50 Years Later - the Winchester to Alton railway

It's unusual for people to remember something that happened exactly 50 years ago, but sometimes as railway enthusiasts we do!

The Winchester-Alton 'Watercress Line' closed on 5 February 1973. I was there on the last day (the 4th) as it was a line quite close to me.

I first travelled on the line a few years earlier, in 1970, to actually visit another line. We were staying in Winchester were we had relatives, and me and my brother took the train from Winchester to Alton, changing there to continue to Bentley. From Bentley we planned to travel to Bordon by bus to visit the Longmoor Military Railway, which had closed the previous year. First problem was it was a bank holiday and the buses were running a Sunday service, which meant NO buses! So we had to walk to Bordon! We found the Longmoor Military Railway there but just an empty trackbed, they'd already lifted the line which was a shame.

This was BC, Before Camera, so no pictures and just vague memories unfortunately. My first photo was taken on 9.7.1971, about a year later.

I then made another trip on a rover ticket AC (after camera) and took a few very misty shots, but I think they captured the gloomy atmosphere of a soon to be closed line very well.

(Two above Alresford 4.1.1973 Copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

(Winchester Junction 4.1.1973 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

                         (Medstead and Four Marks 4.1.1973 Copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

On the final day I only travelled to Itchen Abbas, to get some photos there. I felt a built guilty as I couldn't book a ticket directly from Littlehampton to Itchen Abbas, I had to rebook at Winchester but didn't have time to do that as I'd have missed the Alton train! I got some surprisingly good quality photos there on a cheap camera. The light must have been good.

                                         (All copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing 4.2.1973)

I visited Itchen Abbas a few years later, the station was intact but the line had been lifted. I was on a motorbike back then which was an easy way to visit railways after they'd closed.

                                                      (All copyright Steve Sainsbury 1976)

Medstead and Four Marks, further east, was a wreck with track lifted and junk everywhere. A sadder sight than Itchen Abbas in a way.

                        (Medstead and Four Marks 24.6.1976 Copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

I visited Alresford a few years later after it had become the site of a heritage railway, track down, steam locos and rolling stock in the platforms and yard. A sign that things were turning round at last. 

I travelled on to Ropley which with track down but no activity was more a haven for wildlife than railway fans!

                                 (All Ropley 24.6.1976 copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

Now of course the Alresford to Alton stretch is a busy heritage line, a premier league one at that. It's inevitably lost a lot of the atmosphere both the BR line and the deep closure line had, but it's doing a job now and providing a fair amount of employment locally.

                                    (Ropley 18.7.2015 Copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing)

The stretch beyond Alresford via Itchen Abbas to Winchester Junction is still lost and although a Winchester connection would tap into possible extra custom from the Southampton area coming up the main line, in reality, at least for now, most visitors come by car anyway, although the Network link at Alton is well used. And there would be the issue of shared track for a couple of kilometres at Winchester not to mention the need for extra capacity at Winchester station. It may well become a hot issue in future decades but for now that part of the line is in deep sleep.

Hayling Island

FACEBOOK - HAYLING ISLAND RAILWAYS

Back in 1970 I was just 14 and starting on my first adventures out on the railway network. A runabout rover ticket got me to a lot of places that were still served by trains but on one of the days I took the train to Havant then walked the remains of the Hayling Island branch. It was a nice walk alongside the water for much of its length, and there were plenty of remains as the line had only been closed for seven years (to the day by coincidence).

It did seem a strange closure even back in those gloomy days, a short branch to a busy seaside resort that would have been really useful. 

The station at Hayling Island was still there in a state of disrepair, I even found an old ticket to the station in the rubble!

There are of course now growing voices for the line to return, it would be most useful all the year round, but particularly in the busy summer months. Many people are put off visiting the island at all because of the state of the road, and would rather visit the easier to access towns to the east and west.

There is of course a railway still operating on Hayling, the superb Hayling Seaside Railway, and they do have designs on morphing their route into a 'real' line, carrying passengers all the way to the Portsmouth ferry on the west side of the island. And perhaps once complete they may take the next obvious step of looking to the mainland and restoring the link to Havant, possibly standard gauge or even 2 foot, either would work. They could use street running across the existing road bridge perhaps using traffic lights to control the (inevitably diminishing) road traffic. Expect rail developments on the island in the future.

Lines in the area.

Hayling Seaside Railway website

Further Information from Wikipedia

The line was opened by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) for goods on 19 January 1865, and for passengers on 16 July 1867. It ran from Havant to Hayling Island station. There were two intermediate stations at Langston (sic) and North Hayling. Neither were ever "halts", in spite of their small size.

The line itself was mainly used during the summer months as people from the South Coast would travel down to the beach on Hayling Island. The coaches would often be overflowing during these months, however would be virtually empty during the winter, which would become a problem.

The LBSCR quickly ran into difficulty during the construction of the railway, as they had attempted to save on the cost of buying land on Hayling Island for the line by constructing an embankment on the mud flats in the sheltered waters of Langstone Harbour—This was an ambitious plan, which also involved the construction of wet and dry docks at Sinah Lake. Though they were given a grant to the mudlands by William Padwick, who was himself behind the plan, and the promoters offered to build the embankment and Railway at a cost of £80,000, the area was not sheltered as had been hoped: the bank was severely eroded before the railway could be completed.

