Life & times of the Horncastle Railway
50 years after The Railway Magazine’s hometown of Horncastle lost its railway, Pete Kelly previews a superb new exhibition celebrating the town’s railway history and branch from Woodhall Junction.
It is now 50 years since The Railway Magazine’s hometown of Horncastle lost its railway. Pete Kelly previews a superb new exhibition celebrating the town’s railway history and the branch line from Woodhall Junction.
SINCE moving to Mortons in November 2010, The Railway Magazine’s home has been the pleasant Lincolnshire market town of Horncastle, whose one and only railway was the 7½-mile branch to Kirkstead (later renamed Woodhall Junction) on the
Great Northern Railway’s Lincolnshire Loop line. It closed to passengers on September 13, 1954 and to goods traffic on April 5, 1971. To mark the 50th anniversary of the railway’s demise, the town’s History and Heritage Society organised a special exhibition, written and researched by Chris Bates with important contributions by Ian Marshman, but the springtime Covid-19 restrictions meant a virtual exhibition was posted online instead. Now the full indoor exhibition is set to open from July 29 until September 4, with free admission, at the Joseph Banks Centre in Horncastle (although it is still available online at https://horncastlejbc.info/railway).
Building the line
No stone is left unturned in telling the story of the line, including its construction and grand opening celebrations of 1855, the changes it brought to the town, and what life on the line and around the station itself were like.
In the early 1850s, Horncastle was thriving, with a population of about 5000, and boasting one of the biggest annual horse fairs in Europe. Yet, at a time when railways were spreading rapidly across the country – vastly reducing the cost of coal and other goods and opening up undreamed-of opportunities for travel – Horncastle still depended on its 1802-built canal for much of its trade, and the townspeople felt they were being left behind.
The Great Northern Railway’s Lincolnshire Loop line of 1848 (from Lincoln to Peterborough via Bardney, Boston and Spalding) came tantalisingly close, but as the GNR could not afford the cost of building a branch to Horncastle, the town decided to go it alone.
On April 27, 1853, a group of influential citizens met at the Bull Hotel to discuss a plan to finance the construction of a line to join the loop at Kirkstead, including a station in the then tiny village of Woodhall. The resulting Horncastle Railway Company duly raised the £48,000 capital required, with landowners helpfully selling the necessary land at agricultural prices. Despite stiff resistance from the Horncastle Canal Company, the Parliamentary Bill for the single-track line, which was operated by the Great Northern Railway on the basis of a 50/50 split in takings, received Royal Assent in 1854.
Railway contractor Thomas Brassey, a substantial shareholder in the company, took on the challenge of building the line, but the severe winter of 1854-5 prevented his 450 navvies from starting work until the March. To speed up the process, local people on poor relief or out of work were paid to dig gravel so it would be ready for the start of construction.
Brassey wasted no time in getting the tracks laid along a route that was generally straight and flat. Leaving Kirkstead Junction on a gentle curve, it headed northwards on a 1-in-600 gradient towards Woodhall and its small single-platform, and then across Thornton Moor, passing under a bridge that still stands on the Horncastle-Kirkstead road, and eventually turning northwards again to run alongside the canal into Horncastle.
All-clear just in time
So rapid was the progress that the opening celebrations in Horncastle were planned for August 11, 1855, but a last-minute hitch arose when a Board of Trade inspector noted rain damage to an embankment and refused permission for the services to begin.
Despite this setback, the celebrations went ahead, with parades, banquets and a spectacular firework display. Following a second inspection of the line a few days later, the all-clear was granted on August 17 – just in time for the horse fair!
The railway proved its worth from the start, bringing down the price of coal by three shillings per ton and forcing the canal company to cut its charges. During the first month of operation, the branch carried 3200 people, 2580 quarters of grain, 4156 sheep, 298 cattle, 48 horses, 35 pigs and 91 calves, and the shares quickly shot up in value. Any visitor to Horncastle today would be hard-pushed to realise that a railway station ever existed, for new houses and a large branch of a tyre-fitting company now stand on the extensive site it once occupied. The only clues left are a single gatepost and, hidden in undergrowth, the remnants of an old cattle dock platform. A large and imposing building encapsulated the station master’s house, booking office, waiting rooms and other offices, with entry to the station – with its single platform and runround loop – through a stone porch. The platform was extended in 1874 to accommodate longer trains, and Chris records that, in its final form, it also boasted a short bay platform and an overall roof. Next to the station stood the Great Northern Hotel, and a small branch of WH Smith was even set up. Factor in the extensive goods yards and private sidings serving local industries that clustered around the station, including Sutcliffe’s malt kiln and Harrison’s corn and grain merchants, and the image of a tiny, insignificant station quickly begins to fade. There were coal drops to transfer the fuel from railway wagons into delivery carts, a fiveton crane, cattle pens and a water tank. There was even a wagon turntable by the weigh office opposite the main platform, to turn wagons and send them across the road to Harrison’s and to goods sheds at right angles to the track. This was operated by a shunting horse stabled at the south end of the yard, where a signal box, loco shed and inspection and servicing pit were found. When services opened, passenger trains left Horncastle at 07.25, 09.40, 11.10, 12.35, 15.50, 17.20 and 18.40 on Mondays to Saturdays, with two departures each Sunday at 12.55 and 14.15. Corresponding arrivals were at 08.20, 10.30, 12.00, 13.25, 14.35, 16.55, 18.15, 19.35 and 21.45 on weekdays, with Sunday arrivals at 13.30 and 15.00.
