continue into SR (or even BR) days?

No. The GWR had a monopoly after then and built special Ocean Liner stock around 1930 for the traffic, but the SR development of Southampton and the Depression killed that off. The Super Saloons survived on special traffic duties into the 60s and ISTR several were preserved.

 

[341o2]

When it was open the narrow gauge Mull Rail used to connect with arriving and departing ferries!

By the same logic. Fairbourne railway connected with ferry

Lymington Pier for Yarmouth IOW

Island line to Ryde Pier Head

Portsmouth Harbour on the mainland

Hythe pier railway

Southend pier was originally designed for berthing of boats, so its pier railway likewise

ps having read OP, he did state international!

 

[Bevan Price]

London Euston - Liverpool Riverside.
(as required for transatlantic sailings, which used to be every week or two until the late 1950s.)

plus:
Stranraer Harbour, with services from London Euston, Glasgow & Newcastle.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Fleetwood to Ardrossan (from 1841to 1848) was 'international' and even used by Queen Victoria.
None of those pesky OHLE problems on the WCML like today!

Ramsey Pier tramway on the Isle of Man was a sort of international link, given the special political status of the IoM. One of the few 'hand-pushed' boat 'trains' I would have thought?

 

[Busaholic]

There must have been immigration and customs formalities at Calais or Boulogne in about 1976 but I can't remember them.

I travelled a lot via Calais or Boulogne in the 1970s, both on boat and hovercraft, and NEVER had to even show a passport when arriving in France, but you did have some formalities on the French side coming back.

 

[theageofthetra]

Think it was TLV not GLV for the trailer luggage vans...

Yes and they had the gangway doors welded out of use to comply with customs regulations. For the
same reason the MLV's had no gangways

 

[Flying Phil]

By the same logic. Fairbourne railway connected with ferry

Lymington Pier for Yarmouth IOW

Island line to Ryde Pier Head

Portsmouth Harbour on the mainland

Hythe pier railway

Southend pier was originally designed for berthing of boats, so its pier railway likewise

ps having read OP, he did state international!

Slightly off Topic but I did enjoy my returns from Yarmouth IoW/Lymington Pier, when I upgraded to 1st (for an extra £1! via Trainline). There was a horde of school children and standing room only in the rest of the train and I was in solitary splendor....Luxury Boat Train travel!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Luxury Boat Train travel!

When we used a boat train from London to Southampton Eastern Docks on 1st September 2002, the traction was class 47s top and tail and the coaching stock was - in number order rather than running order - 213, 243, 245, 254, 255, 280, 281, 284, 301 and 308.

 

[Western Lord]

Back in the days of ocean liner sailings (i.e. voyages that took people on a journey to their destination rather than a pleasure cruise), all of the shipping lines had boat trains to service their ships. Cunard and Union-Castle from Waterloo to Southampton Ocean Terminal/Western Docks, P & O and Orient Line from St. Pancras to Tilbury Riverside and Canadian Pacific and Cunard from London to Liverpool Riverside. When P & O/Orient lines introduced the Oriana and Canberra in 1960/61 they switched to Southampton and the earlier ships gradually migrated south as well, ending the St. Pancras - Tilbury trains. Many foreign lines also had trains in connection with their sailings.

 

[Taunton]

No. The GWR had a monopoly after then and built special Ocean Liner stock around 1930 for the traffic, but the SR development of Southampton and the Depression killed that off. The Super Saloons survived on special traffic duties into the 60s and ISTR several were preserved.

There were still Plymouth boat trains with this stock running until the vehicles were withdrawn in 1962. I can recall them occasionally coming through Taunton that summer. The Up train used to shadow the Up Cornish Riviera, which at the time was one of the few trains to pass Taunton nonstop, just at lunchtime (in fact at about 12.55, it was the signal for me to go home for lunch!). All the up main distants would come off and the Riviera, with a Warship diesel, would come through at about 80mph. Just a couple of minutes later all the up distants would come off AGAIN, and then the boat express would pass at equal speed, Castle-hauled to the end, and the always cleanest locomotive you saw all week, the Laira preparation gang must have made a special effort for it. About 4 saloons and a bogie van.

I believe the ship which called at Plymouth to the end had come from South America. There's an Ocean saloon in Didcot museum, when I look at it I wonder if (quite likely) it was one of those I saw whizzing through at speed, long ago.

Direct train from Ostend to Basle ... On the return, just had a seat (still first), but was naff belgian stock. Luckily, after Strasbourg, there were just the two of us, so got a so so sleep. The other got off in Brussels (a yank) and I was alone for the final bit. then , Ferry, bus and boat train.

It was in the last years, but glad I did it.

