the tetbury branch 1889 - 1964 british railways...months after britain’s railways were...

Jackament’s Bottom Halt1939-1948

Trouble House Halt1959

Kemble

Church’s Hill Halt1959

Rodmarton Platform 1904

Culkerton1889

Tetbury

The Tetbury Branch 1889 - 1964 BRITISH RAILWAYS Tetbury Rail LandsRegeneration Trust

Trouble House Halt was immortalised inthe song “Slow Train” written by theBritish duo Flanders and Swann in July1963. The song laments the loss of Britishstations and railway lines due to theBeeching cuts, as well as the passing of away of life with the advent of massmotoring.

Miller's Dale for Tideswell, Kirkby Muxloe,Mow Cop and Scholar Green

No more will I go to Blandford Forum andMoretehoeOn the slow train from Midsomer Norton andMumby RoadNo churns, no porter, no cat on a seatAt Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-StreetWe won't be meeting againOn the slow train.I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey toOpenshawAt Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors nomoreNo whitewashed pebbles, no Up and no DownFrom Formby Four Crosses to Dunstable Town.I won't be going againOn the slow train.On the Main Line and the Goods SidingThe grass grows highAt Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside

And Trouble House Halt.

The Sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate.No passenger waits on Chittening platform orCheslyn Hay.No one departs, no one arrivesFrom Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives.They've all passed out of our livesOn the slow train. On the slow train.Cockermouth for Buttermere

The Slow Train

Livestock traffic was a majorsource of revenue for rural branchlines and Tetbury was noexception. While the line wasunder construction, local farmersand businesspeople built a largenew cattle market at the bottom ofGumstool Hill. The first marketwas held on 8 January 1890. Aspecial train brought 120 farmersand dealers. The auctioneers,Messrs. Moore and Hills, tookmore than £2,000 in animal sales -enough to buildTetbury station alloveragain!

In the 20th century, TetburyStation’s best-rememberedlivestock shipment is probably thetransport of Sir Charles Cooper’scomplete herd of pedigreeHereford cattle and all his farmequipment from Charlton Down,just outside Tetbury, to Scotland.The train of 31 trucks and cattlewagons left Tetbury on 26 February1963, arriving at Dunragit inWigtownshire 16 hours later.

"This is the graveThat we have madeFor the remainsOf the express trainsThat came in a hurryInto Tetbury boroughA foolish driver it hadWho treated it so badAnd thro' much dictationIt died of starvationPeople fancied at leastThat they'd been fleecedAnd others thoughtThat they'd been caughtIn a trap of some sort

And it never aughtTo have come to naughtFor the want of thoughtSome of them triedTo keep him aliveThey kicked up a fussBut he only got wussTill at last he diedAnd nobody criedSave the lawyers, who sawThey couldn't get any moreSo they agreed to stopAnd let the matter dropInto this large graveThat I've just made"

Before the Tetbury branch lineopened in December 1889 therewere several attempts to bring arailway to the town. The Wiltshire &Gloucestershire Junction Railway(W&GJR) drew up plans for a branchin 1845. Work started on a line fromStroud to Tetbury and Malmesburyin 1865. Work stalled due todisagreements between theshareholders, and in 1871 thecompany was wound up.

The Trust has a copy of a very largecartoon, probably published by theBristol Observer in 1869. Itsatirically comments on the moneylost by private shareholders whenthe W&GJR was wound up. It showsan express train hurtling along, thena great train crash, followed by thefuneral of the railway company. Inthe final scene, the grave diggerdeclaims his thoughts on the events

Early attempts to build a Tetbury branch came to naught “If Pat was late, the driver would reverseand pick her up”

I lived on Fox Hill as a girl,next door to the Fox Inn. Asa teenager I used to sit on awall and watch the trainscome and go. I watched astroops returning from warfiled wearily onto theplatform lookingexhausted and dishevelled.Some were on home leave,and some were heading toBeverston or LongNewnton, where therewere military camps, forrest and recuperation.

