LAST YEAR OF THE BIG FOUR

Snowbound Dent tackles the ‘Big Freeze’ of ’47

Winter. What does that mean to you? Other than the mental image of snowy scenes we love to cherish, for many of us in recent years it has probably meant three things: wet, miserable and mild. However, while some today may bemoan the relative rarity of a ‘real winter’ - despite places crunching to a halt when one arrives - the railwaymen of February 1947 would surely have exchanged places with us with relief. Indeed, that goes not only for those whose job it was to try to keep trains moving, but much of the population immediately after the war. That winter, Britain was sideswiped with weeks of freezing temperatures, and what really was the ‘wrong type of snow’; by February it had really set in. The country’s arteries were blocked. Shortages developed and life became even harder. Dent is 1,150ft above sea level, and on these pages you can see what it was like on the ‘backbone of England’. Yet other railways, and not only bleak lofty ones like the SettleCarlisle, were also smothered. Clearing those blocked lines seven decades ago meant using not only ploughs, but also shovels and lots of manpower - including from prisoners of war who had not yet been sent home. Despite its pale and heavy camouflage, the Dent of 1947 is recognisably the same place as it is now; perhaps the biggest absence, were you to stand in this spot today, would be the signal box. That disappeared in the 1980s. Yet for the person outside the Up side waiting shelter, the idea that the future might threaten the S&C with closure, or that the route would become a haunt of steam long after new technology replaced it, or even that this station would shut (in 1970) then reopen (in 1986) must surely be distant. While the Down line heading north towards Carlisle is pretty clear, the LMS will need to do much more work before it can stop any trains at the platform he’s standing on… Oh, and there’s no ‘A1’ either.