One of the best-regarded television plays features just such a Continental boat train trip, from Ostend to Vienna. Called "Caught on a Train", by Stephen Poliakoff, as well as being a well-done piece of drama, it has a whole range of interesting shots of Continental services back in 1980s loco-hauled days, all shot in the correct locations for the programme (one of those things only us lot would notice). On DVD.

I trust you weren't as demanding to the American as Frau Messner was

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080507/

 

[EveningStar]

Weymouth the only location in the UK where a "heavy rail" tramway is still in-situ even though it'll never again see trains run along it?

Walked the full length of the publicly accessible tramway last summer. Does this justify marking up my Baker as having travelled over it?:-?

 

[Cowley]

Walked the full length of the publicly accessible tramway last summer. Does this justify marking up my Baker as having travelled over it?:-?

Only if you had roller skates on your hands and feet and used both rails. If you didn't you'll have go to back and do it again

 

[sarahj]

There were still Plymouth boat trains with this stock running until the vehicles were withdrawn in 1962. I can recall them occasionally coming through Taunton that summer. The Up train used to shadow the Up Cornish Riviera, which at the time was one of the few trains to pass Taunton nonstop, just at lunchtime (in fact at about 12.55, it was the signal for me to go home for lunch!). All the up main distants would come off and the Riviera, with a Warship diesel, would come through at about 80mph. Just a couple of minutes later all the up distants would come off AGAIN, and then the boat express would pass at equal speed, Castle-hauled to the end, and the always cleanest locomotive you saw all week, the Laira preparation gang must have made a special effort for it. About 4 saloons and a bogie van.

I believe the ship which called at Plymouth to the end had come from South America. There's an Ocean saloon in Didcot museum, when I look at it I wonder if (quite likely) it was one of those I saw whizzing through at speed, long ago.


One of the best-regarded television plays features just such a Continental boat train trip, from Ostend to Vienna. Called "Caught on a Train", by Stephen Poliakoff, as well as being a well-done piece of drama, it has a whole range of interesting shots of Continental services back in 1980s loco-hauled days, all shot in the correct locations for the programme (one of those things only us lot would notice). On DVD.

I trust you weren't as demanding to the American as Frau Messner was

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080507/

I have the DVD. Some shots were done in the UK. (Belgian/German Border). Other bits in Germany and Belguim. When he gets of the train at Linz, he is back in Belguim. (style of overhead and station design). But otherwise decent, and no I was was very decent to the American. We were in first class you know...

 

[muddythefish]

No one's mentioned the Fishguard boat trains which still run I believe from Paddington.

 

[30907]

No one's mentioned the Fishguard boat trains which still run I believe from Paddington.

No longer, they're a DMU from Cardiff (basically, origin/destination vary a bit).

But they still run specifically to connect - which is not quite the case with Holyhead (have they been mentioned BTW?)

 

[Bevan Price]

Back in the days of ocean liner sailings (i.e. voyages that took people on a journey to their destination rather than a pleasure cruise), all of the shipping lines had boat trains to service their ships. Cunard and Union-Castle from Waterloo to Southampton Ocean Terminal/Western Docks, P & O and Orient Line from St. Pancras to Tilbury Riverside and Canadian Pacific and Cunard from London to Liverpool Riverside. When P & O/Orient lines introduced the Oriana and Canberra in 1960/61 they switched to Southampton and the earlier ships gradually migrated south as well, ending the St. Pancras - Tilbury trains. Many foreign lines also had trains in connection with their sailings.

And European mainland ports often had multi-portion trains connecting with boats to/from UK, travelling halfway across Europe..

For example (1971),
Train D219, Tauern Express, connection from London Victoria via Dover / Ostend.
Ostend to Split (former Yugoslavia)
Portions for Klagenfurt, Salzburg & Graz (Austria)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Train D225, Oostende - Wien Express
Ostend to Wien West
Portions for Copenhagen & Frankfurt.
Picked up various other portion en route, e.g. Koln - Budapest.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Train D203, Loreley Express, connection with overnight boat from Harwich.
Hook of Holland to Basle (Switzerland)
Portions for Rome, Frankfurt, Dortmund & Munich.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Train Ex469, Arlberg Express.
Portion from Calais added to portion from Paris.
Paris / Calais - Strasbourg - Basel - Innsbruck, through coaches from Paris to Wien West & Zurich.

 

[muddythefish]

No longer, they're a DMU from Cardiff (basically, origin/destination vary a bit).

But they still run specifically to connect - which is not quite the case with Holyhead (have they been mentioned BTW?)

Sad to read - used to watch them going through Clarbeston Road in the 1970s and they were always full, usually pulled by Brush Type 4s but occasionally Westerns.

When did they finish?