I married an Air Force crewman who rode the bombturret. He had been sent toLong Newnton forrecuperation as he wassuffering from exhaustionafter too many bombingraids and seeing too manyfriends lost in aircraft that

were shot down as they allflew alongside oneanother. When we married,our first home was one ofthe army huts at LongNewnton until a housecould be found for us inTetbury. It was a simplestart to our married life butwe were warm, dry,comfortable and happy.

One person, Pat Brain, wasalways late for her train towork, and if she camerunning down Fox Hill asthe train was just puffingout of the station andround the corner, someonewould shout to the driver.He’d stop and reverse tothe platform and wait forPat to climb aboard beforesetting off again.

RW

“We stopped the train to pick mushrooms”

TETBURY STATION used toemploy the young lads who hadleft school but didn't have a jobto go to yet. Our boss, the headcleaner was Tommy Lawler.

We were given about 6d anhour (worth around £2 in 2016)and worked an eight-hour shift,so we earned 4 shillings (nowequivalent to about £17). I was16 when I started at the station.We lads used to clean theengine and the carriages atnight. We started work at 10pmand finished at 6am when theengine driver would arrive intime for the first train to leave.

We could get a ride sometimesand I remember riding back toTetbury one Sunday night andthe driver stopped the trainwhere he'd spotted somemushrooms growing earlier, onhis trips to and fro.

We all piled off and pickedbags of mushrooms, got back inthe train and set off home.

The halt at the Trouble Housewas a popular one. Men used toget off there and drink at thepub until the last train was due.Then they just had to go overthe road to the halt, wave thetrain down and be carried hometo Tetbury. HW

Definitely not chicken feed: livestock revenue was vital

THETETBURYBRANCH

WILD SWAN PUBLICATIONS LTD.

by Stephen Randolph

Stephen Randolph fell inlove with the Tetburybranch when, aged 12, hemoved to Tetbury fromDursely. His family renteda house next to thestation and the youngnewcomer soon gainedthe confidence of thedrivers and guards.

Randolph finished hisfirst attempt at writing ahistory of the branch justthree years later! Hisdefinitive history of theline (left) was publishedin 1985.

The Tetbury Branch tellsthe story of the longstruggle to bring therailway to the town, theline’s heyday, thecolourful characters whoworked and travelled onit, and its eventual demise

under the blade of theBeeching axe.

It is sadly out of print:those who own oneconsider themselvesfortunate, as second handcopies now command manytimes the original coverprice.

The book of the branch

Information compiledby Tetbury Rail Lands

Regeneration Trust fromThe Tetbury Branch by

Stephen Randolph and other sources.

Designed and produced byBrecon Quaddy

December 2016

End of an era. The Goods Shed in 1963, a few monthsbefore the branch closed. In a few short years, the otherbuildings will be demolished and the tracks torn up,leaving only the Shed, the adjacent cattle loadingplatform and the trackbed as mute testimony to 75 yearsof local railway history. The Dolphins Coal and CokeCompany Ltd moved out of the hut on the left and intothe Shed, operating it as a coal depot for many years.

“Tetbury has been isolated and in shadow for solong. The railway will bring us into contact with theouter world and will break off some of the antiquatedtheories and prejudices which have hampered us forso long.”

Tetbury Advertiser, October 1887

The daily routine on the branch, formost of its life, was eight trains perday up and down the line, pulled bysteam tank engines. The passengerservice usually consisted of one ortwo carriages. Any freight wagonswere added to the passenger train.Here, the ex-GWR O-4-2 tanklocomotive locally known as ‘TheDonkey’, pulls into Tetbury in a fewmonths after Britain’s railwayswere nationalised.

1948

Death on the line!Death came early to the linewhen, on 9 October 1891, an85-year-old man, Mr WilliamRussell, who was partiallydeaf, was hit by the 17.20from Kemble at the Larkhillcrossing.

The freshly-built Goods Shed in itsprime at the end of the 19th century.The extension nearest the mainbuilding housed the clerk’s office whilethe smaller room contained theweighing equipment for theweighbridge. Horse-drawn carts anddrays distributed goods arriving at thestation around the town andsurrounding district.

