• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

A sad centenary: last trains on the Bideford, Westward Ho! & Appledore Railway

Status
Not open for further replies.

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,295
A hundred years ago today, the last trains ran on the Bideford, Westward Ho! & Appledore Railway: some fame here concerning the only railway, and community -- certainly in Britain -- with title including an exclamation mark.

This was in various ways, a fascinatingly odd line (in a picturesque corner of the country) -- and one of Britain’s shortest-lived. Standard gauge, but never physically connected with the rest of Great Britain’s rail system -- its focus, the town of Bideford in North Devon; whose station on the London & South Western Railway’s network was on the opposite side of the broad river Torridge, from the town. The B WH! & AR was largely steam-tramway-like; but for very much the most part, running on its own reservation -- rails-set-in-street only at the Bideford terminus end. Its coaches were of a commodious saloon type with end-balcony access, on the American pattern. Its physical isolation meant that its freight-traffic role was virtually nil.

The line’s maximum extent was slightly over seven miles; running west from Bideford to the coast, and the seaside resort of Westward Ho!; then north-eastward back to the Torridge at Appledore. This configuration, and the chosen timetables, meant that the line was of little use for commuting-for-work: it was overwhelmingly tourism-oriented. The majority of the route, Bideford -- Westward Ho! -- Northam, was opened in 1901; the couple of miles onward Northam to Appledore, in 1908.

The immediate cause of the line’s demise, was the First World War: in the course of which various “marginal” British railway operations were, by Government fiat, made to withdraw their services in the interests of financial economising and / or providing rail material for use on the Western Front. The B WH! & A was thus requisitioned in early 1917 for war service, by the Ministry of Munitions: its last timetabled trains ran on March 28th 1917. The railway’s ultimate owners, the British Electric Traction Company, had found it far less of a money-spinner than had been originally hoped; and were seemingly not sorry that the “fortunes of war” rid them of it.

The line’s three Hunslet 2-4-2T locomotives were promptly dispatched off to where they could be of use; the rails were lifted shortly afterward, and similarly sent away. One of the locos went into industrial service at Avonmouth, where she worked for different owners until scrapping in 1937. The other two are reckoned (long with slight uncertainties, but location of sunken ship concerned, is said now to have been determined) to have been embarked to go to France for war service; but the ship which they were on was sunk by a German submarine, off Britain’s south-west peninsula.

Even if there had been no First World War; or if war notwithstanding, the B WH! & A had not been “called to the colours”; it appears unlikely that the railway would have lasted far into the 1920s -- one of many instances of, “if people had had foreknowledge of how soon and how quickly, road motor transport would appear and blossom; numerous light railways inaugurated around the turn of the 19th / 20th centuries, would never have come to be”. As above -- the line’s actual owners were, it seems, glad to get shot of it in 1917. A crazily short life -- sixteen years; or for the final mile or two, nine years. Lucky the century-ago line-basher, who managed to get this one in the bag !

As I may have speculated elsewhere on the forum -- imaginable faintly- and hardly-to-be hoped-for long-term survival in some sort, for this line: shortly after World War 1, Captain John Howey and Count Louis Zborowski were seeking for a venue in England, for a meaningful serving-the-public 15 in. gauge line, à la the Ravenglass & Eskdale up north. They toyed with ideas for totally new routes; and for taking-over and gauge-narrowing of existing but sickly railways (they thought in this context, of Colonel Stephens’s Chichester -- Selsey line, but that came to nothing). One can speculate: did they have thoughts of this kind, concerning the abandoned B WH! & A? (its trackbed then presumably still intact or virtually so) -- or similarly for an alternative early-1920s scenario with the B WH! & A still running, but in dire straits and expected to close at any time? The answer would seem, “we’ll never know” -- just that in the end, the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch is what happened.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Cowley

Forum Staff
Staff Member
Global Moderator
Joined
15 Apr 2016
Messages
15,686
Location
Devon
An interesting old railway and an interesting piece. I was up there recently for a funeral in Appledore and then the wake which was in Westward Ho! There is the odd little bit where you get a clue that there was a railway there once but not much. I think there's a remnant of a bridge in Westward Ho! still and the old carriage shed at Bideford still exists as the photo below (not mine) shows.
I remember reading that they laid temporary standard gauge track across Bideford bridge to get the locomotives over to the LSWR after it had closed. Now that would have been some rare track. :)
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1685.JPG
    IMG_1685.JPG
    234.5 KB · Views: 44

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,295
An interesting old railway and an interesting piece. I was up there recently for a funeral in Appledore and then the wake which was in Westward Ho! There is the odd little bit where you get a clue that there was a railway there once but not much. I think there's a remnant of a bridge in Westward Ho! still and the old carriage shed at Bideford still exists as the photo below (not mine) shows.