Incidentally, there used to be boat trains to Pembroke Dock too (and maybe Neyland)

 

[Greenback]

The morning rail connection to the ferry at Fishguard runs fast from Cardiff calling only at Bridgend, Llanelli and Whitland. The return also runs via the Swansea District Line, but calls additionally at Carmarthen. Both trips take around 2.5 hours, and still had the feel of a boat train the last time I took one to Fishguard Harbour. It was filled with foreign visitors and folks on their way to Ireland. The atmosphere was a bit like I remember from the early 1990's, when a HST could be well loaded.

 

[Trog]

The ones that went down to Weymouth always fascinated me. The police frequently had to bounce cars out of the way if they'd been parked badly. I loved the thought of sitting in a cafe by the quayside as an enormous train appeared in the street outside. My parents went to Guernsey for a weekend once when I was little and witnessed a 33 hauled train on the branch down to the quay, unfortunately I didn't get to see one.

First time I travelled that way I think it was a Merchant Navy Class to Weymouth Town then a Class 03 diesel to Weymouth Quay.

 

[Busaholic]

Back in the days of ocean liner sailings (i.e. voyages that took people on a journey to their destination rather than a pleasure cruise), all of the shipping lines had boat trains to service their ships. Cunard and Union-Castle from Waterloo to Southampton Ocean Terminal/Western Docks, P & O and Orient Line from St. Pancras to Tilbury Riverside and Canadian Pacific and Cunard from London to Liverpool Riverside. When P & O/Orient lines introduced the Oriana and Canberra in 1960/61 they switched to Southampton and the earlier ships gradually migrated south as well, ending the St. Pancras - Tilbury trains. Many foreign lines also had trains in connection with their sailings.

My first trip to 'the Continent' as Europe was commonly then called was in 1961, and involved the ship journey from Southampton to St Malo then run, I believe, by British Railways. I'm pretty sure the train we got from Waterloo ran through the dock area too, so presumably it was a boat train. Only one ferry a day (as now?) overnight from Southampton and daytime return.

 

[SouthDevonian]

How about the Scilly Isles? In Operation Cornwall (Xpress Publications) which describes summer services in 1957, although most of these services carried on into the early 1960s, there is the following description of the FO 22.35 Paddington-Penzance 13 coach train: this heavy service was a relief to the 21.50 Paddington to Penzance but ran via Castle Cary rather than Bristol and thereby passed Cogload 50 minutes ahead of the parent train. After taking a pilot at Newton Abbot it made fewer stops than the 21.50 and reached Penzance 80 minutes ahead of the latter. The formation was a standard 10 coach GW set but also had a sleeping car section on the rear primarily for the benefit of passengers taking the 9.30am sailing from Penzance to the Scilly Isles. (The 21.50 also conveyed a sleeping car section but the scope for late running was such that passengers for the RMS Scillonian were directed to the relief train).

Regarding a return from the continent in 1966 on an overnight boat from Ostend, my early morning EMU boat train between Dover Marine & Victoria was routed via Faversham & the Catford Loop.

 

[Busaholic]

How about the Scilly Isles? In Operation Cornwall (Xpress Publications) which describes summer services in 1957, although most of these services carried on into the early 1960s, there is the following description of the FO 22.35 Paddington-Penzance 13 coach train: this heavy service was a relief to the 21.50 Paddington to Penzance but ran via Castle Cary rather than Bristol and thereby passed Cogload 50 minutes ahead of the parent train. After taking a pilot at Newton Abbot it made fewer stops than the 21.50 and reached Penzance 80 minutes ahead of the latter. The formation was a standard 10 coach GW set but also had a sleeping car section on the rear primarily for the benefit of passengers taking the 9.30am sailing from Penzance to the Scilly Isles. (The 21.50 also conveyed a sleeping car section but the scope for late running was such that passengers for the RMS Scillonian were directed to the relief train).

Regarding a return from the continent in 1966 on an overnight boat from Ostend, my early morning EMU boat train between Dover Marine & Victoria was routed via Faversham & the Catford Loop.

There's never been a railway extension beyond Penzance Station to Penzance Harbour, though.

Re the morning boat train from Dover, they came past my school in Catford every weekday certainly up to 1967 when I left.

 

[theageofthetra]

Were there boat trains operating to the ports in Northern Ireland?

 

[30907]

My first trip to 'the Continent' as Europe was commonly then called was in 1961, and involved the ship journey from Southampton to St Malo then run, I believe, by British Railways. I'm pretty sure the train we got from Waterloo ran through the dock area too, so presumably it was a boat train. Only one ferry a day (as now?) overnight from Southampton and daytime return.

Yes, the station was known as Southampton Docks, but the ship was normally overnight both ways, and thrice weekly at best, down to twice weekly at the end. See post #16. Ferries were less intensively worked in those days, partly a hangover from coal firing, partly because any cargo took much longer to load.

