OBITUARY: RON COTTON, THE BR ENTHUSIAST WHO HELPED SAVE THE ‘S&C’

Ron Cotton, the man who BR appointed to oversee the closure of the Settle-Carlisle line in 1983, but who then played a fulcrum role in keeping the 72½-mile Pennine route open, has died at the age of 88.

The former London Midland Region Liverpool Divisional Passenger Manager, who was seconded to the seemingly thankless task of shutting one of Britain’s most scenic and bestloved post-1968 steam routes, was initially seen as something of a bogeyman by opponents of the closure, of whom the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle line were the chief protagonists.

But declaring that while the line remained open, he would do what he could to maximise revenue, Cotton, who was credited with thinking up BR’s ‘Awayday’ and ‘Merseyrail’ brands, set about increasing the paltry train service that then existed and came up with a salvo of promotional ideas including an ‘any station to any station’ day ticket for just £5.99.

There was already a deeprooted groundswell of support for retention of the ‘S&C’ before Cotton’s appointment – but he galvanised public interest in the line spectacularly, to the point where between 1983 and 1986, the number of passengers carried on the route burgeoned from 93,000 a year to 450,000. Far from carrying the ‘bogeyman’ tag, that alone will probably earn his place in history as something of a local folk hero.

Under his watch, and with local authority help, intermediate stations on the line which had closed in May 1970 were reopened and adopted by friends groups, freight traffic which BR had conspired to divert to other routes returned, and although the ‘S&C’s’ ultimate reprieve from closure came three years after his retirement in 1986, he had kept in touch with the politics of the anti-closure campaign from his home at Hoylake on the Wirral.

It wasn’t widely known that Ron Cotton had at least one foot in the railway enthusiast camp. He spent his two years of compulsory national service with the Royal Engineers at Longmoor Military Railway in Hampshire, and his BR managerial and marketing career involved him organising, among many other initiatives, the ‘Farewell to Steam in Scotland’ tour of March 1967. His marketing flair was demonstrated then when, despite filling the train, he continued to sell tickets, resulting ultimately in an 18-coach train, hauled by ‘A4’ No. 60009 Union of South Africa and ‘Black Five’ No. 44997 between Perth, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

He returned to the Settle & Carlisle line in 2009 to unveil at Garsdale station the famous bronze statue of ‘Ruswarp’, the border collie who, for almost three months, had kept guard over the dead body of his master, ‘Friends’ activist Graham Nuttall. He returned again in 2014, as a passenger on the BlackpoolCarlisle special organised by the ‘Friends’ to mark the 25th anniversary of its reprieve. With him on board was former Tory Transport Minister Michael Portillo, who had announced the reprieve in 1989.