Seventy Years of the South Western: A Railway Journey Through Time

By Colin Boocock

The South Western main line is one of the most important railways in the south of England. Colin Boocock spent a significant part of his life living on and researching the history of this centre of railway operations in the South and South West of England. This book looks at the network over the last seventy years, from Nationalisation through to the present day. The system provides a vital link between the South and South West of Britain and London, operating a mixture of commuter services and important main line passenger trains. Throughout the seventy years covered in this book, the South Western network also had significant flows of heavy freight between the capital and Southampton Docks and the West Country. Today there are still frequent, well-loaded container trains from Southampton to the Midlands and the North via Basingstoke and Reading. This volume also covers the transitions from steam traction to diesel and electric in stages from the 1950s through to the late 1980s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526780898

Colin Boocock

Colin Boocock is a life-long railway enthusiast and an experienced railway engineer. Brought up near the green electric multiple units that passed over the level crossing at Addlestone in Surrey, he was enthralled when his parents took him to watch steam expresses at nearby Weybridge. His love for steam traction extended to modern forms as the railways developed and modernised. The sight of the then-Canon Eric Treacys booklet My Best Railway Photographs gave Colin the idea that he, too, could take photographs of trains. Seventy years on, he is still doing this. He often wonders: is this a record?

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CHAPTER 1

JOSEPH LOCKE’S MAIN LINE

AN APOCRYPHAL TALE

Enthusiasts who have travelled widely will have heard the story about the high-ranking Russian who was shown the then new railway station at Vauxhall. He allegedly returned to his home country with the exciting news that he had seen a Vauxhall, the word that sounds the same as the word that is now used for a railway station in the Russian language and pronounced Vokzal, though in Cyrillic script the latter is usually expressed as BOK3AЛ. I think the story is actually apocryphal because the London & Southampton Railway (L&SR) originally terminated at Nine Elms at the London end, and its extension to Waterloo which passed through Vauxhall was not opened until 1848. Russia had been operating passenger railways since 1837, so in the intervening eleven years it must have invented a word for a railway station well before 1848!

The south London district of Nine Elms featured large in the first decades of the L&SWR because not only was its terminus there, but the railway also set up its depots and main workshops at Nine Elms on both sides of the main line. Indeed, Nine Elms works built 814 steam locomotives and much rolling stock up to the time when the two main works there closed in 1894 and 1909, as described in a later chapter.

While the railway to Southampton was built and opened in stages, and then extended at each end to better-located termini, it was conceived from the start as a high speed, easily graded railway that had potential for centuries of development. Joseph Locke, civil engineer, is credited with the railway’s excellent alignment, the only curves of note outside the terminal cities being through the stations at Farnborough and Micheldever. Its longest gradient, calling for excellent enginemanship in the Up direction, was sixteen miles at 1 in 252 from Eastleigh up to the tunnel at Litchfield, between Micheldever and Basingstoke. Wanting to build extensions to other places such as Portsmouth, Salisbury and Dorchester, the L&SR renamed itself in 1839 as the London & South Western Railway (L&SWR).

The first station out of London Waterloo is Vauxhall, seen here on 4 July 2018 as a pair of Siemens class 707 EMUs operated by South West Trains passes through on the westbound suburban lines.

Map 2 – Joseph Locke’s main line.

Towns of note on the London to Southampton main line were Woking, Basingstoke, and Winchester (the old capital of Wessex and host to the longest medieval cathedral in Europe). Virtually all other calling places were at first little more than large villages, though most managed to grow into sizeable towns as the railway brought prosperity westwards. Its first terminus in Southampton was at Northam, known then as Northam Bridge, presumably because that was where the road between Southampton and the Woolston ferry crossed the railway. The railway took only a short time to extend to its rather grand Southampton Terminus station, a location close to the old St Mary’s quarter and just across the road from the docks.

