How charming, genteel and well spoken are all these people. Takes me back to my youth and my own parents, honest good working class people. Where has the world gone ? So sad.
Great memories, my parents and I travelled this line after the war. I was10 when the war ended, we went from Newcastle to Tarset from there it was about a mile walk to our destination Greenhalgh where we would have a week long holiday staying with our neighbours parents. Sometimes we would go to Bellingham instead of Tarset as a bus went near the village once a week on a Thursday. It only went to the lane end as it was called as it was a steep hill from there to the village less than quarter of a mile but in those days it probably would struggle to get back up the hill. Once we took the bus from Newcastle it was full and there was a steep hill which the bus could not climb so the men had to get out and walk up the hill, I can still hear the bus labouring up the hill in crawler gear.no body complained it was a way of life.
When I watch something like this my first thoughts are how soft we have become, Britain has changed so much since those days and certainly not for the better,a lovely reminder of how we used to be,thankyou for that lovely look back in time
Yes, maybe soft in some ways, harder in others.Can you imagine the railway bosses being happy with helping the country folk now if they found out staff were carrying butter or whatever FOC. Business doesn't see the bigger (and humane) picture. It's all forms and tick boxes these days especially in education which was my work background.
Ironically its the people who pine for the olden days that oppose greatness. The reason we were great was we were international leaders, we built forwards and embraced new developments, we were the first to build railways, first to heavily industrialise and yet now a person can't even build a house to live in without a 5 year study and everyone within a 20 mile radius giving them permission to build on their own land. I mean just look at the decades wasted arguing about a single job speed line which has wasted over £32bn just on complaining (seriously) The younger generation just wants to get on with life but the older ones seem intent on holding the country back then acting bewildered when the economy stumbles.
6.29 on the video i noticed my dad standing on the platform just behind a couple of people new it was him by his cap this picture must have been taken early sixties .he retired late sixtys with ill health passed away 1971 it was very special seeing this video.
living in us the city of St louis MO and into ILL is the metro link like a subway but above ground wont use it not safe shooting muggings ect aint worth it to me
Wonderful programme that provides a great reference point to the people that kept those trains running and provided a service that communities relied on ❤️
Train line, life line, time line, end of line. A nice reminiscence by all of a calmer period, without too much intrusion of our complexer world of today.
Sadly, not everything can be subsidised. The railways were a complete money pit for the govt after WW2 and roads started to eat into the railways freight business. I agree, it does seem sad to lose what we had, but sometimes its just the way it is.
People wanted change themselves. Life was hard in those communities, and as people became able to afford modern comforts and conveniences, they wanted them. Car use shot up in the fifties and sixties because people were better off and wanted more comfortable lives. You can't blame them.
@@johncourtneidge ...and the fact that corrupt Minister of Transport Ernest Marples wanted the railways run down so he could make himself money by building Motorways. So he brought Dr Beeching in and told him to run things down.
@@spanishpeaches2930 The Roads Were Not I Take It. The Transport Minister for the First Half of The 1960s was Chairman of The Bigest Construction Company in The UK. Guess who he Awarded All Motorway and Road Development Contracts to. Mr Ernest Marples Was in 1973/74 investigated for Thirty Years Worth of Tax Evasion,did a Runner Overnight,From London to Luxembourg,then Surfaced in France Where He Was Found to Have a Chateux. No Doubt Also Tax Payer Funded. This is the Guy Who Appointed Beeching, Who Gets The Blame. On One Occasion In Scotland. The Local Police Found The Civil Servants Sent To Investigate Closure of The Peebles Line,'Jugging It Up' in one of The Local Hotels with The BR lot sent to Close The Railway. Said Civil Servants Not Having Turned Up at a Local Resident Protest Against Closure. Corrupt Politicians Are Not Simply A Modern Phenomena.
This was a great insight into the line and an invaluable piece of history. The station at Saughtree features a great deal and I have just been to stay there as the station has been preserved and offers superb B & B accommodation. The pine trees you see in the pictures of Saughtree were planted in 1951 according to records. The current owner has re-instated part of the track and a working diesel shunts wagons and a Brake van on a short length of track - well worth a visit. Strangely, on the way back from Keilder to Saughtree by road, I spied a bridge and climbed up to photograph a tree through the arch - only to find this is the same picture on the closing credits, the bridge is crumbling a little now but the tree is still the same shape, just a lot bigger! It's a wild and beautiful place.
I am so glad to see this on TH-cam. I have a rather poor quality VHS copy made from the initial broadcast. So it's great to see this excellent documentary, about one of the most fascinating railway lines in that region of the UK, preserved on line. Thank you!
