amazed!

FACEBOOK DISUSED RAILWAYS

About a year ago I thought a Rail Thing Facebook group would be a good idea. But it soon transpired that it was far too general, and that Facebook groups needed to be more targeted. So a few more sprang up - Southern Electrics and DMUs, ones for counties, classes of locos, Swiss trains, narrow gauge, trams etc etc. There are now about 300, possibly more! Some have just a few members, several have a few hundred but only one currently has more than a thousand.

Amazingly it's the Disused Railways group and yesterday it reached 5000 members! I've no idea why it's so popular, and it's still not as focused as I'd hoped when I set it up. The idea was just to have pictures of closed lines and a few memories, but it's sort of expanded from that. But it does seem to have captured the imagination of an awful lot of people! Who knows where it will be this time next year.

I became interested in disused lines long before I got involved with the real thing, and as a teenager got to look at many lines, the Midhurst lines, the Selsey Tramway, Cuckoo line, Lynton and Barnstaple, Meon Valley, Gosport, Hayling Island etc, all visited via rail and then on foot. I loved the atmosphere. It's ironic that over the last 15 years I've been trying to encourage their reopening!

We won't see their likes again. With railways reopening everywhere all closed lines are under threat. make the most of them whilst they are still there ...

Fittleworth 15.5.1977

Beeding 20.11.1986

Baynards 20.5.1977

Selham 3.7.1977

Itchen Abbas 24.6.1976

Mold 2.4.1985

a walk up the line

FACEBOOK - REVERSING BEECHING - REOPEN THE HORSHAM-SHOREHAM LINE

On 20 November 1986 I took a walk along the remains of the Horsham to Shoreham line, which retained track as far as the old Beeding Cement Works.

This was a strange closure, a double track line that provided an excellent alternative route from Brighton to London (with junctions facing the right way) and serving a number of sizeable towns on route. It actually closed on the very same day as the S&D, 6 March 1966.

I did actually see this line when it was still open to passengers, from the car as we were on the way to Bramber castle. I could see Bramber station but, being only 9 years old, was not allowed to visit it. On the next visit the line was closed and overgrown, and I still wasn't allowed to visit it!

Not long after closure the line was lifted apart from the 2 or 3 miles between Shoreham and Beeding. But eventually even that section closed. There was an abortive preservation bid, the main stumbling block being that the last short stretch of the line into Shoreham was still a busy BR route.

So on that sunny November day in 1986 I said goodbye to the line, though I didn't know it at the time. I walked the whole length apart from about 500 metres in Shoreham.

There have always been mutterings about reopening the route. It would seem a sensible time to start planning this now. There are a few of the usual stupid 'blockages', characterless houses plonked for some reason right on the trackbed even though it must have always been clear that the line would be needed in the future. Towns like Henfield and Steyning are ridiculously without railway stations! Other places like Bramber, West Grinstead, Southwater and Partridge Green have (currently unfulfilled) potential to be commuter towns. I can't see the Adur Valley being without trains for much longer, but for now the route is silent, yet another disgusting reminder of the stupidity and shortsightedness of the Flower Power generation.

facebook future

If you think rail investment should be directed at restoring Britain's closed railways as well as building many NEW branches, ensuring that all towns and villages with a population of 500+ have modern transport facilities, rather than being wasted on prestige High Speed lines, please join this new Facebook group.

(Pics Beeding, Shrewsbury Abbey, Bideford and Woodhead)