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The great beginning! Railway heritage 1940-1959

Yet the preservation movement that we enjoy today, with an army of more than 20,000 volunteers running more than 120 operational lines and museum venues, has its roots in the efforts of small enthusiast groups saving classic Welsh narrow gauge lines in the early 50s.

World War Two and the austerity measures that it brought ensured the survival in traffic of many locomotives which were overhauled and lasted for some years longer than would otherwise have been the case, allowing the final examples of classes to survive into an era where preservation was taking shape.

After the rather hit and miss efforts at preservation by the Big Four companies before 1939, no less than seven engines were preserved in the three years between the end of the war and nationalisation.

Two were fairly obvious choices by the LNER for its museum at York. NER M class 4-4-0 No 1621 had outlived most class members and was known for outstanding performance in the 1895 Race to the North, while the pioneer GNR Large Atlantic No 251 also clearly deserved a place.

Most preserved engines though were still simply laid aside in the works that built them. The last substantially original LSWR Adams T3 4-4-0 No 563 had been dumped at Eastleigh on withdrawal in 1945, but was belatedly selected in 1948 for exhibition at Waterloo for the station’s centenary.

It was repainted, retubed and ran from Eastleigh to Waterloo and back at 25mph with an LSWR coach. It was then stored at Farnham along with the restored Brighton ‘Terrier’ 0-6-0T No 82 Boxhill, before a year in exile at Tweedmouth followed by its return to Eastleigh in 1959.

LMS No 20002 was the last Midland Kirtley double-framed engine in service.

2-4-0 No 156A had been preserved in 1930 by the LMS, but was scrapped two years later. The postwar LMS management clearly had a more enlightened view, and had No 158A restored to MR condition.

Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway 0-4-2WT No 1 Gazelle was preserved in 1943 at the Longmoor Military Railway, while in 1945 Metropolitan Railway 4-4-0T No 23 was saved at Neasden Works.

Even the GWR, right at the end of its existence, paid £100 for 0-4-0WT No 5 after closure of the Wantage Tramway, because of the long association between the tramway, the town of Wantage and the railway company. Bearing the name Shannon once more, No 5 was mounted in an enclosure on the down platform of Wantage Road station in April 1948.

Mixed fortunes under BR

Following nationalisation, British Railways continued to add to the list of preserved locomotives, again usually out of sight of the public at various works. Two classic GWR types, Star 4-6-0 No 4003 Lode Star and Dean Goods 0-6-0 No 2516 had outlived most other class members by many years.

Lancashire & Yorkshire 2-4-2T No 50621, which was withdrawn in 1954, was retained at Horwich as it had been the first engine to have been built there. It was restored to original condition in 1959.

However, in the early days of nationalisation, survivors such as the last LNWR Claughton 4-6-0 and the last Great Central and Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Atlantics were scrapped, and other gems, such as the last unrebuilt Midland Railway Kirtley curved-frame 0-6-0, No 58110, was withdrawn in December 1951 and scrapped, despite the efforts of its shedmaster.

A world first in mid-Wales

However, the biggest watershed of all history of preservation came in spring 1951, with the takeover of the Talyllyn Railway by volunteers. It marked the giant leap from the arbitrary preservation of classic locomotives by those in authority to ordinary people running a full-scale railway by themselves.

When Britain’s railways were nationalised from 1 January 1948, the Talyllyn Railway was one of the few operating lines not included; but the slate traffic on which it had depended had vanished and the infrastructure had severely deteriorated.

While its owner, Sir Henry Haydn Jones, vowed it would not close while he was alive, on 2 July 1950, Sir Henry died and closure of the 2ft 3in gauge seemed inevitable; but it continued to operate for the remainder of the summer season, ending on 6 October.

It would, however, not be the end, but the beginning of something that would, as we know, become very big indeed. The idea of running a railway for tourists or enthusiasts was not new. In 1929, efforts to save Suffolk’s 3ft gauge Southwold Railway attracted the attention of the national press, and had they been successful, it is likely that it would have been Britain’s first heritage line.

While the Talyllyn was the first existing railway in the world to be taken over by enthusiasts, it was not the world’s first heritage line. It had already been beaten to that title in 1948 by the Edavile Railroad in South Carver, Massachusetts.

This line was a remnant of the Maine 2ft gauge system which closed in 1941, originally developed by Boston pioneer George E Mansfield, who had been impressed by a trip on the Festiniog Railway and founded the USA’s first 2ft gauge line, the Billerica and Bedford Railroad, in 1879.

