Marking -- for this poster, at all events -- a sad happening, the large majority of a lifetime ago. That being the end, as decreed by British Railways, of the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway's lines as an interlinked system carrying freight and passenger traffic: some 170 miles of interconnecting passenger services withdrawn -- Great Britain's biggest such route length ever thus closed at any one time, as of that date; which I identify as February 28th 1959, just sixty years ago.
With the overall situation concerning public and private transport, the way it had come to be as at then; the days of passenger services throughout this definitely "secondary", deeply rural, and largely other-rail-duplicated system would in any case have been numbered, and retention thereof would have been hard to defend on any other grounds than those of sentiment and nostalgia. (I would suggest that if environmental factors are considered, things could be seen as different freight-wise.) However, the M & GN was greatly loved by many enthusiasts and local people; and for numerous folk, late February 1959 hurt. The official withdrawal date was March 2nd; but with no Sunday services on the system, the last passenger workings were on Saturday February 28th. As was more or less standard in those years, "stunts and antics" commemorated the final day's workings; with many people making a sentimental last journey on the trains, and assorted attendant larks. Locos hauling the trains bore various rueful chalked comments, including the laconic "That's Yer Lot".
My love of the M & GN stems in large part, from its having been in the close background of my childhood / adolescence; first in Spalding, then in Peterborough -- lived for the first twenty-odd years of my life, within sight or almost, of one or another M & GN line (first decade, up to the "evil 28th"; second, post-same). It's likely that my first-ever train journey was on a Spalding -- Hunstanton excursion, M & GN between Spalding and South / King's Lynn.
"Black February" meant the end of "passenger" on the M & GN, or all-but; not, however, instant oblivion for the entire system -- although a dozen years on, nearly all of what at first survived thus, had vanished. In this way, a little over half the system continued at first, in scattered sections, to carry freight; and in the case of the 16-mile Cromer -- Melton Constable section, passenger also. In childhood, it had happened that I travelled over all or most of the M & GN's east -- west route west of South Lynn, including its former Midland Railway prolongation westward to Saxby; but no more than that. In the 1960s / 70s, I managed to travel over an additional few remnants: Sheringham -- Melton Constable (closed by BR in 1964); the middle, longest-lasting, part of the Norwich City -- Melton Constable branch, between Lenwade and Themelthorpe; and South Lynn to East Rudham. Nothing of the M & GN now remains, save the national network's section, passenger-served under the aegis of GreaterAnglia, between Cromer and its western outskirts (former junction with quasi-Great Eastern trackage) and Sheringham; and the heritage North Norfolk Railway from Sheringham to "their" Holt station -- a total of some ten miles, about one-eighteenth of the system's past maximum extent.
With the overall situation concerning public and private transport, the way it had come to be as at then; the days of passenger services throughout this definitely "secondary", deeply rural, and largely other-rail-duplicated system would in any case have been numbered, and retention thereof would have been hard to defend on any other grounds than those of sentiment and nostalgia. (I would suggest that if environmental factors are considered, things could be seen as different freight-wise.) However, the M & GN was greatly loved by many enthusiasts and local people; and for numerous folk, late February 1959 hurt. The official withdrawal date was March 2nd; but with no Sunday services on the system, the last passenger workings were on Saturday February 28th. As was more or less standard in those years, "stunts and antics" commemorated the final day's workings; with many people making a sentimental last journey on the trains, and assorted attendant larks. Locos hauling the trains bore various rueful chalked comments, including the laconic "That's Yer Lot".
My love of the M & GN stems in large part, from its having been in the close background of my childhood / adolescence; first in Spalding, then in Peterborough -- lived for the first twenty-odd years of my life, within sight or almost, of one or another M & GN line (first decade, up to the "evil 28th"; second, post-same). It's likely that my first-ever train journey was on a Spalding -- Hunstanton excursion, M & GN between Spalding and South / King's Lynn.
"Black February" meant the end of "passenger" on the M & GN, or all-but; not, however, instant oblivion for the entire system -- although a dozen years on, nearly all of what at first survived thus, had vanished. In this way, a little over half the system continued at first, in scattered sections, to carry freight; and in the case of the 16-mile Cromer -- Melton Constable section, passenger also. In childhood, it had happened that I travelled over all or most of the M & GN's east -- west route west of South Lynn, including its former Midland Railway prolongation westward to Saxby; but no more than that. In the 1960s / 70s, I managed to travel over an additional few remnants: Sheringham -- Melton Constable (closed by BR in 1964); the middle, longest-lasting, part of the Norwich City -- Melton Constable branch, between Lenwade and Themelthorpe; and South Lynn to East Rudham. Nothing of the M & GN now remains, save the national network's section, passenger-served under the aegis of GreaterAnglia, between Cromer and its western outskirts (former junction with quasi-Great Eastern trackage) and Sheringham; and the heritage North Norfolk Railway from Sheringham to "their" Holt station -- a total of some ten miles, about one-eighteenth of the system's past maximum extent.