The board of trade inspector was invited to certify the line as being fit for passenger traffic, but he initially refused to do so as he found that many of the sleepers had begun to rot in the original section of the railway, and there was also an unauthorised level crossing at Langstone. The former problem was quickly fixed but the level crossing remained until the closure of the line.

The line was taken over by the Southern Railway in 1923 and by British Railways in 1948. Because of the weight restriction on the bridge it was worked, from late Victorian times to closure in 1963 by small LB&SCR A1/A1X Class locomotives.

Closure

Over the winter of 1962 it was decided to close the branch, the reason being that the timber swing bridge which crossed Langstone Harbour needed to be replaced. The line was operating at a small profit at this time but despite protests British Railways took the view that the cost of a new bridge was an unreasonably large investment. The final normal service train ran on the evening of 2 November 1963. Goods services continued until the final day but goods trains were not run separately. Instead goods were conveyed in mixed trains (passenger coaches, goods wagons and vans, and a brake van) and these were a feature of the Branch until the end. To clear the remaining goods stock away, the final train from Hayling Island on Saturday 2 November 1963 was a mixed train hauled by A1X no. 32650. The day after closure a special was run, hauled by A1X nos. 32636 and 32670 and this was the last ever train on the Branch. All three of these locomotives survive in preservation.

After closure and the line today

After closure, an attempt was made to re-open the line, using a former Blackpool Marton Vambac single deck tram, no. 11. The tram was stored in the goods yard at Havant, and later, on Hayling Island itself. With no support from the local authorities forthcoming, the re-opening venture came to nothing and the tram never ran on the line. Unlike the line, however, the tram survived, and is currently preserved, in running order, at the East Anglia Transport Museum. The attempted re-opening delayed the lifting of the track. This finally took place in the Spring of 1966, and included the demolition of most of the structure of the railway bridge at Langston. A significant amount of the bridge remains, including the base of the swinging section, and what seem to be bridge piers. The bridge piers are, in fact, the lower parts of the wooden bridge structure which were enclosed in rectangular columns of concrete by the Southern Railway in the late 1920s, early 1930s. The columns stand on the bridge foundations, which were specially strengthened to deal with the tidal scour at this location.

Today, the area where the tracks once stood on the Havant side of the line is a Local Nature Reserve and footpath. This enables people to walk from Havant station all the way to where the bridge and the level crossing was located, by Langston station, serving the village of Langstone.

If one were to continue walking south from Langston station (the railway never spelled it with the final "e"), across the road bridge, they would join the Hayling Island side of the line. This section of the line passes down the west side of the island, passing through where North Hayling station used to stand, and terminates at West Town, the main area of population in the south of the island.

This section is now a combined footpath, bridleway and cycleway. It has recently become part of route 2 of the National Cycle Network, sponsored by Sustrans, a charity for sustainable transport.

return to east budleigh

Bicton Woodland Railway 14.5.1977 (Copyright Jeremy Tilston)

FACEBOOK - RAILS OF DEVON

Back in 1970 I'd just turned 14 and was staying on holiday down at Teignmouth with my parents. But I was allowed to buy a rover ticket for the week and spent that whole week travelling around the network down there. I didn't have a camera (that was the next year!) so despite visiting a lot of branches and the soon to be closed Okehampton line, I've no record except memories.

One of my more adventurous trips was to the Bicton Woodland Railway. This involved a trip down the Exmouth branch then a bus along to Bicton. Just 3 years earlier I could have done the whole trip by train, but the line from Exmouth, through Budleigh up to Sidmouth Junction had - incredibly - been closed in 1967!

Bicton was an odd sort of railway. A new build of course, and to the unusual gauge of 18". There was real steam there, and a big impressive diesel. Everything was painted in a pleasing deep blue livery, and the line was a pleasant one through gardens and woods. It was my first introduction to 18" gauge, and to an estate style railway.

The line is still there and hopefully I'll get to revisit it this September when we're spending a week down at Dawlish Warren.

My big regret (apart from not taking photos!) is that I didn't think of walking back from East Budleigh to Exmouth along the closed branch line!

Loco no 1.

I bought these top two postcards from the site way back in 1970!

Further info (from Wikipedia)

The Bicton Woodland Railway is a narrow gauge railway running in gardens in the grounds of Bicton House near Budleigh Salterton in Devon.

The line was built in 1962 as a tourist attraction for visitors to the house. Most of the rolling stock was acquired from the Royal Arsenal Railway, Woolwich, with two locomotives, Woolwich and Carnegie coming from that source, as well as seven goods wagons which were reduced to their frames and converted to passenger carriages. It opened to passengers in 1963. Originally locomotives and carriages had royal blue livery.

Additional rolling stock was acquired from the RAF Fauld railway and the internal railway of the LNWR Wolverton works.

In 1998 the Bicton Gardens were put up for sale and the railway put into hiatus. The new owners sold the line's existing stock and in 2000 took delivery of a 5.5-tonne diesel-powered replica tank engine. The line's original equipment was purchased by the Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills museum at Waltham Abbey.