1969 AND ALL THAT
Back in 1969, there was certainly Something In the Air. No, not just the title of the smash Top 20 hit by one-hit wonders Thunderclap Newman, nor the Apollo 11 lunar landing (that was clearly some way above the atmosphere!), but the revival of part of one of the biggest Beeching closures of all – the Great Central Railway’s London Extension.
A one-paragraph news item in the December 1968 edition of our (now) sister title The Railway Magazine said it all: “Formed to acquire a section of former main line, possibly in the East Midlands, on which privately-owned steam locomotives could be run at speed, the Main Line Preservation Group has appealed to all interested to contact its Hon Secretary, Mr J C Kirby, 2 Coventry Street, Leicester.” The group had been formed, in its own words, “to acquire a suitable length of main line, for the operation of steam-hauled passenger trains, at realistic speeds”.
The withdrawal of passenger services from many rural routes and their subsequent closure in the face of the growing public stampede from rail to road had been taking place throughout the Fifties, long before anyone in railways had heard the name Beeching.
However, on March 27, 1963, the British Railways chairman’s report, The Reshaping of British Railways, called for around 5000 of the network’s 18,000 miles to be closed completely. This time around, not only were branches serving rural backwaters earmarked for closure, but trunk routes were listed too – the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway system, the Waverley Route from Carlisle to Edinburgh… and the GCR main line from Nottingham to Marylebone.
On the GCR, the rot had taken hold in the late Fifties when vital freight traffic began to decline, and the route was neglected in favour of rival routes, such as the Midland Main Line which it largely duplicated.
In 1958, the route was transferred from the Eastern Region to the London Midland Region, where both management and staff still had loyalties to the old LMS empire, and not a line which was long seen as an LNER competitor.
Express passenger services from London to Sheffield and Manchester were discontinued in January 1960. That left the route with only three daily ‘semi-fast’ London-Nottingham trains on the route.
