THROUGH THE WESTERN’S HEARTLAND

It was, I’m sure, just coincidence that I began writing this text and amassing a selection of illustrations in September 2021. Or was it? The Midland & South Western Junction Railway has been a strange fascination for me ever since my brother and I first ‘discovered’ it in 1964, three years after it had closed. That closure took place in September 1961, 60 years ago.

At the risk of heresy as a railway writer, I’ll confess that I’m not a big fan of the Somerset & Dorset. The Bath-Bournemouth railway through the western heartlands of the Great Western was a long way from where I lived on the Middlesex/ Surrey border. Though it was undoubtedly attractive from an enthusiast viewpoint, with its gradients, difficult working conditions and great scenery, its growth from a line linking the Bristol Channel to the South Coast into a line linking the Midlands to the South Coast never really offered a serious business case, in my view.

There was, however, an independent railway which did link the Midlands with the London & South Western Railway, provided access to Southampton and its docks, rather than Bournemouth, and pierced the very heart of the GWR to give the Midland access to Southampton, without ever being more than a very minor thorn in the GWR’s side. Compared with the Somerset & Dorset, it was insignificant, yet before the Grouping in 1923 it had its own distinctive locomotive fleet and a character, which it retained until its end in the early 1960s. Though it contained the words ‘Midland’ and ‘South Western’ in its title, it was not beholden to either company, and was a ‘Junction’ railway not a ‘Joint’ railway, an important distinction which often seems lost on those who don’t know its history. It was much more independent than the S&DJR and did not have locomotives from either of its big neighbours until after Grouping, when it was swallowed by the GWR anyway.

The Midland & South Western Junction Railway, from Andoversford Junction, near Cheltenham, to Red Posts Junction, just west of Andover, was built piecemeal, beginning as the Swindon, Marlborough & Andover Railway (SMAR) and linking those three towns. By serving Swindon, of course, it cut across the Great Western and when extended northwards it did so, right on the western boundary