Cranberry producer Ellis D Atwood bought up redundant locomotives, rolling stock and track to serve his estates, while preserving some last vestiges of the 2ft empire for posterity with a small railroad museum. He deployed his cranberry growers on tracklaying and train crew duties and by 1948 he had laid more than seven miles of track, on which second-hand Vulcan and Baldwin locomotives and luxury coaching stock ran.

The route to Tywyn

Building and running steam railways for pleasure purposes, however, dates back much further. Sir Arthur Heywood had a 15in gauge line built on his Duffield Bank estate in Derbyshire in 1874, with the idea of selling it to a wider audience, and in 1895 built a similar system at Eaton Hall for the Duke of Westminster.

Modelmaker Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke and miniature locomotive engineer Henry Greenly formed a company, Miniature Railways of Great Britain, in 1904, to develop such lines.

In 1915, Bassett-Lowke converted the derelict 3ft gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway to 15in gauge and ran miniature steam engines, and followed it up a year later with the similar conversion of the 2ft gauge Fairbourne Railway, then a horse-worked passenger and local freight concern.

These cannot in their day be described as ‘heritage’ lines, because they were merely scale replicas or types based on contemporary stateof- the-art main line locomotives.

The concept of volunteers taking over an existing railway and running it, without such wholesale modifications, was mooted in the letters column of the January 1941 issue of The Modem Tramway, the journal of the Light Railway Transport League.

Headed ‘An Interesting Suggestion’, Manchester reader Arthur E Rimmer, concerned at the Welsh Highland Railway's imminent prospect of having its track lifted for the war effort, wrote that the line, which closed to passengers in 1936 and freight the year afterwards, had proved its value during World War One in carrying timber and slate, while a passenger service could be reintroduced to save petrol supplies.

If the reinstatement of the Welsh Highland on commercial grounds was found to be not possible, he continued, would it be practicable for clubs and societies supplying free labour to tackle such a scheme?

The Welsh Highland was not saved, but on 2 September1949, an anonymous letter appeared in The Birmingham Post, headlined 'Breakdown on Talyllyn Railway'.

The writer said that Dolgoch, by then the line’s sole operative locomotive, had suffered a fractured frame and had to be withdrawn from service, leading to the then two-days-aweek passenger service being suspended.

A reply in the newspaper’s letters column came on 9 September from renowned transport author Tom Rolt, who in 1935 had helped found the Vintage Sports Car Club and in 1947 had prevented the GWR from effectively closing the northern section of the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, by insisting on exercising his right of passage at a dilapidated lock in King’s Norton, Birmingham.

Tom Rolt disagreed with the author’s demand that the Government or British Railways should step in to save the Talyllyn from closure.

Instead, Tom argued, ordinary people should take the initiative themselves.

Born on 11 February, 1910, Tom trained as an engineer, initially apprenticed to steam locomotive manufacturer Kerr Stuart Ltd in Stoke-on-Trent from 1926.

In the late 1930s, he cruised the English canals in his converted narrowboat, Cressy, and told the story of his voyages in his landmark book Narrow Boat.

Even before the letter appeared in The Birmingham Post, Tom was aware of the crisis facing the Talyllyn. He had visited it during World War Two, but when he arrived at Tywyn Wharf, a handwritten sign greeted him saying 'no train today'. So he decided to walk to Abergynolwyn along the track to the workshops at Pendre, where he found that the only operational locomotive was being repaired by a frustrated engineer.

Tom returned to Tywyn in 1949 with fellow railway enthusiast Bill Trinder, who owned a radio shop in Banbury. and met with Sir Henry Haydn Jones.

By the time of Sir Henry’s death, Tom had already set the wheels of preservation in motion. He called a public meeting on 11 October at the Imperial Hotel in Birmingham to consider the future of the line, and 36 people turned up, electing a committee which met for the first time on 23 October, when the group became known as the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society.

Through the generosity of Sir Haydn's widow, the society was effectively given the railway in February 1951 – and members ran their first train on 14 May 1951, with initial services running between Tywyn Wharf and Rhydyronen. Regular trains began to run on 4 June and continued through the summer.

The Corris ‘comes back’

The early preservationists faced many uphill struggles, not least of all motive power. Dolgoch desperately needed major attention, while Talyllyn was not operational.