A modest-cliff-edge section of the route, south-west of Westward Ho !, forms a section of the South West Coast Path. The point where the line's route sharply changed direction here -- from south-westward, to eastward toward Bideford -- can still plainly be seen -- marked by a small curved embankment.

I remember reading that they laid temporary standard gauge track across Bideford bridge to get the locomotives over to the LSWR after it had closed. Now that would have been some rare track. :)

On March 30th, indeed. One wonders why -- war or no war -- they were in quite such a tearing hurry; wouldn't it have been easier to take the locos away by water? (Also, with all the locos gone, how was tracklifting accomplished?) Looking at photographs of the locos proceeding along the temporary track: these seem to show among the watching crowds, and officiating workmen, a large number of guys seemingly of military age and fitness -- and I can't help wondering, "in 1917, how come?". As discussed elsewhere on this sub-forum: maybe the popular perceptions of how things were in World War I, which we mostly tend to buy into -- are a bit skewed.
 

KN1

Member
Joined
19 Mar 2017
Messages
101
Wasn't it on the old track bed where James May built the model railway a few years ago.
 

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,295
Wasn't it on the old track bed where James May built the model railway a few years ago.

I thought that was between Barnstaple and Bideford (which line lasted into the 1980s); but may have that wrong.
 

Cowley

Forum Staff
Staff Member
Global Moderator
Joined
15 Apr 2016
Messages
15,686
Location
Devon
I thought that was between Barnstaple and Bideford (which line lasted into the 1980s); but may have that wrong.

Yes you're right, it was on the Barnstaple to Bideford stretch on the other side of the river. That line is now a very pleasant cycle route and part of the Tarka Trail.
 

Bevan Price

Established Member
Joined
22 Apr 2010
Messages
7,320
I think that, to some extent, Westward Ho! was a failed attempt to create a seaside holiday resort, but it was probably too remote from large centres of population to attract lots of holidaymakers in the "pre-car" era.

Cummertrees, between Annan & Dumfries is another "failed holiday resort" - in this case it was too far from the seafront. The long row of houses on the north side of the line was part of that project.
 

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,295
A mid-1900s visitor quoted in the Oakwood Press book on the railway by Stanley C. Jenkins, was not much impressed, by the railway or "the exclamation-mark place". He described Westward Ho ! as "a sad collection of forlorn houses, dressed in penitential grey plaster", occupying seaside "flat lands and sandy wastes". "Three-fourths of the houses" were empty, the rest "chiefly occupied by people who wonder why they ever came -- and wish they hadn't."

I found Westward Ho ! in modern times to have a bit of a weird "feel" -- but nicely so: it's the kind of place which ought to be served by a ridiculous light railway.

Interesting about Cummertrees. I've long liked the sonorous sequence of station names along that stretch: Cummertrees, Ruthwell, and Racks.
 

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,295
I must be at a loose end: am thinking on some, to me interesting, musings in Jenkins’s book on the B WH! & AR, concerning the fate of the material requisitioned for the war effort.

There seems overall, a bit of uncertainty re details of what happened in 1917 and after, to the line’s three locos (named – with definingly local associations -- Kingsley, Grenville, and Torridge). It seems sure – from more than one source – that Kingsley was the one which stayed in Britain and survived for another two decades, ending up in the service of the National Smelting Co. Ltd. at Avonmouth. It would strongly appear that her two sisters were shipped off in the direction of France and the Western Front – though minutiae, differ – one account suggests as ultimate departure-point, Pembrey / Burry Port in South Wales; another, perhaps more obviously sense-makingly, suggests Avonmouth. (It’s tentatively suggested that the rails – rapidly lifted after closure [how? using horse-drawn rail trolleys??] may have been sent off to the Front on the same ship as the two locos.) Seems sure that the cargo concerned, came to grief not very far from point of shipment; and the locos disappeared from all records thenceforth.

As mentioned in my OP -- in this case, there would appear to have been a recent finding of a sunken ship, seemingly of the right period, containing two steam tank locomotives: at a location, exactly which would seem to depend on whose account you look at – but anyway, in the notorious “shipwreck alley” between approximately Clovelly and Padstow. Which would seem to point with a fair degree of probability, to the watery grave of Grenville and Torridge – future diving may perhaps confirm?

