END OF AN ERA AT WASHFORD
As the Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust opens the doors of its Washford museum for the last time, we talk to its volunteers and find out what gems the group harbours in its collection. MARCHING ORDERS
Profile of the Somerset & Dorset Trust
On one end of the small signal box at Washford station hangs an oval wooden board, white with a black cross on one side, and black on the other, now placed with the black side facing outwards. “I’ve put it like that because we’re in mourning,” says Somerset & Dorset Railway Trust volunteer Peter Trenchard.
It’s an example of the boards that once hung on the outsides of signal boxes to indicate to travelling linemen (Signal & Telegraph electricians) that their services were required, the four possible positions of the board denoting whether all was well, there had been a complete failure of the box’s electric instruments, or some other problem in between.
With the advent of telephone circuits in signal boxes, explains Peter, “most other railways got rid of them after the First World War – but the S&D kept them.
“When you were an isolated railway, you could keep a bit of tradition…”
It’s a tiny example of the ways in which the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway retained its own individual character, a charisma that, even more than 50 years after its closure, still earns it the love and respect of enthusiasts far and wide.
For more than 40 of those years, the S&D Trust has been keeping its memory alive at Washford – but not for much longer, having opened its doors for what is expected to be the last time at the August bank holiday weekend, before an impending move to a new home.
“It’s a quirky museum for a quirky railway,” sums up another of the volunteers. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to recreate that atmosphere somewhere else.”
Anyone who’s been reading Steam
Railway since SR503 in March will be aware of the issue, but for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t, the situation is this: In February this year, the West Somerset Railway plc gave the trust notice to quit the site by February 2021, saying that it needs the siding space to move its permanent way depot from Dunster, and citing previous breaches of safety at the site (the latter set out in its ‘Position Statement’ in SR506, but about which the trust still insists it was never previously contacted).
As detailed in News, the trust is seeking a new permanent home, while the Mid-Hants Railway has offered to temporarily house some of the collection.
It’s not every day, month or year that an entire railway preservation centre ups sticks and moves to a new site. When the group concerned has been around since 1966, on its present site since the mid-1970s, and has an unrivalled collection of artefacts relating to its subject, that makes it an especially noteworthy upheaval. We therefore needed no further reason to find out just what there was to see at Washford – and, in the fullness of time, will be at the new base.
CARRIAGE COLLECTION
When the S&D closed in 1966, having been systematically and deliberately run into the ground by a vindictive Western Region, a group of enthusiasts formed the Somerset & Dorset Railway Circle to ensure that its memory was never forgotten. Initially, it was merely a historical society wishing to document the history of the line, but another of its aims was to preserve artefacts…
Most of us enthusiasts are compulsive collectors, and it might only be when you take a step back that you realise
you’ve gathered your own mini-museum of railwayana and mini-search engine library of railway books. So it goes with the S&D Trust. Its headquarters may appear a relatively unremarkable, if tidy and presentable, goods yard and shed, but inside that building, the station and the various coaches and wagons can be found an Aladdin’s cave of S&D relics, as well as interpretative panels on the line’s history. The latter were a small part of a project funded by a £58,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant in 2016, which also involved a series of exhibitions and talks along the length of the former line to commemorate 50 years since its closure.
The collection began with the acquisition of the trust’s biggest, and certainly best-known, asset – ‘7F’ 2-8-0 No. 53808, which it rescued from Barry scrapyard in 1970. It first went back to its old stamping ground at Radstock, where the Circle (renamed as the trust in 1973) attempted to set up a preserved line – but, unable to raise sufficient funds, the group and ‘7F’ moved to the WSR, the locomotive steaming again in 1987.
As director Nigel Davies points out, the trust has now owned the ‘7F’ for longer than any of the railway companies for which it previously worked – but one could say that the real gem of the collection is in fact six-wheeled First Class coach No. 4, built at the SDJR’s Highbridge Works in 1886. Found serving as a cricket pavilion at Templecombe, the grounded body was painstakingly restored over a period of almost 30 years, incorporating sections from the remains of sister coach No. 5, and placed on the chassis of an LMS CCT van to make it the only operational SDJR coach in preservation.
Also on site at Washford, however, can be found every other known surviving item of SDJR rolling stock – or the remains thereof.
Under tarpaulins awaiting restoration are the bodies of two more six-wheelers – Thirds Nos. 98 and 114, respectively built by Cravens in 1894 and at Highbridge in 1890, and found forming part of a bungalow in Chichester. Had the eviction notice not been served, says Peter, the trust would have been looking to bring one of these into the shed for work to begin. Another of the volunteers, Dave Temple, opines that No. 114 should be first in line for restoration because, “when you tell visitors it was built ‘just over there’ in Highbridge, they’re interested…”
RISING FROM THE ASHES?
Thus there are the makings of a full Prussian Blue vintage train here – but without a brake vehicle. However, stored in one of the wagons are the remains of what is thought to be four-wheel passenger brake coach No. 12, one of two SDJR carriages that became part of a house in Exeter, only to be burnt when squatters set fire to the building.
One coach was too badly damaged to save, except for a few parts, but about a third of one side of the brake was salvaged and could form the pattern for a replica to provide the necessary brake vehicle (although this is a job that would only be tackled after at least one of the Thirds is restored, says Peter).
