According to Chris...
His grandchildren call him ‘Granddad Trains’ and he’s been a dedicated railway modeller since the 1960s but, despite popular legend, Chris Leigh doesn’t remember when dinosaurs roamed the Earth!
Chris has been contemplating whether change is always a good thing on the railways as he goes chasing the new Class 800.
I’ve never been fond of going back to places that I knew years beforehand, because I always find that they’ve changed, and it’s usually not for the better. However, one of the great things about this job is that alongside all the nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ there are constant reminders that the railway is still an exciting, interesting place. Old and new were brought into sharp focus for me just recently, when I took delivery of a Hornby Class 800. The Class 800 is Great Western’s new flagship train. I had not been anywhere by train on the old BR Western Region for a while and, in order to write an ‘informed’ review of the new Hornby model, I needed to have seen and, if possible, ridden on one. The Worcester line apparently had several regular Class 800 diagrams and that suited me well because I could call at Moreton-in-marsh and check out the station, which is the subject of Oxford Rail’s new resin model. So, on a Thursday in early March, I drove out to Moreton. As I arrived at the station, Class 800s on Up and Down services crossed in the platforms. My gamble had paid off, and I took a ride to Oxford aboard unit 800005. We stopped at Kingham and Charlbury, having whizzed past the site of Adlestrop and the basic modern halts which have replaced those wayside stations that Beeching wanted to close. Shipton, Finstock and Combe have scarcely one train a day, while it was fascinating to stop at Hanborough (see MR245) at which these express services now call once an hour. Indeed, Hanborough’s proximity to traffic-gridlocked Oxford means that it brought more passengers to our train than either Kingham or Charlbury. My return to Moreton-in-marsh was by HST, so I was able to make a direct comparison. The new units have received their fair share of criticism, but I like them. True, the seats are hard but I did not find them uncomfortable. Acceleration is quick and smooth, and I deliberately chose a motor coach so I could hear the noise level. There wasn’t much. As I retraced my journey back to Moreton in a Mk 3 coach I couldn’t help recalling that my first trip over this route had been in a Hawksworth Corridor Second in 1964, the 1.25pm (Saturdays only) Oxford-moreton-inmarsh-evesham being just two coaches behind ‘Grange’ No. 6868 Penrhos Grange. At Moreton it had reversed into a siding to allow a ‘Hymek’hauled express to overtake, before emerging and continuing on its way. Remarkably, that siding is still there. So too is the signal box, the goods lock-up and even a couple of walls of the old GWR stables alongside the trackbed of the branch to Shipston-on-stour. Those relics put me in a nostalgic mood and as I drove home, a few miles out of Moreton on the A429 (the Roman Fosse Way), I noticed a three-storey red brick property which immediately looked familiar. At Stretton-on-fosse, the Shipston branch crossed the Fosse Way. Before it became a minor GWR branch this had been part of the Stratford-upon-avon & Moreton Tramway, a horse-drawn line so old that it even pre-dated the Stockton & Darlington. The building I had seen was the former Golden Cross Inn which stood beside the ramshackle wooden Stretton-on-fosse station. The adjacent ‘Station House’, actually a crossing keeper’s cottage, is still there and the course of the railway is not hard to spot between these two surviving buildings. From 1820 to the 20th century, I’d unwittingly encompassed the whole story of the railways in that part of the world in a single day.