The Weymouth to Easton, Portland Railway Line: Then and Now
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- A video I've put together showing some before and after photos of the Weymouth to Easton line opened by the Great Western Railway in 1865 and closed in 1965. All black and white photos are (C) Middleton Press and taken from their publication "Branch Lines Around Weymouth". Thanks to Middleton Press for their use. All colour photos are (C) Paul and Mike Matthews. The "then" colour photos are circa 1970. One deliberate mistake to spot!
I enjoyed this. I was trying to piece together where and how my grandad rode his bike when he was a signalman/booking boy/ lad telegraphist at Weymouth and Portland. 🙏🏻
Great vid. Love the way the "now" shots were so carefully lined up accurately with the originals - really helps to see the transformation over time as old fades out. Top effort!
Fascinating video, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was born in Weymouth and lived In Wyke Regis till I was 6 (1961) and the steam trains ran along the embankment, now known as the Rodwell Trail, at the end of our Doncaster Road garden. I loved the trains and used to wave as they passed, but for some reason they gave me horrible nightmares at the time! Really interesting to see the 'then and now' images along the route. Thank you for putting together such an interesting video.
I award this documentary the DIAMOND KEYBOARD AWARD and the Golden Rose of England!
Brilliant compilation - I can just about remember going on one of the last passenger trains to Easton. I've walked the trackbed many times since (or, as much as one can) and your pics really bring it to life. It should never have been closed, just mothballed, ready for the demand for legacy lines!
How clever to put that song to these nostalgic pics. Thankyou.
Thank you for that, nice to receive a positive reply other than the wingers not knowing how to turn the volume down :)
I remember trains with 4 wheel wagons, each with two large blocks of Portland Stone.
I also remember Portland Navy Days, with 4-wheel tank engines giving rides in a wagon inside the dockyard.
Congrats putting together a first class video of this superb railway now lost for ever. I was born in Rodwell and worked on the railways. I had the privilige of working over this railway on numerous occasions firing the steam engines that ran over it. I was the fireman on the last passenger train to run over this line in 1965 just as they closed the line so this video is very nostalgic for me.
It maybe a nice walk now but nothing can replace travelling along it behind a steam loco, happy days!
Brilliant choice of music. I can remember those stations. Had Beeching not cut all that back we could now have a really useful transport system connecting Weymouth to Portland with useful stops along the way, and take so many cars off our roads. Oh, well….
An excellent video (although I personally preferred it with the sound muted!). I was born in Howard Close and spent my first years living in a house whose back garden abutted on to the railway embankment not far from Sandsfoot. I used to scramble up through the nettles and stand on top of the embankment looking across the railway track at the warships in Portland Harbour. Well done for posting this clever combination of evocative images.
I can just about remember watching trains on this line in the 1950's.
As a kid I holidayed in Weymouth and remember the Quay railway well and also pedaloing on Radipole lake under the disused railway bridge
In a way I understand how these posters feel about lost lines. I live in Port Stephens, just 40-odd minutes drive north of Newcastle(Australia) and we saw first-hand how our state government maliciously shut down a perfectly good rail corridor from Wickham, through Civic, to Newcastle stations, then, recently as a few months ago, ripped up the rails, all to please their developer mates!
From a local who has only ever known the rodwell trail as it is now, thanks for creating this
Beautiful transitions, lovely video, great effort must have taken ages, great choice of music to. Made me all emotional thank you so much for sharing.
as a kid who grew up along this line (wyke, east wear, tillycoombe and the grove) in the 80's its so good to see what it was. by my time it was nothing more than a pathway or playground. i remember walking the incline (if you've ever walked it you could not forget it), catching toads and lizards at the bit near the prison, swinging off mad rope swings strung over the cuttings in wyke (was then the rodwell trail) going down the cliff path to the old firing range looking for casings and grenade pins. Im not particularity old but this has me reminiscing like crazy. a youth spent playing outdoors. not like today.
A lovely piece of work!
Exemplifying the fact that 'Good goes to bad' (that's the Second Law of Thermodynamics).
So, work for good.
The Common Good!
Le bien Commune!
A lovely piece. Well done and thank you.
I have been to Portland over forty times ,and had no idea it had its own railway ,which is obvious in a way considering the size of the harbour and all the quarries ! ,thanks for sharing a delightful film .