Also in store are the remains of an SDJR brake van – known to be so because surviving lettering proclaims it to be No. 9, allocated to the Wells branch. These are the only known remnants of an SDJR goods vehicle; the road van No. 747, prominent in the yard with SDJR markings, is in fact an LSWR item, though the S&D did have similar vehicles.
None of the trust’s varied collection of wagons has any S&D connection (although many are from the LSWR, Southern Railway or LMS, the companies that jointly ran the line) but their restorations stand the group in good stead for building replica carriages. LMS 12-ton open wagon No. 607324, says Peter, is “virtually a new-build
– all done on site by volunteers”, the metalwork being original but the woodwork having rotted away.
Some of the track on which they stand does have S&D provenance, the three-way point having been recovered in the move from Radstock. Along with the shed, it’s all the property of the trust, and is expected to move to the new home with them. “We’ll leave it if the WSR pays us for it,” says Nigel. “If not, that’s where a lot of the money for moving comes from.”
Used with the wagons for demonstration shunting in the yard, and painted in full Prussian Blue regalia to match No. 4, was the trust’s other steam locomotive – Peckett 0-4-0ST Works No. 1788 ‘Kilmersdon’. Having reached the end of its ‘ten-year’ boiler certificate in January, while on loan to the Helston Railway, it remains in storage there until transport to the new base, and an overhaul, can be arranged.
Its current SDJR livery isn’t authentic, but it’s a piece of Somerset history nonetheless. It was the last steam locomotive at work in the Somerset coalfield when it was withdrawn in 1973, having spent all its life at the colliery near Radstock after which it is named, and from which the group also possesses the last narrow gauge coal tub to leave the mine.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS
These aren’t the only relics of other Somerset railways in the vicinity of the S&D. There’s also a short length of 2ft gauge track, a Lister petrol locomotive, and replica wagons on original chassis, from the Ashcott peat works railway, owned by Fisons.
The system crossed the S&D’s Evercreech Junction-Burnham branch on the level, and this was the location of a spectacular – and luckily non-fatal – accident on August 19 1949. With the Somerset
Levels enveloped in thick fog, one of the little petrol locomotives stalled on the crossing and was hit by former SDJR ‘3F’ No. 3260 hauling the 8.00am mixed train from Glastonbury to Bridgwater.
The Johnson 0-6-0 derailed and fell into the South Drain beside the line, from where it was impossible to retrieve, the embankment being unable to support a sufficiently large crane. It was therefore cut up where it lay – but years later, a Mike Hodge of Cannington, Somerset, found its ashpan and a section of firebox in the drain, and both of these are now at Washford.
Fewer relics remain of another narrow gauge line connected with the S&D – the 2ft 6in gauge Oakhill Brewery Railway – for it lasted just 17 years before closing in 1921. But in storage at Washford is the crane from the transhipment shed at Binegar, used to load the barrels of beer on to standard gauge wagons after two little 0-4-0STs, Bagnall Mendip and Peckett Oakhill, had hauled them up from the brewery.
TAKING THE TABLETS
Another artefact from Binegar is the Whitaker tablet exchange apparatus, used for the key (also in the museum) authorising the drivers of Fowler ‘Jinty’ 0-6-0Ts to return to Binegar ‘wrong line’ after banking goods trains to Masbury Summit. A second example in the yard (its original location is unknown) has been demonstrated using the corresponding mechanism on the ‘7F’, requiring the use of an original gauge from Stalbridge to set its height and distance from the track.
Patented by SDJR Locomotive Superintendent Alfred Whitaker in 1905, the apparatus allowed locomotives to exchange single-line tablets at speed, expediting the working of a railway that, right to the end, was hampered by a combination of single-track bottlenecks and very heavy holiday traffic.
Something of those glorious years could still be experienced in the Washford signal cabin bearing that lineman’s board. Inside, the trust has replicated the interior of Midford signal box, and could re-enact a typically hectic summer Saturday as the signalman routes a succession of holidaymakers’ specials off the single line from Bath Junction. A genuine S&D signal cabin – the diminutive structure from Burnham-on-Sea – stands in the yard.
As well as ‘OO’ gauge dioramas of Highbridge and Edington Junction stations, there are large-scale models of ‘7F’ No. 89 and a Prussian Blue ‘2P’ 4-4-0. These, says Dave, could have provided live S&D steam on the site; a recently retired electrician and model engineer from Lancashire had volunteered to build a miniature railway, but with the eviction notice, followed by the lockdown, the idea never came to fruition.
LAST WORDS
By any measure, it’s a huge amount of stuff to pack up and ship elsewhere – but the volunteers are facing the eviction with stoicism, mixed with a degree of frustration. “We’re just pig sick of the whole thing,” says Dave. “It’s all so unnecessary.”
Martin Rice, the group’s financial director, comments, with reference to the ‘Tuesday gang’ of up to 14 regular volunteers: “We could ‘recreate’ Washford, but the body blow hits the team here – they’re just the current incarnation of what’s been here for 40 years, and it’s difficult to ask people to dismantle something they’ve spent years tending.”
Ted Lambe, the leader of the restoration team on No. 4, sums up: “It was a bitter disappointment, and we were very angry, but you have to accept it and look to the future – hopefully we can keep the team together.”
Let’s hope so, and that the trust can continue to keep the memory of this beloved railway alive for future generations – wherever that may be.