RAIL passengers rolled back the clock when they stepped aboard a train to mark the reopening of a branch line. Aubrey Hawke and Bernard Mills were among those on the last train to use the old branch line between Plymouth, Tavistock and Launceston 50 years ago.
Fifty years ago Mr Hawke was the last passenger to board the line, which was severed by Dr Beeching's axe and closed earlier than planned because of winter snow. Bernard Mills, a photographer and founder-member of the Plym Valley Railway, was also on the last train 50 years ago and on the first train.
The railway will open to visitors on certain Sundays from 11am, starting from Easter Sunday.
Jason Beverley was there with the PCTPG and took quite a few photos of the PCTPG fleet which of course ran a a free bus service to the event. His photos can be found here on his Flickr account
Both pics ©Jason Beverley.
Plymothian Transit Recommends
- Jersey’s new bus operator - CTPlus Jersey t/a LibertyBus launched its new services yesterday morning, with a fleet of five Enviro400s, 33 Optare Solo SRs and (we believe) Optare Bonitos. Omnibuses
- Whilst fbb applauds the idea of London timetable books, in an ideal world the implementation leaves quite lot to be desired. Having created and edited the Great Britain Bus Timetable and its derivative volumes, fbb is well aware that these things aren't easy. Public Transport Experience
- Really not quite sure what possessed them to do this! It's not unattractive, but it's just so dull! At least the multicolours were a bit uplifting.. PTOTPA
any chance of a map of the line and some pix of trains?
ReplyDeleteSloppy journalism from the Herald/This is Plymouth I'm afraid. The Beeching Report (actually called 'The Reshaping of British Railways') was published in March 1963 and the Plymouth to Tavistock South line was closed on December 29th 1962 so this closure was nothing to do with the 'Beeching Axe'.
ReplyDeleteYes, once again we can rely on the Herald to get all their facts wrong as per normal! As correctly stated, closure of the Plym Valley line was nothing to do with Beeching. The line was already scheduled for closure. From what I was told, the severe winter of 1962 / 1963 caused major damage to the signalling along the line, so it was easier to just close the line early to passenger traffic.
DeleteOver Christmas I've started going through my late grandfathers slides (he was a keen photographer). I've come across some photographs taken at Gunnislake in the 1960's / 1970's showing some lovely old BR DMU units. Quite a few historic photo's of Plymouth and the surrounding area from around the same era. I'm hopeful there's some more, so once I've scanned them in, documented and cleaned them, I'll share some links on here.
Has 52 been fit with a new blind?!
ReplyDeleteYep, 52 has been fitted with an LED destination display. I'm not sure if they've been able to program in destinations to the display yet as they're missing the thing that's like a USB stick that you plug into the computer to 'copy and paste' destinations created in HELEN, the sign editing program, and you then plug that 'stick' into the controller on the bus. It's called a 'KEYLO' - picture here if anyone's interested.
Deletehttp://www.cvarena.co.uk/images/products/2525260.jpg
Any predictions for 2013 ??? First, Citybus, Target etc ????
ReplyDeleteno we havent yet tom. only dests on it atm are things like go ahead first cymru brighton and hove etc
ReplyDeleteTarget Travel assisted in us acquiring the destination for which we are very grateful (and a fee pennies lighter!).
ReplyDeleteWatch out for 7552 at future events and it's programmed destinations.