Well done, first one to spot that deliberate mistake! After I'd put the vid together I realised the error.
Wow, that was wonderful thank you.👍🏴
Wonderful work you did with the historical photos mixing with and the present day ones. What marvellous trip back in time. Ive neve r been to Weymouth but it makes me wonder why exactly how was life these days. I could even imagine those people's minds then. A time tunnel journey. Lovely soundtrack by Elton John.
Congratulations ipcress1066.
Sérgio (Brazil)
What a beautifully made video!! Very well done
really enjoyed watching, thank you. As ever anything to do with Portland makes me feel very emotional.
Never been there but an excellent insight. A quality piece of editing. Thanks.
As a boy I used to live in a house, now demolished, above East Weares. The goods service was still running then and we would go down the cliff path, past the firing range sentry box, to the tracks and put pennies on the line. You could find lumps of coal, too, which would go in the coal bunker once we got home.
Thank you for reminding me how it once looked.
Hi Im not really in to trains, more then & now photos. Loved the work in matching up/editing.
Didn't mind the music either. Thumbs up from me..
HI nice wee video brings back a lot of good memories when I was a kid. We used to wave to train driver from the back garden on Doncaster road.I still like to walk the trail when I visit family there. from GREENOCK SCOTLAND.
wicked video, well put together brought a little lump to my throat, well done, must of took a lot of work, and photos.
I love walking down the Rodwell trail I live there xx nice to see the history of weymouth x
What a brilliant effort you have put in to this video. Really impressed. Thank you for sharing
Great video - with good music choice - impressive getting the right camera angles
Those stations at Rodwell looked so nice. Hard to imagine now.
What a lovely clip on how things were so sad how some things have changed for the better ???
I grew up in Easton in the 60’s, used to play all over ‘the banks’ and wave as the trains came by.
I can still remember the last train to leave Easton station in ( approx) 66 ish?
Very nicely put together video. Thankyou.
My grandfather worked as a guard on this railway in the 1940,s until 1950,s. (passed away in 1960,s) He was known as Jack, real name John Townsend and lived in Upwey.
Very enjoyable - thankyou for posting this...
well put together,just been watching Julia Bradbury's railway walks about it
Lived by the Railway Sheds at Weymouth used to turn the old Steam Trains round on the turntable with old friends Good memories 👍
ipcress1066 A heartfelt thank you for this great download. I remember this line very well from the 50's and 60's. An excellent choice of song too[very appropriate]. Just one more example of how that bxxxxxd Beeching decimated our railway network.Thanks to people like you these lines are not forgotten. Well done.
It wasn't Dr. Richard Beeching who was responsible for withdrawing passenger trains from the Weymouth to Easton branch. This happened in 1952 - nine years before the portly Physicist from the Isle of Sheppey became Chairman of the British Railways' Board of Directors. There was a fast and frequent competing road 'bus service linking Weymouth to Portland which local people, voting with their purses and wallets, used in preference to the trains. Normal trade competition, just as happens between nearby branches of Waitrose and Tesco.
@@KempSimonThanks for putting me right on that one. But Beeching did a iot of damage to the rail network. E.G The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway.
In April 1964 there were four separate railway transport corridors linking the Bristol/Bath conurbation with the holiday resorts of the Dorset Coast. Two of these lines are still open today. It's possible to travel direct from Bristol and Bath to Weymouth via Westbury and Yeovil using a line which, for most of its length, ran parallel to the late, lamented Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway but had easier gradients and linked more significant centres of population. A Labour Government came to power in October 1964 having explicitly promised that, if elected, it would halt all major railway closures. The axe fell on the S&DJR main line and branch in March, 1966.
@@KempSimon Yes typical .Full of promises to catch votes. Once elected they conveniently forget those promises and go ahead with closures anyway. So many lines were victims of broken promises
They tore up some beautiful railway lines so people could have PATHS to walk their dogs.
Really interesting video and very well done, thanks
@m4ttys I did finally manage to find a photo but that was after I'd uploaded the vid. Thanks for the comment.
I can remember these trains 😥
Excellent video!!
Fascinating and poignantly beautiful. Like many others on the system, it's a crime that this line was shut down!
