West Country holiday memories bring the sunshine to railwayana auction
BEFORE jet travel was commonplace and holidays in faraway and often obscure locations became the norm, longdistance travel on a steam train to the West Country was eagerly anticipated by many – especially if one of the family was a trainspotter.
The romance and joy for Londoners was enhanced by the names of many of the Western Region expresses, such as ‘The Merchant Venturer,'‘Torbay Express,'‘The Royal Duchy' and the iconic ‘Cornish Riviera Express,' or ‘The Cornishman' for those travelling from the Midlands.
Often, the final leg of the journey was a change of trains from a King or Castle at the head of at least a dozen carriages onto a single-line branch, with a tank engine pulling just three or four coaches. Somehow that added to the excitement, as though the majesty of an express locomotive being replaced by a seaside resort engine was more in keeping with the surroundings.
The memories of those days six or more decades ago will reverberate around the internet on July 24, when GW Railwayana holds a live online sale which has GWR and BR Western Region memorabilia from Bristol and many points south-west at its heart.
Although it is unlikely to attract the highest realisation, GWRA's Simon Turner is keenly anticipating putting under the hammer a station totem sign from the Cornish resort of St Ives that was sold by BR for 2s 6d in 1969 and which Simon estimates will sell for well into four figures. His enthusiasm is not only because a St Ives totem has never come to auction before, but also because this category is currently riding the crest of a railwayana wave.
St Ives station was opened by the GWR in June 1877 as the terminus of a branch line – the last to be built to broad gauge by the company – that ran for just over four miles from the main line station of St Ives Road. To coincide with the opening, it was renamed St Erth.
The following year the GWR leased the nearby 1774-built Tregenna Castle and converted it into a hotel, which it still is to this day and will host the G7 summit of world leaders starting on June 11. The GWR bought the hotel outright in 1895 and its name will be recognised by many steam-era trainspotters due to it being carried by Castle class 4-6-0 No. 5006.
A small engine shed was opened at St Ives in 1887 and the line was converted to standard gauge over a single weekend in May 1892. The shed was closed in September 1961 but the line itself defied closure attempts under the Beeching Report of 1963, although eight years later the original station was replaced by a smaller platform close by on the site of the former goods shed.
Today it retains its link to holiday traffic, with more than 750,000 passengers having used it annually in recent years.
Nameplate Taw Valley, from SR No. 34027, will also enhance the sale's West Country theme.
The Pacific, which was built at Brighton in April 1946 and saved for preservation after withdrawal from Salisbury (70E) in August 1964, was named after a river that rises on Dartmoor, crosses north Devon, and flows into Bideford Bay at Barnstaple.
Relics
Other West Country memorabilia in the auction includes four more Western Region totems comprising Dawlish, Bath Spa, Bridgwater and Nailsea & Backwell, a Weston Clevedon & Portishead Railway fully-titled posterboard, and a wood with cast-iron letters Quintrel Downs running-in board from a station near Newquay that was spelt with a single letter ‘l' by the GWR, although the general spelling is Quintrell.
For signalling enthusiasts there is a Junction Lock South Ground Frame sign from the Bristol Harbour Railway's Canons Marsh branch line and a Weston-super-Mare East Box nameboard with the ‘East' painted over, presumably carried out by BR in 1955 when the West signalbox closed.
GWRA's Mr Turner said: “West Country items have always been popular, probably due to the many holiday memories they bring, and the GWR and the Western Region obviously played a big part in that.”
He added that the St Ives totem was bought by a collector for 2s 6d in 1969, when the Western Region held a sale of a number of such signs at Camborne station.
➜ See next month’s issue for a review by Geoff Courtney of Transport Treasury Publishing’s latest release, Cornwall Transition From Steam, which contains 112 pages of 1950s/early 1960s images taken by renowned railway photographer RC ‘Dick’ Riley.