So they looked to the Corris Railway, which had been closed by British Railways shortly after nationalisation, and was also built to the very rare 2ft 3in gauge.

Two further steam locomotives, Nos 3 and 4, were bought from British Railways, which by then owned the Corris, along with a substantial amount of track in 1951.

They were named Sir Haydn and Edward Thomas respectively and became the first ‘new’ Talyllyn locomotives for nearly 90 years.

Birmingham engineering firm Abelsons Ltd donated 1918-built Barclay 0-4-0 well tank Douglas, which became Talyllyn No 6. The takeover of the Talyllyn by volunteers was the inspiration for the 1953 Ealing Studios comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt about a group of villagers attempting to run a service on a disused branch line after closure.

The railway took off as a major centre for railway preservation, and in 1956, the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum was set up in an old gunpowder store at Tywyn Wharf.

Narrow gauge items from far and wide were collected in the wake of the arrival of the first exhibit, Spence, an unusual 0-4-0 tank engine donated in 1952 by Guinness from its recently closed St James's Gate Brewery railway in Dublin.

Pegler and the Festiniog

The success at Tywyn was followed by the saving of the Festiniog Railway (the two ‘f ’s in the current title were added later in the preservation era).

Festiniog passenger services finished on 15 September 1939, with slate trains running three days a week during the war, until they too finally ended on 1 August 1946, leaving only the short section from Duffws to the North Western main line railway yard through Blaenau Ffestiniog town centre in operation.

The company was so short of money that it could not afford an Act of Parliament which would provide the statutory powers necessary to close the railway and lift it. Nature needed no money to carry out its job, and soon the line was very overgrown and in a severe state of decay.

The revival of the Festiniog may have been sparked off by teenager Leonard Heath- Humphreys, who had a letter about the line's potential for restoration published in the January 1951 edition of the Journal of the British Locomotive.

Leonard read Charles E Lee’s book Narrow Gauge Railways of North Wales of 1945 and came up with the idea of a fighting fund to stop the Festiniog from being being lifted.

He made contact with the Festiniog company in July 1950 and suggested launching a society to reopen the line.

Leonard’s subsequent initiatives in the railway press led to a public meeting on 8 September 1951 in the clubrooms of the Bristol Railway Circle, attended by just 12 people. There, Leonard met Allan Garraway, a member of the Talyllyn RPS, who later became the revived Festiniog's first full-time general manager, a position he was to hold until 1983.

Eventually, a legal committee was set up and meetings were held with the FR company board during 1952, but progress was slow.

The big breakthrough came when the abovementioned Alan Pegler attended a meeting of the nascent Festiniog Railway Preservation Society at the Great Northern Hotel at King's Cross in January 1953, and came on board.

Detailed negotiations ended with Alan and his nominees taking over control of the Festiniog board on 24 June 1954, following the handing over of a 2000 cheque. His shares were subsequently transferred to a charitable body in the form of the Ffestiniog Railway Trust. Led by an unpaid board of directors, enthusiastic volunteers and a small paid staff began rebuilding the line to Blaenau Ffestiniog.

The restoration programme started on 20 September 1954 when Morris Jones, the foreman fitter who had last worked for the Festiniog in March 1947, rejoined the staff to complete the rebuilding of England saddle tank No 2 Prince. A special train to commemorate 60 years service of Robert Evans, who had spent 25 of them as the line’s manager, was run from Minffordd to Porthmadog on 6 November 1954. He continued as manager until he retired on 1 June 1955, when Allan Garraway took over.

A diesel ran first!

A diesel locomotive hauled the first preservation era services. On 23 July 1955, after a formal Ministry of Transport inspection, a passenger service ran from Porthmadog Harbour station across the Cob to Boston Lodge, behind Mary Ann, a 1917-built fourwheeled Motor-Rail Simplex World War One trench railways locomotive which the railway has bought in 1923. However, it was soon replaced by Prince, which had by then been reassembled and returned to service on 3 August 1955.

The services were extended to Minffordd in 1956 and in autumn that year, double Fairlie Livingston Thompson, by this time renamed Taliesin, underwent test runs.

Easter 1957 saw trains running again to Penrhyn and a year later, services were extended to Tan-y-Bwlch.

However, in 1954, what appeared to be a body blow was dealt to the revivalists’ hopes to running trains back into Blaenau Ffestiniog. Plans by the British Electricity Authority for a hydroelectric power scheme near Tanygrisiau were unveiled in 1954.