Jenkins in his book, however, indulges in more general thoughts about this overall theme. He muses on various possible small inconsistencies in accounts of locos’ (and rail’s?) attempted journey to war; and goes on to note what might be thought a century-old “urban legend” or “meme” about doings of this kind. He mentions other lines reckoned to be of limited usefulness, which around the same time as the B WH! & AR, were similarly compulsorily closed and their materials roped in for the war effort – cited are the Great Western’s Uxbridge High Street branch, and the Caledonian’s horse-worked Inchture branch. He goes on to mention tales current among the folk in all those areas, of said lines’ rails and associated material being on ships which were torpedoed and sunk by German submarines on their journey to France – “Bideford, Uxbridge, and Inchture are widely scattered places at opposite ends of the country, yet stories of railway equipment being shipped off to France in 1917 and lost en route to the front are told in each of these places”.

He continues further to ponder on the bad shipping losses which Britain was sustaining in its offshore waters at that time, to German submarines – maybe getting a little into conspiracy-theory territory, in speculating on “some major disaster” and German success, close to the British coast: hushed-up for purposes of morale, possibly “an Official Secret to this very day” – but odd bits about which nonetheless leaked out to the general public, hence the tales told as above (in the case of the B WH! & A, sinking pretty-well confirmably now, did happen -- which Jenkins acknowledges).

This occasions for me, thoughts of rumours in the rumour-mill, including some elements of truth; and being appealing to the populace, hence being eagerly seized-on, and growing to “urban legend” status. Ordinary folk disquieted about the miserable stuff going on, thinking / feeling “our rulers have got us into a horrific and seemingly endless war in which millions are being killed; not content with that, they’ve taken our local railway away for the purpose of waging that war. “ Suggestions of the railway “gear” ‘s being sunk by the enemy and never reaching the Front, striking folk as a kind of rough justice: “much good depriving us of our local line, has done for Them”. A thing which people would like to believe; thus their being very ready to believe and circulate it?
 

bramling

Veteran Member
Joined
5 Mar 2012
Messages
17,685
Location
Hertfordshire / Teesdale
An interesting old railway and an interesting piece. I was up there recently for a funeral in Appledore and then the wake which was in Westward Ho! There is the odd little bit where you get a clue that there was a railway there once but not much. I think there's a remnant of a bridge in Westward Ho! still and the old carriage shed at Bideford still exists as the photo below (not mine) shows.
I remember reading that they laid temporary standard gauge track across Bideford bridge to get the locomotives over to the LSWR after it had closed. Now that would have been some rare track. :)

There's a plaque at each end of the railway, the carriage shed at Bideford Yard, and a section of wall at Appledore station, plus as someone else has mentioned a reasonable stretch of trackbed west of Westward Ho! The sites of a few of the intermediate stations can be visited but there's little tangible, a few stones at one maybe.
 

DerekC

Established Member
Joined
26 Oct 2015
Messages
2,107
Location
Hampshire (nearly a Hog)
There's a plaque at each end of the railway, the carriage shed at Bideford Yard, and a section of wall at Appledore station, plus as someone else has mentioned a reasonable stretch of trackbed west of Westward Ho! The sites of a few of the intermediate stations can be visited but there's little tangible, a few stones at one maybe.

Half a mile or so of the trackbed west of Westward Ho! makes a very nice, easily graded and fully accessible section of the South West Coastal Footpath. So at least a small amount of the original investment wasn't wasted.
 

341o2

Established Member
Joined
17 Oct 2011
Messages
1,899
The War Office also made an order to requisition wagons from the Redruth and Chasewater railway in 1914 and rescinded the order in 1917. There were two issues with this, firstly the R&C had closed in 1915 and secondly being 4' gauge, these wagons could have not been used on the rest of the mainline network
 

Calthrop

Established Member
Joined
6 Dec 2015
Messages
3,295
The War Office also made an order to requisition wagons from the Redruth and Chasewater railway in 1914 and rescinded the order in 1917. There were two issues with this, firstly the R&C had closed in 1915 and secondly being 4' gauge, these wagons could have not been used on the rest of the mainline network

Marvellous ! Still, military organisations have always been famous for bungling -- I have no doubt that the other side in World War I often acted just as stupidly.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top