National Trust has a change of heart

In 1975, I paid my first visit to the wonderful Lutyens-built Castle Drogo in Devon, which the National Trust (NT) had been given the previous year. I fell I love with it, and it remains my favourite historic building.

I immediately took out Life Membership of the NT (for £70 - it’s now £1,695!) and started visiting properties. However, over a few years I noted that their annual handbook was years out-of-date, in one case showing the nearest station to a property as Richmond (Yorkshire), which had closed in 1969!

As I grew unenamoured with teaching, and was pondering how I changed to a transport career, I saw an opening. I approached the NT and said I would update their handbook to show the correct nearest station for every property, and do so free of charge.

I simply required a commitment that they would include everything - even though that inevitably would cost them quite a large sum, as every extra page in their handbook would equate to about an additional million pages annually!

I then approached the British Railways Board and told it what I was to do, and suggested that as this would effectively give it about 250 million free rail references, owing to the large print-run of the handbook, we enter a contract and the BRB pays for my time.

Impossible in today’s fragmented railway, it was agreed. And I soon expanded to include the English Heritage Guide and that of the Youth Hostel Association.

I then approached the-then National Bus Company and agreed a similar contract to cover the insertion of bus details, especially those that linked with stations.

All this was useful on leaving teaching, to supplement my main aim of producing a national Bus/Rail Guide… but that’s another story.

I subsequently updated these guides for 25 consecutive years, until voluntarily ceasing in 2008. By that time, the NT was actively promoting public transport as its preferred mode of reaching properties, to reduce car use and protect the environment. Within a few years, however, the information became out-of-date and it was finally withdrawn altogether.

Recently, I noted that Railfuture bemoaned the lack of rail information and took it up with the NT. The NT’s response? “The majority our members reach properties by car and not adding public transport information saves us £200,000 per annum in paper.”

How strange that a body that focuses on the environment has changed so much, and no longer cares about public transport.