Haunting. A reminder of times when community was real, and not just a PR buzzword, when people were real, too. A reminder of just how far we have fallen in the space of 60-odd years.
@@melanierhianna Interesting you should bring that up, because it has useful illustrative purposes. "Society" nowadays has become fragmented into multiple isms, everyone defined by their own group, or subgroup label. And has that made us happier or more contented? Not if the suicide and mental health statistics are anything to go by. For ten years I worked in a predominantly LBG profession. We just got on, and it was great fun, but that was before all the labelling started. Since then, we seem to have gone backwards. Back in the first half of the 20th century, was being a woman really such a disadvantage? Endless drudgery, childbirth, hard work and routine, weighed against the male's lot of 12- hour shifts in factories or down the pits. That's if they weren't being packed off to Belgium to charge headlong into German bullets. Honours even, I'd say. There was no privilege in our society, not if one was working class, anyway. And that's why these folk had to stick together. Because they mutually supported each other, and made life just that bit more tolerable. And that is why our society today is falling apart at the seams- because everyone seems to belong to their own inwards looking sub-group, and the rest can go to hell. We may have all the comforts, and the labels, but we are not a happy people.
The loss of a railway *service* when train crews collected prescriptions, newspapers and groceries for the isolated communities along the line, replaced by a railway *business* keeping a close eye on "the bottom line" is mourned, but in reality, these non profit-making branches were very vulnerable. BR HAD to stem the losses, but the way it was done was brutal. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, some of these lines (I'm thinking particularly of the Waverley Route) could have, should have been saved and would most likely be well-used in these traffic-choked days.
Too many lines were butchered and killed off without a seriously good reason. Beeching was a scapegoat & a puppet, put in place by that moron Marples, the minister of transport,who should never of had that job as he was co owner of one of the biggest road construction companies in Britain and was intent on destroying the railway network in order to force people onto the roads, so (a) falsely generating a need to build more roads (so generating more contracts for his company, and more money for his pocket, and (b) generating more money for government coffers (in road tax (of which very little actually goes towards road maintainence) and fuel tax (plus tax on everything else associated - batteries, tyres etc). And further, the sacking of so many (1000's) of railway staff from the closure of goods depots, passenger stations, signalmen, track and infrastructure, and other maintainence workers, office staff of all grades, etc., May have cut the railway wages bill, but that then put 1000's of people on the DOLE, so creating a huge drain on the country's finances which would have virtually negated any savings made overall by closing any railway which was just, or not quite, breaking even.. Marples made sure the spotlight was on Beeching and not himself,while he made life an uncertain misery (with a cut in income and an uncertain future) for a huge part of the British population, while he himself made a huge sum of money out of it all (on the sly/behind the scenes, until he got found out for swindling his tax returns big time fiddling the books. Sadly, he got wind of his intended prosecution (for tax fraud), and fled Britain to the Mediterranean with his ill gotten gains.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 It wouldn't require any additional money from the taxpayer, to let the land lie fallow. It would, however, save a fortune in re-purchase costs should the line be restored later.
@@bigalb1913 mothballing a line costs money. You have to maintain it and all the structures you are responsible for, such as the bridges carrying the railway (bridges over the railway, other than footbridges, are more often than not are for the local highways department to maintain). For example, the mothballed March to Wisbech line, which there are plans to reinstate, is unusable because of the growth of buddleia and birch trees; although to put that line back in to service they'll need to reinstate all the level, crossings and build a bridge for the A47.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Minimal maintenance, surely, for structures not in service - compared to the cost of re-purchase of land and property. Just look at the massive costs of HS2, much of which is down to inflated land and property prices.
@@bigalb1913 so you've gone from no cost to the taxpayer to some cost. Yes, it is lower than the cost if buying land, but it us still a drain on the finances. BR would be spending money in your scheme on route miles that are not earning a penny. But which route miles would be worth the investment? And over what period? It is 60 years, thereabouts, since the Beeching reports and we've had 3 financial crises and half a dozen recessions since they came out.
The comments the gentleman made at the end of the film, reflect what is sadly missing in our society today. People caring and looking after each other. For all the advances in technology etc I fear we have regressed as human beings.
I suspect we will come full circle. Only the well off will be able afford electric cars. The freedom of the road will be denied to most. Oh how we will regret the missing railway lines 😢.
@@melanierhianna I think you make a very good point there. A lot of people back then lived under a huge weight of societal expectations and pressures, and there were a lot of very miserable people who couldn't live the way they wanted. While it's nice to be nostalgic about this stuff, lines like this have disappeared because society has changed, and because people legitimately wanted better lives, that they fought to get.
