Charting the Bluebell’s achievements from 1960 to the present day
Sixty years ago, a group of volunteers were preparing to re-open a railway, becoming the very first standard gauge former BR line to do so, recalls COLIN TYSON.
British Railways first proposed closing the Lewes-East Grinstead route in 1954 and, despite much protestation, the pastoral byway was shut on May 28 1955. Much like the fictional comedy Titfield Thunderbolt, the route had its own romantic moniker, which only won more sympathy: the ‘Bluebell’. It had arisen after a resident suggested that the trains were slow enough to get out and pick bluebells, although engine-men and railway staff had also used the nickname ‘Bluebell and Primrose Line’.
Closure was originally scheduled for June 13, but an ASLEF strike brought about its premature end.
But BR and the British Transport Commission hadn’t reckoned with a resident from North Chailey by the name of Miss Rose Ellen Margaret (Madge) Bessemer – chairwoman of the fighting committee against closure of the line.
Bessemer pointed out the original parliamentary act for the line’s construction, documented in 1877/8, contained a clause that stated: “four passenger trains each way daily to run on this line with through connections at East Grinstead to London, and stop at Newick, Sheffield Bridge [Park] and West Hoathly.”
Closure was therefore illegal, with concrete proof that the line must survive.
So it was that on August 7 1956 a grudging BR fielded a single engine and carriage on such a service, and the line was given a stay of execution. It became known as the ‘Sulky Service’, in recognition of the puny, quite farcical train that served few people and at inappropriate times, but still just enough to fulfil the terms of the Act.
Regardless, the discovery proved a sensation and the press lapped it up. Miss Bessemer was besieged by the press on the first train as a celebrity.
But it was not to last. The ‘Sulky Service’ had merely strengthened the resolve of the Transport Commission to axe the line from the network and after being taken to the House of Commons, the case ended at a three-day public inquiry in February 1958. BR and the BTC had finally got their way at the second time of asking.
Miss Bessemer said it was “a battle lost with honour”.
The end finally came on March 16 1958, when ‘4MT’ No. 80154, decked in flowers, took the packed 4.28pm to Lewes out of East Grinstead for the last time, seen off by hundreds of well-wishers and mourners.
A contemporary, but sadly anonymous, poem read:
With Parliamentary precision
The Minister gave his decision
In terms concise and not too starchy.
It said that, round about mid-March, he, Confronted by financial facts,
Would be compelled to wield the axe. Sussex must face up to the blow,
The ‘Bluebell Line’ at last must go,
For like so many charming folk,
It, too, was beautiful, but broke.
Of course, the local population Expressing righteous indignation
And rallying round from near and far
(As usual, by motorcar) Characteristically enthused
About the line they seldom used. Enthused, alas, but all in vain;
This was the death knell of the train
With no more puff-puffs on the go, Nature resumes the status quo,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Naught can escape this mortal ‘must’,
Yet here’s a thought that’s comforting There will be bluebells there next Spring!
Even though the railway had finally succumbed to the fashion for railway cutbacks, Miss Bessemer had staved off closure for long enough to enable preservationists to attempt its salvation. Four Brighton students – Chris Campbell, David Dallimore, Martin Eastland and Alan Sturt – arranged for local enthusiast and railwayman Bernard Holden to chair a meeting to form the Lewes & East Grinstead Railway Preservation Society.
Holden was born in the station house at Barcombe on the ‘Bluebell’ line during the period that his father was stationmaster there and he knew the line well.
The society’s intention wasn’t for a heritage steam railway, but for a Great Western ‘Flying Banana’ railcar and two-car DMU-operated service. However, the idea died a death when the society could not afford to purchase the whole line, simultaneous to the realisation that there was a lack of interest in such motive power.
This meeting, open to all those interested in running the line privately, was held on March 15 1959 at the Church Lads’ Brigade Hall in Haywards Heath. A committee was chosen and subscriptions were subsequently taken.
Member number one was Charles Hudson, who was to head up the line’s S&T department and is now a vice president of the society. Charles said: “I arrived at the hall after the meeting had started so I took a vacant seat in the immediate back row by the door. Behind me was a card table which, after the meeting, became the new membership secretary’s table and I was able to turn
round in my seat and place my pound note on the table and thus became ‘member No. 1’ in the receipt book!”
A further committee meeting held at the same location on June 1 changed the name to the shortened Bluebell Railway Preservation Society – a name that stuck – which concentrated its efforts on the section from Sheffield Park, based on a main ‘A’ road and where there was readily available water for engines, to Horsted Keynes. The connection to the outside world from Horsted Keynes, the junction for the branch to Haywards Heath, via Ardingly, was to prove invaluable in bringing the first engines and rolling stock to the line.
The newly formed committee paid a visit to a very neglected and forlorn Sheffield Park in June 1959. BR was asking for £34,000 for the 4¾ mile section and the society only had £89 in the bank! A five-year lease on the track was later arranged with BR to provide breathing space to raise funds.
PUFFER FOR POSTERITY
On July 12, the society ran its first fundraising railtour, from Tonbridge, to East Grinstead and down to Horsted Keynes, where the society chairman addressed the audience before the train continued to Haywards Heath and Lewes, and back to Tonbridge. The society had 400 members “and it was hoped to increase this to 1,000.”
The debut Bluebell News publication urged members to “Preserve the Puffer for Posterity”.
Membership had risen to 600 by the end of 1959 and, at a meeting held in the grand surroundings of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton on February 19 1960, a gathering of 200 members were told that the five-year lease would not become operative until a Light Railway Order was granted, which finally came on July 9.
The first locomotive, ‘Terrier’ No. (326)55, had already arrived from Brighton by rail in the company of two carriages on May 17 1960 (just two months after BR’s Evening Star was built!), at a cost of £750.
There were hopes of acquiring a second ‘A1X’ for the first trains, but as there were only 11 remaining in
BR service – all regularly in use – a
SECR ‘P’ 0-6-0T was settled upon in the shape of No. 31323, which joined No. 55 on June 27.
Both tank engines became the best ambassadors and publicity machines that anyone could hope for: Stepney and ‘Bluebell’, made even more famous thanks to the children’s Railway Series by the
Reverend Wilbert Awdry.