Initially, the main line was all double track. The L&SWR later accommodated growth by enlarging long sections to four tracks, particularly from Waterloo through to beyond Basingstoke where the newer line to Salisbury and the west country veered off at Worting Junction and the two double tracks resumed. A longish section of four tracks was also developed between just beyond Shawford to Eastleigh to reduce conflict between passenger trains and the several freight trains in and around that area, and there were four tracks between St Denys and the Terminus, too. The L&SWR pattern on the main line four track sections was Up slow, Up main, Down main and Down slow. At the London end, pressure on the railway from increasing traffic led to the widening of the railway still further to six tracks between Clapham Junction and the approaches to Waterloo. From Wimbledon inwards the slow lines are on the south of the main line formation. From Clapham Junction inwards, the ‘Windsor’ lines join and stay on the north side.

And, of course, there were many other lines thrown off from the main line as the L&SWR expanded its reach. Key to this story is the winding route that peeled off on a sharp curve just missing Northam station. We now know this line as going to Bournemouth and Weymouth, but originally it by-passed Bournemouth altogether in its drive to reach Dorchester and beyond, an unusual story that is taken up in the next chapter.

The L&SWR and the Southern Railway prioritised the London to Southampton main line with investment to reduce the impacts of flat junctions. Almost all lines turning off it, as far as and including Worting Junction, were rebuilt with flyovers or flyunders, a major exception being the junction with the Portsmouth Direct line that turned south off the main line just after Woking station. Quite why a grade-separated junction was not built there is a puzzle because it is an intensively used junction and movements conflicts occur when trains are not on time. Network Rail is being encouraged to think about this, assuming funds could be eventually made available and enough land acquired to make it possible.

Another feature that was inherited by British Railways at nationalisation in 1948 was the automatic signalling along the long stretch of fast four trackage between Woking and Basingstoke. At set intervals on gantries that spanned the four tracks stood the semaphore arms of the section signals and their related distant signals. These were activated via pneumatic cylinders and acted automatically as the trains progressed, returning to danger as soon as each train had passed, and clearing again when the train had left the next section. Initially lower quadrants, these signals were replaced by BR with upper quadrants, still in auto mode. Only later did multiple aspect colour light signals take over.

That the SR had been a forward-looking railway was evidenced also by its push to electrify its London suburban lines, and then some of the shorter main lines. Later chapters detail the suburban lines from Waterloo that are relevant to the South Western story, and the drive to reach Portsmouth more directly.

A journey today along this line to Southampton begins on the concourse of the recently refurbished and extended Waterloo station, one of the big stations that Network Rail manages. At the time of writing, First Group/MTR’s South Western Railway franchise is the principal operator there, and the Southampton-bound ‘fast’ trains are destined for Bournemouth, most going on from there to Dorchester and Weymouth. Our train is likely to be a class 444 electric multiple unit of five or ten cars built by Siemens’ factory in Austria. A slow passage across the points and crossings in the station throat is followed by gentle acceleration on viaducts at roof-top level towards Vauxhall, and soon we pass Queenstown Road (formerly Queens Road Battersea) on our right and need to slow down for (or even stop at) Clapham Junction before any really fast running can happen.

Steady running takes us past Earlsfield and the electric multiple unit maintenance depot at Wimbledon before we reach the station of that name, by which time the Up slow line has crossed over on a concrete flyover. Just before the station, a line curves in from the left, a suburban line from the Streatham direction that now brings in trains from the Thameslink line that soon branches off again for Sutton. Immediately after Wimbledon are two flat junctions, both on the left. The first is now part of the Croydon tramway but it used to handle short EMUs bound for West Croydon. The second is the double track flat junction taking the Thameslink Sutton trains. Then comes Raynes Park, a station with staggered platforms that embrace a flyunder arrangement to get the Chessington branch away to the left. Another grade separated junction leads off to the right at New Malden where the Shepperton and Twickenham trains head away. Then we pass through Berrylands and Surbiton stations in close succession, losing after them the short branch to Hampton Court on the right, and then to the left is the L&SWR suburban route to Guildford which ran via Effingham Junction. Apart from the Wimbledon junctions, which were links from and to the SR’s Central Section (ex-London, Brighton & South Coast Railway), all these junctions are grade separated.