It involved the building of a huge reservoir, Llyn Ystradau, which would flood part of the line including Moelwyn Tunnel, severing the restored section from the eastern terminus forever.

Accordingly, Festiniog directors opposed the subsequent Parliamentary Bill in 1955, but at that time, railway preservation was not just in its infancy but very much at a crawling stage, and their demands went unheard. The compulsory purchase of the railway above Moelwyn Tunnel went ahead in 1956.

The revivalist company vowed to fight on and return to Blaenau one day…

The end of steam

Perhaps the biggest impetus ever given to the steam preservation movement was the publication in 1955 of the modernisation plan for British Railways. This envisaged the total elimination of steam traction on the BR system, within the foreseeable future, despite the fact that production of the BR Standard types was in full swing, and there were no more than half a dozen main line diesels in service at the time.

There were more diesel shunters though, and diesel railcars, as well as electric locomotives and multiple units. Modern diesel multiple units were being produced in quantity by then and from 1958, diesel locomotives started to make their presence felt.

Another centenary was celebrated in 1956, the opening of the London Tilbury & Southend Railway’s main line into Southend.

To mark the event, the RCTS ran the ‘Southend Centenary’ railtour on 11 March 1956. No 41946 was selected to haul the train as it was the last surviving LTSR-built 4-4-2T.

It had been displaced in early BR days, but had served at Wellingborough heating locomotive fuel oil in 1947, then as shed pilot at Toton from 1953. Having been repainted in LTSR livery as No 80 and named Thundersley for the special, it went into store at Derby Works and ultimately permanent preservation.

Private main line preservation

Yet up to 1959, main line steam preservation was still virtually all ‘official’, in other words under the auspices of BR after 1948. The SLS had bought Gladstone in 1927, Alan Pegler had operated the two Atlantics out of King’s Cross, and two Welsh narrow gauge lines and their rolling stock were now in private hands. The year saw the first acquisitions of main line locomotives by private individuals, clearly a significant development.

A landmark came on 7 May 1959 when the cheque changed hands and GNR J52 0-6-0ST No 68846 in the ownership of Captain Bill Smith RN steamed out of King’s Cross, bound for a private siding at Marshmoor in Hertfordshire, where it would be restored to GNR livery. Britain’s first privately preserved main line steam engine, GNR No 1247, made its first public appearance at the opening of a new freight terminal at Peterborough in July 1959, and travelled there under its own steam, but it would be two years before it saw railtour service.

Less well known though is the story of the last LNWR Coal Tank No 58926, which had been moved from Abergavenny to Crewe Works on withdrawal in 1957.

A group of determined enthusiasts headed by Max Dunn, who had once been shedmaster at Bangor, was persuaded by a friend to organise an appeal to raise funds to buy the engine. One communication to Max stated: “The British Transport Commission require £666 for this engine in order to satisfy their auditors, and are pressing for a substantial remittance on account. Please send what you can afford to save this gentle and homely relic of a more tranquil age from the oxyacetylene cutting apparatus.”

The appeal was successful, the locomotive was purchased in 1959 and Max arranged for it to be repainted in LNWR livery at Crewe as No 1054, following which it went to Hednesford in Staffordshire for safe storage by the Railway Preservation Society.

A third locomotive purchased on withdrawal in 1959 was Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 0-6-0 No 52044, by Tony Cox (a founder member of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Preservation Society).

The next stage?

Railway closures were a fact of life, but a major shock at the end of February 1959 was the closure of virtually the whole of the former Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway system, at least as through routes.

As the 1950s drew to a close, the steam preservation movement had made a good start. There were definite plans for a museum to display many of the engines which had been restored in various locomotive works.

At the same time, the Railway Preservation Society led by Noel Draycott was attempting to secure historic items of rolling stock, and hoped to establish a running line in due course (it became the Chasewater Railway), while a group of students in Leeds had their eye on a historic length of line in the city’s industrial suburbs.

Also, after campaigns to prevent closure of at least two standard gauge routes, East Grinstead to Lewes in Sussex and the whole of the Midland & Great Northern Joint Railway system, had failed, the emphasis had now turned to full-blown attempts to purchase and reopen these routes.

Another Welsh narrow gauge line had also become the target of revivalists; the Welshpool & Llanfair Railway, closed by BR in 1956.