Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
LOST RAILWAYS
A new TV series explores the extraordinary hidden relics of the railroads that Dr Beeching’s cuts consigned to history
The school run is one thing. But few wives have the time to also give their hubbies a lift to work every morning... and certainly not by physically lifting them. The fishwives of Lossiemouth in Morayshire, on the ‘Scottish Riviera’, were a breed apart. Not only did they make sure their menfolk clocked in on time, they carried them on their backs, hitching up their skirts and wading out to the fishing boats, with their fishermen hoisted behind them.
And the ladies of Lossiemouth still regard this as good, dutiful behaviour. ‘No self-respecting woman would let her man go to sea with wet feet,’ one tells presenter Rob Bell, in his unconventional six-part documentary series about British history and archaeology.
Walking Britain’s Lost Railways takes Rob along some of the 4,000 miles of track axed half a century ago in the infamous Beeching cuts. It’s a novel way to explore how dramatically the country has changed since the 1960s.
In Lossiemouth, the women no longer give their husbands piggybacks through the freezing water, but they were once a tough lot: when the fleet returned, those wives would wade out and haul the boats ashore, before gathering up the catch and walking with it ten miles to market.
The arrival of the railway in the 1850s made their life easier, as the fish could be whisked to town much faster by train. But Dr Beeching did his worst, despite plentiful evidence that the line was still profitable.
Now all that remains of that Victorian revolution are the sand dunes, said to be the burial sites of old carriages. A spur of rails and timber crosses the sands, partly submerged and falling to pieces, like the fossils of a dinosaur.
Some of what was left behind is rather more solid. Elgin station, at the start of the Morayshire line, is an imposing edifice built in 1902 in the tower ing stone style known as Scottish Baronial. It looks like Balmoral-by-the-Sea. Rob points out: ‘It was built to last, but the Edwardians didn’t count on the line closing a few decades later.’ Today the station is an office building, with all of the period detail lovingly preserved.
Other parts of the Morayshire line have disappeared completely. Rob follows its path through a wood, oddly dotted with fruit trees – the result of long-ago travellers throwing apple cores out of the carriage windows. This was a lucrative railway, not just for the fish it transported but because of the region’s other main export: whisky. The train service changed the way that single malts taste, because for the first time distilleries were able to take deliveries in bulk of Spanish sherry casks. These barrels, steeped in the flavour of old wines, were ideal for storing whisky, sometimes for 20 years before bottling. In the distillers’ jargon, the whisky was not ageing but ‘sleeping’ – just as many customers do after a few drams.
To his surprise, Rob discovers that whisky is a clear liquid like vodka, until it has been mellowed in the casks to acquire its unique flavours and aromas. He samples the raw brew, which is 69 per cent alcohol: ‘I can feel it burning,’ he gasps, after the tiniest sip. Clutching at his throat, he adds, ‘Hot!’
The twin cargoes of single-malt and fish come together in the town of Buckie, where the line used to run behind the salmon factory. The fish, caught on the nearby Spey river, would be gutted and hung in a smoking cham- ber, where heaps of wood were burned on the floor – chippings from old whisky barrels. The rich alcoholic fumes still give Buckie salmon a special flavour, but the operation no longer depends on catching the 3pm departure from the neighbouring platform.
Rob’s second adventure takes him to a line that is less remote, though it seems more deeply lost in time. The Woodhead railway that ran over the Pennines from Sheffield to Manchester has largely disappeared from sight. Picking up the trail in Deepcar in Yorkshire, he finds himself in thick woods where girders and metal ties lie in the undergrowth. In one thicket of trees stands a disused lamppost. It’s like a scene from Narnia. ‘It feels like a lost world,’ says Rob. But as the track broadens out, it leads him to one of the strangest relics in modern archaeology – the 300-yard Thurgoland tunnel. Because of its shape – it’s bowed like a horseshoe – the tunnel has an amazing echo. Stand at the centre, shout your name, and the sound will reverberate for 20 seconds. Acoustic engineer Trevor Cox demonstrates the weirdness of the echo by playing five notes on a saxophone. The sounds intertwine, forming a chord that rolls around itself until it is as deafeningly grand as the thunder of a pipe organ.
Other tunnels on the line are less happy places. The three-mile-long Woodhead tunnel through the Pennines was one of the longest in the world when it was completed in 1853, but it was built at a terrible cost, with scores of accidental deaths and hundreds of injuries. Now the tunnel is walled up. ‘So many people paid the ultimate sacrifice to build this,’ says Rob, ‘and we don’t get to see it. It’s a very lost part of our lost railways.’ Walking Britain’s Lost Railways, Friday, 9pm, Channel 5.