The Weymouth to Portland branch line lost its passenger train service in 1952 because local people voted with their wallets and purses. There was a competing road 'bus service which people used in preference to the trains. It's the basic economic law of supply and demand in action. Normal trade competition, just like that between two rival supermarket chains. We've only got a limited amount of money so we spend it where we believe it gives us the best value. It's not criminality, it's common sense.
Good luck to the locals saving their pennies if that's the case! I say it's a crime@@KempSimon because I feel railway lines ought to be protected and preserved wherever possible, particularly in areas of unique natural beauty which are being destroyed by pollution and traffic congestion. Portland is on a narrow peninsula linked to Weymouth by a causeway, so a rail link is doubly important - for freight as well as passengers. We can all see the benefits of hindsight. But the environmental, economic and social damage caused by removing vital railway connections like this is in a sense a crime against humanity. There are dozens of other similar examples all round the country, especially near the seaside, e.g. Hayling Island and many others in Scotland and Wales. That's why I say it's criminal.
thanks for the video
Great video ! 👍
Hi Marc, wow, where to I start? A lot of trial and error I'm afraid. What I tend to do is take plenty of photos that look about the right spot then once I have them on the computer compare and crop them until they just about match (as you can tell some are not a very good match as I couldn't get close to where the original was taken. I then use Magix Movie Edit Pro to merge them into a video. The S&D, nice, I've taken a few shots around Broadstone but that's as far as I've got so far.
A good presentation, doesn't actually need music. After this, have a look at the 'National Library of Scotland' side-by-side maps.
My PC has a volume control. Seemed to have been muted anyway!
excellent video..
Good. Video
Great video. How do you go about finding out the exact position of where the original black and white photograph was taken, photographing the same view now in colour, and perfectly cross-fading from one to the other, to create a "then and now" impression? Is it a specific computer program or something? Cos I've tried doing a similar idea with the S&D line around Corfe Mullen, where we live, but I can't seem to figure out how to achieve "then and now". I always seem to get the wrong angles etc.
I find the "Then and now" pictures moving too. Can you make one of the M&GN railway? Many locations and even the odd station still standing!
I would love to Les if I had the time and the resources, it just so happens I know Weymouth quite well and visit it a few times a year
brilliant !!!!
Walked the Redmell Trail 03/01/2017.
The climb from the river up to Rodwell summit must have been quit a slog. What is the gradient? A Weymouth driver, who had fired on the line, said that they did not carry a timetable when working to/from Easton, but a calendar, !
A train just went by outside my window as this video ended.
Railway Movies.
The Titfield Thunderbolt 1952.
The Great Train Robbery 1963.
The Railway Children 1970 & 2000.
Thomas and the Magic Railroad 2000.
NICE EDITING , BUT THE BRIDGE IN THE THIRD COMPARE IS IN A DIFFERENT ROAD , I LIVED IN WEYMOUTH !
Yes I know, I realised it after I'd finished it but left it in there so the pedants had something to point out ;)
Always very depressing seeing things like this. I'm in West Sussex and we're just the same. Long gone but "desperately needed now" lines.
I think it's often forgotten how much the south suffered under the closures and how it changed the place forever.
I'm near Gatwick and local lines now would be really busy. Instead, all we have is loads of traffic and unmaintained roads that are listed as A roads but are more like country lanes.
They are NOT ‘Desperately needed now’. Thats the problem with misguided railway nutters. You fail COMPLETELY to understand that, by the mid 50’s, rail was facing REAL competition from road transport. Which hadn’t been invented when the railways were first built. Their only ‘competition’ was horse and carts that travelled over muddy tracks.
Hi, I go climbing here regularly but don't recognise the places at 3:54 and 4:04. Is it that they demolished the cliff on the left of the bridge, or did they fill the cutting in to create the sloping foot path (at 4:00) down from the road at the top (at 4:10). Thanks for posting this interesting video...
Hi Derek, yes I think you're right, that section was filled in so the road at 4.10 could be built.
lovely :)
Very nice video, but I loved the music the most. Who is the artist of that song?
+ScienceisTruth Elton John, 'This Train Don't Stop There Anymore', 2001.
Elton John
Bro is that you in some of the photos ?
That's you that is...
It would be good if you could do that with other lines acorss the country
Beeching has much to answer for.
😓😢