Trouble House Halt is said to be the only stationin England built specifically to serve a pub. Onthe line’s final day of passenger operation,bowler-hatted ‘mourners’ put a coffin on boardthe last train to Kemble at Trouble House Halt.It had been made by the landlord of the pubtogether with his brother, covered withinscriptions and filled with empty whiskybottles. On arrival at Kemble, the coffin wastransferred to a train for Paddington, addressedto Dr. Beeching, infamous as the executor ofthe plan that closed thousands of miles of ruralrailways in the early 1960s. The crew had to putout a bonfire of hay bales on the line atCulkerton on their way back to Tetbury, wherethe town’s rail service ceased for ever.

The Goods Shed stands partly onrubble quarried from thehillside that originally slopeddown across what is now the carpark. Scores of labourersexcavated the hill by pick andshovel. Some are pictured hereat the foot of the cliff behind theShed. The contract for erectingthe Shed and the rest of thestation buildings at Tetbury, aswell as making alterations toKemble station at the other endof the branch, was let in 1887for £1,719 - between £1.5 and£2.5 million in today’s economicvalues.

Added to the line in 1959, inhopes of attracting passengersto the new diesel railbusservice, Church’s Hill Halt wasa simple, exposed platformmade from sleepers.

Jackament’s Bottom Halt wasbuilt in 1939 to deal withvastly-increased wartimeactivity at Kemble aerodrome,including hosting TroopCarrier Groups from theUSAAF 9th Air Force withmasses of Dakota aircraft forvital resupply missions toallied troops in recently-liberated parts of Europe.

1960

Open from 1904 until the line closed,the pretty halt at Rodmarton, seen herein 1962, was, in the words of branchhistorian Stephen Randolph, “rarelyvisited by intending passengers.”

Culkerton was the sole stop on the linewhen the branch first opened. Villagerswere served by a wooden stationbuilding, with a 200-foot platform,footbridge and a sturdy brick goodsshed. A station master’s house wasbuilt later but it was never providedwith mains gas, electricity or runningwater. Drinking water was delivereddaily in milk churns. It was hardly apleasant place to live - which may havehad something to do with the highturnover of staff there. British Railclosed Culkerton in 1956, reopening itin 1959 as an unstaffed halt.

Wartime needs brought extra passengerservices to the branch … for a while

Diesel rail buses took over passenger dutieson the branch in 1959 in a bid to revivetraffic and reduce running costs. Sadly it wasnot enough and the line closed on 4 April

In marked contrast to attitudestowards today’s railway

mega-projects, the Victorian publicwere usually eager to attract lines to

their towns and villages

Sixty years after its debut, the Goods Shed wasstill handling incoming and outbound freightevery day, although the fabric of the building wasshowing distinct evidence of wear and tear aswell as signs of the wartime neglect that stillafflicted the whole of the country’s rail network.

1964

1963

c.1960

1962

1940

1920

18951888

1883

1944

A resident of thefarm cottages justpast Larkhill left abeer crate beside thetrack where it ran past thebottom of her garden. Everymorning, the railbus stoppedto wait for her at theunofficial ‘beer crate halt’and she would use the crateto step up into the service toTetbury.

Beer crate halt

Tommy Curtis worked as aguard on the branch for 40years, from its opening dayuntil he retired in March 1932.The train behind him is amixture of passenger andlivestock vehicles – typical oftraffic on the branch, whichhandled 292 trucks of animalsand 43,645 milk churns in1925 as well as 13,000 tons offreight.

1932

1948

1960 The railbus idles beside theTetbury platform at Kemble.Although it’s highly unlikelythat trains will ever runbetween Kemble and Tetburyagain, there are great hopesof reopening the route of theline as a trail for walkers,horse riders and cyclists.

Tetbury signal box still exists, in almostoriginal condition - although it now lives120 miles away at the home of the branch’shistorian, Stephen Randolph.