Graeme Pickering tells the story of the final 12 passenger lines closed due to Beeching’s 1963 report, the official end of the very last one coming some 40 years later!
A FRENZY of closures began in the wake of Dr Richard Beeching’s The Reshaping of British Railways report in March 1963, but a number of routes clung on for considerably longer.
Given the sheer volume of Beeching-related cuts, proposals and subsequent changes, attempts to categorise the lines involved can be subject to a certain degree of interpretation, but based on Section 1 of the document, our list ranks, in chronological order, the last dozen for which closure to passengers would mean the end of the line.
1 Ilfracombe-Barnstaple Closed October 1970
Ilfracombe gained its railway in 1874 in the shape of a 14-mile line working northwards from Barnstaple.
The Barnstaple & Ilfracombe Railway (a subsidiary of the London & South Western Railway) had steep gradients and much of it required cuttings and embankments.
Other engineering features included a curved 17-span iron bridge over the River Taw at Barnstaple, a swing bridge at Pottington and a 69-yard tunnel, itself on a gradient, as trains descended towards Ilfracombe. There were intermediate stations at Barnstaple Quay (later Barnstaple Town), Wrafton, Braunton and Mortehoe & Woolacombe.
Holiday traffic reached its peak in the 1930s, but demand for travel was much lighter outside the summer months and the increasing popularity of road travel hastened its decline.
Closure was authorised by the minister of transport subject to additional bus services being introduced and the final trains ran on October 3, 1970, the last leaving Ilfracombe at 19.55.
The North Devon Railway Company (NDRC) entered into negotiations with British Rail with the aim of purchasing the line before it was dismantled. Unfortunately, its share issue failed to realise the sum required and, by this time, BR had reportedly increased