Speed rises through Esher (for Sandown racecourse), Hersham and Walton-on-Thames before we pass through the centre tracks at Weybridge where there is another flat junction to the right, though the trains that head off from the bay platform there do not conflict with the main line as they move off north-west to double back to Waterloo via Staines. There is a trailing burrowing junction from this branch before Byfleet & New Haw, which used to be called West Weybridge². Beyond West Byfleet, we reach the busy junction station at Woking, after which there is quite a clatter as our train crosses the tracks heading off left towards Guildford and Portsmouth on the so-called ‘Direct’ route.

Just east of Wimbledon used to be the SR’s Durnsford Road power station which was built to feed power to the suburban electric network through its system of sub-stations, switching stations and conductor rails. The coal for the power station arrived in wagons that were shunted into position by this home-built Bo-Bo electric locomotive numbered 74S. (Colin J. Marsden)

A stunning feature of Joseph Locke’s excellent main line was the long, almost straight stretch of four tracks that led through Woking all the way to beyond Basingstoke. ‘King Arthur’ class 4-6-0 30784 Sir Nerovens speeds a Waterloo-Basingstoke semi-fast westwards near Hersham in Surrey. (Tony Sterndale, courtesy of the Bournemouth Railway Club Trust)

We have now left the rather scrubby lands of Surrey and into more leafy Hampshire. The 444 is quite capable of speeding up the long climb towards milepost 31 that includes the divergence by flyover of the branch from Brookwood towards Alton, by which time we have passed on the left the large cemetery that was laid out as an overflow for London burials in the nineteenth century and which is again referred to in Chapter 5 when I discuss Waterloo station. Now we are on the long fast stretch that has a slight curve through Farnborough (now called Farnborough Main, a rather unusual name, in deference to the former South Eastern line’s station at Farnborough North) and then we speed up towards the modern line speed of 100mph through Fleet, Winchfield and Hook before slowing for the junction at Basingstoke where the former Great Western line from Reading trails in on the right, a flat junction. Cross-Country DEMUs join our route here, one every hour, with occasional extras in between.

Worting Junction was the parting of the ways where the Salisbury and Exeter route diverged from the Southampton main line. The L&SWR provided this flyover junction to reduce conflictions. Rebuilt ‘Merchant Navy’ 4-6-2 35014 Nederland Line takes an Up Bournemouth to London train over the Battledown flyover on 8 August 1964. (Alan Trickett)

As far as Basingstoke, the slow lines have hosted outer-suburban trains formed of class 450 Siemens four-car EMUs, usually in eight-car formations. Beyond Basingstoke, the four tracks peel apart at Worting Junction with its often-photographed Battledown flyover, the Salisbury and Exeter trains, nowadays exclusively classes 159 and 158 DMUs, heading off to the right and leaving our train to climb on the double track up and over Roundwood summit to the tunnel at Litchfield. The descent of the sixteen miles of 1 in 252 is interrupted by braking for the speed restriction through Micheldever after passing through two more tunnels, and later there is another shorter tunnel at Wallers Ash where there are long loops on both sides of the railway to enable freights to keep out of the way of expresses.

There used to be a junction called Winchester Junction, but there is no sight of it today. Here the secondary line from Alton came in on the left, while the temporary link from the former Didcot, Newbury & Southampton line that was worked by the GWR came in on the right, the DN&S line proper diving underneath our main line to call at its own Winchester Chesil station in the city centre. This line therefore by-passed the L&SWR’s Winchester City station, joining the main line after calling at the outside of an almost independent platform at the next station, Shawford. After Shawford, the next four-track section begins, as we continue along the valley of the River Itchen, passing the extensive freight yards at Allbrook before thumping across the junction under the road bridge at the approach to Eastleigh station where the line comes in from Salisbury and Romsey before it heads off left towards Fareham and (nowadays) Portsmouth. Originally, this line went straight to Gosport, which was closed to rail passenger trains from 1952 and to freight from 1969.

In modern times there are many heavy trains of containers from Southampton Docks that have to thread their way between the frequent electric train service. 57006, a former 47 rebuilt with General Motors power unit, brings a northbound container train through Winchester station on 19 July 2005.