At first the line was worked by locomotives and crews from Boston, with a single engine kept at Horncastle overnight, and goods trains coming in from Lincoln. The station had a staff of about 20, from a station master to porters and clerks, along with a single footplate crew. A plate-laying gang with responsibility for the section of track as far as White Hall Wood was also based in the town.
Peak years
For almost 70 years, until the Horncastle Railway was absorbed into the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923, it managed to pay its shareholders, many of them local people, a dividend every year. With cheap excursions to London and seaside destinations, the lucrative conveyance of agricultural produce and equipment, the coal traffic wrested from the canal company, and the annual surge in passengers and horse transport to and from the horse fair, it is not difficult to see why.
The branch was not quite so popular with the crews themselves, many of whom
“The railway proved its worth from the start, bringing down the price of coal by three shillings per ton.”
complained of working excessive hours. The GNR’s Locomotive Superintendent of the day blamed this on the many Lincolnshire branches, citing Horncastle as being the worst, for its operation included quite a protracted procedure at Kirkstead (later known as Woodhall Junction), where trains had to reverse out of the station and set back in order to gain access to the branch.
Ironically, other criticism was brought about by the success of the branch, which soon outgrew the original facilities at both Horncastle and Woodhall. The editor of Horncastle’s local newspaper went so far as suggesting the station was possibly “the worst in any town of its size”. Both stations received better waiting rooms between 1888 and 1910, and the line itself was resignalled.
The rapidly-changing world in the 20th century led to the slow decline and closure of many small branch lines long before the word ‘Beeching’ was even heard of. Agricultural depressions, more lorries on the road (especially after the First World War), the introduction of rival bus services and increased car ownership all played their part until, under British Railways, the plug was finally pulled on passenger services in 1954 and on ever-dwindling goods traffic 17 years later.
What might have been
The most intriguing part of the story is not about what the Horncastle Railway was, but what it might have been if the town had not missed connections to other nearby railway projects that either went ahead or were proposed but rejected.
One of the most intriguing, a full decade before the opening of the Horncastle to Kirkstead line, was an 1845 proposal for a Lincoln, Horncastle, Spilsby and Wainfleet Haven Railway which, with a capital of £500,000, would link Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and the West Riding with a new North Sea port at Wainfleet Haven.
Its promoters proposed 40 miles of new track starting near Lincoln and progressing to Horncastle, and thence to Spilsby via a
“The most intriguing part of the story is not about what the Horncastle Railway was, but what it might have been.”
succession of small villages. From Horncastle there would have been a railway to Bardney Ferry to join the Lincolnshire Loop line. Sadly the plan came to nothing, but the Great Northern Railway did come up with a plan of its own to build a branch from Tattershall to Horncastle which was rejected by Parliament in 1847. Another near miss came after a rethink of the Lincoln-Horncastle project in the shape of a new route from Stainton-by-Langworth on the Market Rasen line, and across the Wolds to Louth, with a branch to Horncastle. Unfortunately for Horncastle, Parliament approved only the Stainton to Wragby section. A line from Louth, through Doningtonon-Bain to Bardney (for Lincoln), opened in 1876 but again, there was no connection to Horncastle. With a growing demand for seaside travel by the workforces of large industrial towns in the Midlands, a plan to build a new line across the Wolds from Lincoln to Skegness was proposed in 1884. A loop would have linked it to Horncastle, and a branch to Spilsby would have connected with the East Lincolnshire line at Firsby via the line opened in 1868, but once again, Parliament declined approval. The final blow came with a scheme that Parliament did approve with the Lincoln, Horncastle, Spilsby and Skegness Railway Act of 1887. The plan envisaged a line from the Lincolnshire Loop at Stixwould and through a cutting near Thimbleby to a junction with the Horncastle branch at Thornton. The line would then have crossed the Wolds to connect with the existing Spilsby branch line, and continue via Great Steeping to improve the connection to Skegness by building an overpass at Firsby. This time it was the backers who could not come up with the goods, so Parliament agreed to the scheme’s abandonment in 1891.
In the end, a ‘New Line’ was laid through Coningsby, New Bolingbroke and Stickney to Bellwater Junction, where it joined the Boston to Skegness line. This avoided the considerable expense of crossing the Wolds that a route via Horncastle would have entailed, and in its heyday this ‘New Line’ generated lots of excursion trains during the holiday season. As Chris concluded in his presentation: “Horncastle remained the dead end of its own small branch line.” ■
“Horncastle remained the dead endofits own small branch line.”