Likely route from Paddington to Taunton in 1939

[DrElaine]

An ancestor who was a teacher was evacuated with her school from London to Somerset in 1939. They travelled from Paddington to Taunton on 2nd September. What route would they most likely have taken and how long would they journey have been, please?
Elaine

 

[4069]

In summer 1939 the principal train on Sundays was the 11:10 from Paddington, which ran via Westbury and called at Taunton at 13:47 before continuing to Exeter and Plymouth. Extra trains for evacuees would probaly have taken the same route.

 

[Gloster]

The normal route is as now: Reading, Newbury, Hungerford, past Westbury and Frome to Taunton. An alternative would have been the old route via Reading, Swindon, Chippenham, Bath, Bristol and past Weston-super-Mare. There are even more alternatives: from Swindon via Bristol Parkway (which did not exist then) and into Bristol through its northern suburbs or cut across from Chippenham via Melksham and Trowbridge to Westbury and then on to Taunton. All these lines still exist and can be found on a map.

There are two problems, Firstly, there was a mass exodus of children from London in only a couple of days and so trains were fitted in as and when possible by the railway operating authorities, so seemingly illogical routes might be necessary for some. And the railway had a lot of other extra trains running for the military at the time, so the evacuees’ train had to be fitted around these. Also, trains might carry children for a number of different towns and villages: it is unlikely (but possible) that the train just carried children for Taunton. It might be carrying children to destinations in the east of Somerset and so would stop at every station from Westbury on. Or it might have children who were going to places beyond Taunton and so ran fairly fast to there and then continued on. Or it might have come via Bristol and been dropping children between there and Taunton.

I would guess a minimum of three and a half hours if the train was fairly fast to Taunton and up to about six to seven if there were plenty of stops. And this would probably be in non-corridor coaches without toilets normally used on suburban trains.

 

[Taunton]

Look at my user name Possibly (if the children were early teenage girls) one of them was placed ("billeted" was the word) with my family in the town for a period. As you might imagine there was an element of friction; nobody, on all sides, quite knew what to do. Known in the family as "the evacuee". Places were found to insert them at local schools. After a few weeks of nothing happening, many London parents came and took their children back, by normal services.

The trains for them were fully specials, not by the normal services. As described above they were typically made up of suburban type vehicles, without corridors through the coach (or toilets). Those were still pretty standard at the time, even on medium distance services or summer excursions. The route would have been most likely the way the main expresses went, and still do, they would be unlikely to have routed via Bristol, where there were enough issues of their own. A number were hauled by freight locomotives - it was still "summer" to the railway and trains were not heated. The time taken from Paddington (or possibly Ealing etc) would have been likely double what the normal express took; they were run as "Control Extras", which is a professional railway expression for "make it up as we go along". I believe they stopped every couple of hours at stations which had toilets on the platform, and where, if they had managed to get organised, local groups like the Salvation Army issued sandwiches and water. The driver and fireman would have reported, taken the carriages to the starting point, taken the children to destination, and then taken the carriages back to London. If they did a 16-hour day or more, so be it.

The well-known luggage labels attached to the children were typical railway ingenuity, it was all they had to hand in quantity at the starting station, it having been recognised that there might well be separation.

Incidentally, Mr Taunton Senior, not having met yet the future Mrs Taunton Senior, took one look at his own home station elsewhere on his morning commute, with all the children milling around with luggage labels in their coats, was appalled, and on his way in to the office went via the military recruitment office, joined the queue of others, and signed up, that day, although not actually taken in until later.