Brighter future for the Shakespeare Line
IN recent weeks the future of the High Speed 2 rail link has, understandably, been in the spotlight, not least for the controversy it continues to generate. However, here in the heritage sector, fresh focus is now being directed at the last major trunk route built in the steam era, the GWR’S line from Birmingham to Cheltenham via Stratford-upon-avon, which opened in 1908 as part of a new route from the industrial West Midlands to South Wales, avoiding the Lickey Incline. Coming at the start of the age of motor transport, there would not be another like it until the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, High Speed 1, opened on November 14, 2007.
The northernmost section, the North Warwickshire Line from Tyseley to Stratford, is one of the greatest of all Beeching escapees, having survived attempts to close it in the late Sixties and then again south of Henley-in-arden in 1984. It hung on by its fingernails to eventually prove a major plus point for rail travel in the modern age of road congestion, for today it is a major commuter route, with the once-lonely Whitlocks End Halt, which originally served a handful of houses, now a busy park-and-ride destination.
Most of its original buildings survive intact, and despite serving a largely rural area for much of its length, the North Warwickshire Line is still double track.
Indeed, it has often been considered to be a‘heritage main line’and at last, a consortium of local councils and rail authorities are backing serious moves to promote it as such, under the banner of the Shakespeare Line.
The route, however, does much more than simply take people to the town of the Bard’s birthplace and the great riverside theatre built in his honour. It traverses the rolling pasturelands of the Forest of Arden, which was immortalised in many of his great plays, and serves the historic communities that grew up in its clearings, and which in themselves are richly deserving of a place on the wider tourist map. Vintage Trains is now taking a central role in promoting the Shakespeare Line, and in this issue we are proud to support the Tyseley-based operator with a reader’s discount for a special trip on April 5 to herald the new‘shakespeare Express’season. Full details are in Headline News, pages 6-7.
At the same time, our publisher Mortons Media Group is named as the media partner for the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway’s late May bank holiday 2020 Cotswold Festival of Steam, which this year will have a Mendip Hills flavour. This heritage line, of course, runs over part of the southern section of that line, opened in 1908, and also acts like a ribbon of pearls linking some of the Midlands’finest countryside treasures. Indeed, last year’s event accounted for the three busiest days of the railway’s entire season, and there is every indication that it will be more popular than ever, with a bus link laid on to Cheltenham’s main line station and also into the centre of Broadway. The Government talks a great deal about reversing the Beeching cuts, and would it not be absolutely magnificent if the line from Broadway through Honeybourne to Stratford-upon-avon could be relaid, linking directly to the Shakespeare Line and opening up an untapped wealth of modern-day opportunities for both tourism and local residents alike?