On the slow train from Newport to Brecon

A couple of years ago (was it really that long?) I wrote in praise of  "Slow Train" by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann A little ditty they composed in homage to the cultural loss resulting from the Beeching Railways Axe. They simply strung together a list of the names of just a few of the 3,000 small stations and halts that were closed during this period. The result? Musical poetry at its best, accompanied by some lovely old photographs of steam trains and sooty platforms. I know you want to see the clip again, so here it is..

Enjoyable and evocative though that clip is, it's not half as evocative as the one I came across recently. It's entitled 'Lost Railways - Last Train from Newport to Brecon 1962'. From the archives of BBC Wales, it shows the journey of the last train to travel along the old Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway, starting in Newport and ending in Brecon. Here it is (there is no sound). Watch it carefully as I'll be asking some questions at the end of it.

This line holds so many memories for me, particularly Bedwas Station. The station and the marshalling yard were places we played as children and the railway line was our route around the back of the mountain to one of our 'dens' (the railway line was also the scene of a childhood indiscretion - we were about 8 at the time - that led to some of us appearing before our local JP - but I'll draw a veil over that. OK, if you insist, it involved a guard's van, a guard, air pistols, cowboys and Indians and Acker Brookes, our local bobby - I blame it all on John Wayne. I wonder how many other people remember the incident now? And blush? As I don't!).

 

Down: the line took us to Newport for train spotting and onward journeys to Bristol Zoo and Brighton (to visit my grandmother). It also took us, via a convoluted route involving Machen and Caerphilly, to the semi-tropical paradise of Barry Island. What joy! It was famous even before Gavin and Stacey.

 

Up: we went to the Brecon Beacons for hiking and camping with the cubs and scouts. Happy days and days, I'm positive, that started my love of open spaces and wild scenery.

 

There's so much about the film I enjoy. Not that long in (at 0.40), it reaches Trethomas Station and immediately after (0.50-1.10) the train passes through the Coke Plant (I worked there as a student) and Bedwas Pit (my dad and grandfather worked there and it was another of my playgrounds). At 2.03, there's a glimpse of the village of Pantywaun, demolished quite soon afterwards to make way for the expansion of the nearby open-cast coal mine. I remember getting off there a couple of times as the starting point for a hike. And then up to Merthyr and through the Beacons to Brecon. What a trip and one that would present-day tourists would love.

 

Admittedly not the Orient Express but it was MY line and I can still remember many of the stations along it. Without resorting to the internet, I came up with:

Newport, Bassaleg, Rhiwderin, Church Road Halt, Machen, Trethomas, Bedwas, Maesycwmmer, Fleur de Lis, Cwmsyfiog, Brithdir, Abertysswg, Torpantau, Cyfarthfa Steelworks, Talybont-on-Usk, Talyllyn Junction and Brecon.

I bet Flanders and Swann could write a song about them! In fact, what not listen to the first clip and try substituting some of the above names into the lyrics? It really works and is a very pleasant digression from whatever more pressing matters you might have on.

There's a slow train coming...............

I am in the process of (slowly, oh, how slowly) writing a book about the servicemen who died in WW1 and who are listed on our local War Memorial. Attempting to track down a relative of one who had worked on our nearest railway line in the early 1900s, I did the obvious and Googled under a number of railway relevant terms. Hooray! I found what I was looking for - eventually and after some smugly satisfying lateral thinking. Having been successful, I rewarded myself with a rummage in the 'Related Items' collection and came upon an excellent interpretation of a Flanders and Swann song I'd long forgotten, "Slow Train". Michael Flanders and Donald Swann wrote and performed the song back in the 1960s and although the events it records (the closure of almost 50% of the small railway stations in Britain following the Beeching Report on the future of the railway network) are now long gone, the song remains as a triumphal celebration of nostalgia. To illustrate the cultural loss resulting from the Beeching Axe, they simply strung together a list of the names of just a few of the 3,000 small stations and halts that were closed during this period. The result is, I think, musical poetry at its best. And it's accompanied by some lovely old photographs of steam trains and sooty platforms.

The Beeching cuts hit all parts of the country. Both rural and urban lines were decimated and by the end of the decade a quarter of the original trackway mileage and a half of all stations had been cleaved from the system. Here in the West Country, as in the rest of the UK, many of the most romantic small stations and desultory branch lines vanished almost overnight. They remain only as ghostly markings on OS maps: look for faint dotted lines annotated with 'track of old railway'.
 

One of the more weird things I came across in my searches was the post-Beeching fate of the station at Cleckheaton in Yorkshire. It was stolen! Following the closures, British Rail issued contracts for the demolition of the buildings, the clearance of the sites, and the sale of the recovered material. When the appointed contractor turned up at Cleckheaton Station he found the entire station - every stone, wooden fence, metal frame, and tin signpost - had already been dismantled and removed. Eventually the person who had dismantled the station was arrested and taken to trial (the only case in British legal history concerning the theft of a railway station). He was eventually acquitted as the court accepted his defence that he had been following the orders of what he thought was the legally appointed contractor. The company that masterminded the plan was never identified, and the station was never recovered.

And finally: whilst we are talking about slow trains, how about this live version of 'Slow Train' by Joe Bonamassa? Listen and compare and contrast with the more sedate music of Flanders and Swann. I enjoy them both, but they are very, very different.