 

[30907]

Re the morning boat train from Dover, they came past my school in Catford every weekday certainly up to 1967 when I left.

The Night Ferry was booked via Chatham and the Catford Loop from electrification in 1959 until the new berth at Dunkerque Ouest was opened in the 70s and it was retired substantially earlier into Victoria.

 

[Glenmutchkin]

Were there boat trains operating to the ports in Northern Ireland?

Larne was served by noat trains on both 5'3" and 3'0" gauges.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/yourplaceandmine/antrim/A1081748.shtml

 

[Taunton]

The Night Ferry was booked via Chatham and the Catford Loop from electrification in 1959 until the new berth at Dunkerque Ouest was opened in the 70s and it was retired substantially earlier into Victoria.

The boat trains used a variety of routes between Dover/Folkestone and London. These were mostly just two-track, right through to Victoria, which handled stopping suburban services as well, but there were a range of alternative loops that could be used across Kent and South London to fit the services in, which not only needed different timings almost daily dependent on season, how many relief services were required, etc, but in the Up direction could not assure good timekeeping because it was dependent on weather at sea, boat arrival and how long people were taking getting through customs. So there were a large number of conditional paths. This approach continued right through the Eurostar Waterloo era.

The standard route was from Victoria via Penge, Orpington and Tonbridge, but if behind a stopping service on the Penge line it was quicker to take the Catford Loop. The local services on both lines were arranged so either one or the other was fairly readily available. Beyond the junctions at Bickley there was a choice of going via Maidstone East, rejoining the main line at Ashford, or going right round through Chatham and Canterbury, approaching Dover Marine from the opposite direction. A further option was to take the Maidstone line initially, but then to rejoin the main line at Sevenoaks by the link through Bat & Ball. This looks a long way round but the two-track main line after Orpington has three intermediate stations and the long Polhill tunnel which was a single signal section, and would often just not have the capacity for an additional service for some time.

Even the Eurostar drivers had to know all these variations; I recall in 2003 a long and tedious slow run in one grinding round the curves at Maidstone East at about 30moh, getting behind an all-stations local, and ending up at Paris about an hour late. I wonder what the French driver used to TGV work thought about "going round by Ze Bat and Ze Boll".

 

[Dr Hoo]

Another example not yet mentioned is Barry Pier. Latterly occasional DMUs ran in connection with the last international steamers across the Bristol Channel from Wales to England at Weston-super-Mare's Birnbeck Pier.

I think that services finished around 1971.

 

[Taunton]

Ferries were less intensively worked in those days, partly a hangover from coal firing, partly because any cargo took much longer to load.

Part of this was that ships at the time commonly had just a single crew, who slept in cabins on board. The concept of running the vessel 24x7 with multiple crews is more recent.

Family have photographs of a holiday to Jersey in the 1930s, they took their car with them from Weymouth, which was craned on and off the vessel, a process which added a couple of hours at each end. There was no specific car provision on the GW ship, they were just placed on the open deck areas at bow and stern, and tied down there.

 

[berneyarms]

No one's mentioned the Fishguard boat trains which still run I believe from Paddington.

No longer, they're a DMU from Cardiff (basically, origin/destination vary a bit).

But they still run specifically to connect - which is not quite the case with Holyhead (have they been mentioned BTW?)

Sad to read - used to watch them going through Clarbeston Road in the 1970s and they were always full, usually pulled by Brush Type 4s but occasionally Westerns.

When did they finish?

Incidentally, there used to be boat trains to Pembroke Dock too (and maybe Neyland)

The morning rail connection to the ferry at Fishguard runs fast from Cardiff calling only at Bridgend, Llanelli and Whitland. The return also runs via the Swansea District Line, but calls additionally at Carmarthen. Both trips take around 2.5 hours, and still had the feel of a boat train the last time I took one to Fishguard Harbour. It was filled with foreign visitors and folks on their way to Ireland. The atmosphere was a bit like I remember from the early 1990's, when a HST could be well loaded.

The HST between Paddington and Fishguard ceased in 2003, replaced by DMUs from Cardiff/Swansea.

This really reflected the reality of numbers of foot passengers on Irish Sea ferries dropping significantly as Ryanair opened up the air transport market to far more people across the Irish Sea with their low fares.

Holyhead does still have ferry connecting rail services. The lunchtime conventional ferry arrivals and departures operated by Stena and Irish Ferries both have a Virgin Trains direct connection to and from London Euston, and the Arriva Trains Wales loco hauled set operates a service to and from Manchester.

The rail connections into and out of the night time ferry sailings at Holyhead have been withdrawn however.