On the left after the Portsmouth line has disappeared is the former Eastleigh Locomotive Works that still survives, then we pass the flat field that now includes a runway for airliners, but which used to be just a field on which propeller-driven planes for Paris or the Channel Islands would splash their way on take-off or landing. All trains now stop at Southampton Airport Parkway station, that station having been given priority now at the expense of Eastleigh; Eastleigh station nowadays sees only half-hourly stopping train EMUs and the ‘Romsey rocket’ DMUs calling there. Southampton Airport station was new in 1966, before which BR didn’t consider the old Eastleigh Airport worthy of a train service³. It has expanded massively since then, as has the adjacent airport, and is now a Parkway station with car parks and a few hotels nearby. It still has just two often very busy platforms, however.

In earlier years the Southampton main line’s freight was dominated by the heavy loads taken from Southampton Old Docks towards London, usually Feltham yard. One of these trains approaches Eastleigh behind Urie H15 4-6-0 30487 on 23 May 1955.

The train now enters the suburbs of the city of Southampton, and passes through Swaythling station, a typical L&SWR two-platform station that is dwarfed by the next one at St Denys. Here the line from Portsmouth and Fareham trails in on the left round a sharp curve that leads it into its own pair of platforms before the two double-track lines intermingle to form a four-track section in full view of an arm of Southampton Water. Bevois Park yard passes by on the right, followed by the wide level crossing at Mount Pleasant and Northam yards on the left, a space now occupied by the Siemens rolling stock maintenance depot.

If we were to follow the original main line at Northam (not for our 444 unit as it is not electrified), we would go straight ahead through the former two-platform station there and head about a mile south to the Docks. A sharp curve to the right would take us into Southampton Terminus station, a moderate but quite grand affair with a typical large L&SWR station building fronting the road that formed a reasonably impressive entrance for local people to access the railway. The line that by-passes this terminus crosses Canute Road and enters the docks area. This crossing has hosted boat trains and banana trains (steam-heated to help the fruit ripen) and many freights, all of which had to be waved across the road from the docks by a man with a red flag, there ostensibly to hold back the road traffic while trains from the docks slowly crossed into railway civilisation.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the hourly Alton push-pull trains were the regular trains at the Terminus, headed by L&SWR M7 0-4-4Ts until they were replaced by Ivatt class 2 2-6-2Ts not long before the service was dieselised. Other services were stopping trains to Portsmouth and to Bournemouth, often with T9 ‘Greyhound’ 4-4-0s, plus a few services to and from the Didcot, Newbury & Southampton line. These latter regularly brought Great Western engines into the Terminus station. The DNS line south of Newbury closed in 1960. The Alton services soldiered on long enough to be dieselised with two-car diesel electric multiple units from 1959.

On 9 July 1967, the day steam traction finished on the Southern Region, class 47 D1924 approaches St Denys in the Southampton outskirts with the very last Bournemouth Belle Pullman train from Bournemouth to London Waterloo. The railway here skirts one edge of Southampton Water.

In the Beeching era, the passenger services to Southampton Terminus were withdrawn at about the same time as the Winchester to Alton branch line was completely closed.

Had our train turned sharply to the right on the approach to Northam station it would have followed the totally different main line that is the subject of the next chapter. Joseph Locke’s London & Southampton main line was superbly aligned, vertically and laterally. What follows is a different story altogether!

Joseph Locke’s main line terminated here. This used to be Southampton Terminus, the platforms of which lay behind and to the left of the building. Beyond them were tracks that crossed Canute Road and into the Eastern (Old) Docks.

CHAPTER 2

CASTLEMAN’S CORKSCREW

MISSING THE POINT

The railway west of Southampton got its nickname ‘Castleman’s corkscrew’ because on the map it wandered widely during its course towards Dorchester. Some called it ‘Castleman’s snake’, an equally apt name.

In steam days, the sharp double-track curve to the right from the junction just before Northam station was restricted to 15mph. Electrification in 1967 and the elimination of the third side of the triangle there enabled