@@leeosborne3793 I lived through it as a kid and I was not miserable,I did'nt notice any miserable adults around me either,quite the opposite in fact. Most had been through a war and survived.
I was thinking of the higher, isolated parts of the route - around Riccarton, where "severe" could describe winter conditions. Maybe you didn't watch the later parts of the video? I'll bet the pay they got was lousy.
These have a charm all their own. I watched one, perhaps from the same stable, about the old lady who had lived all her life in the familly farm. I will put a link to this charming into my (G)Olden Times playlist so maybe others will come across it. I'll subscribe now since I like this kind of thing. Valuable social history that could otherwise be lost.
Once the Waverley line is restored throughout maybe the Border Counties should be next. The roads in the area are totally unsuitable for the increasing number of heavy logging lorries.
It looks likely to happen, given that there are only 2 lines into Scotland and can be done for around £1 billion - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borders_Railway. You could not sort the roads for that amount of money.
Superb film , thankyou for your efforts. That Britain is now lost to us . I am 73 and watched it happen, but didn't realise what we were losing. The railways are almost an analogy for what went wrong with our country. Socialism almost worked, didn't it. Until Blair screwed it.
@@philiprufus4427 FormerGlen Ogle line to Killin is another cracking ramble and must have been great on the steam train. Some of these old lines were not Beeching cuts apparently. Some were just private and non-viable sadly. Not enough freight and tourists didn’t come.
Moved many a load of timber out of riccarton down to workington and beyond . The house above the old station at riccarton supposed to be haunted so im lead to believe .
....delightful film; the line closed 7 years before the Beeching axe fell! 2,900 miles closed pre - Beeching, 2,300 closed after Beeching. Puts things into context.
You're underestimating the Beeching impact, there; the mileage lost under Beeching was much higher than that, closer to 5,000, and a lot of it was secondary main (and in the case of the Great Central, primary main that was being run down due to turf wars inside of British Rail) whereas the mileage lot prior to Beeching was almost entirely remote rural branches.
Absolutely. When the WR took over management of the former SR West of England lines they became subject to the turf wars you describe, with devastating consequences for many communities. There's a parallel here with this railway and that to Halwill Junction and beyond.
4000 miles in 1952-1962 before Beaching incuding quite extensive networks in East Anglia in 1959, carrying only a handful of passengers per train and some lines of significance in South England and in 1962 the notorious Okenhampton- Halwill 24 miles 3 daily trains, 2 passengers a week. In Jan 1963 10,000 main line steam engines were in service and in many ways modernisation had failed. The GWR warship and western hydraulics had taken out the most primitive main line steam Castles and Kings, but were thenGWR warships were essentially Nazi fast attack boats, jumbos with only 3 year life at top 80-100mph performance. The nationalised railway system was still run like 4 independent company's with outright warfare between GWR warships and Southern Bulleid.Pacific's (*still being rebuilt as effectively new BR express steam in 1962; and the GE and NE region were still rebuilding the entire old.A1A3 flying Scotsman class in 1961/2 and at the same time reconstruction of 159 class 5 BR 4 6 O finally made them work as express engines by fitting.,.double chimneys and firing them with the.volume of.a GWR King, that meant they had the power of an express engine but much higher coal and carbon production. In 1963 Breeching report was.accepted because contuation of steam in South England and London was no longer possible to staff and.the pollution and social problems were becoming impossible. The cost of fully modernising the system was by the impossible, and.Breeching offered a necessary justification for completing.diesalistion in five years at the cost.of hatcheting out a third of the passenger services and some significant secondary main lines. It was the same radical hatchet job as doe by.Healey on defence and RN.and inevitably then lines selected for closure were often the wrong runs and it.destroyed the coherence of the rail.system. because as in the US the duplicated main lines meant.one should have been used for passengers and another for freight.
My own view is that in 1963 the three most ridiculous, uneconomic and almost impossible to work lines in the UK were the Isle of Skye, Somerset and Dorset and Central Wales line which was never actually closed, but was actually intended to be the first major post Beeching Government by the MacMillan and follow on Alex Douglas Home governments in 1963 but fact it ran thru 10 marginal electorates meant this line, increasingly poorly patronised and transversing many other lines catchment never closed. In 1966/ 67 the operating prosperity of the 6 regions of the six regions of BR was basically determined by which region was landed with former Cambrian rail system and the Central Wales line both of which ran from the ECML at Shrewsbury - when this part of the Welsh system transferred from the Western Region,.the WR made operating profits and the London Midland Region went into the red by adding the.Welsh system despite the.final completion of the.London Manchester ECML electrification in 1966 3-4 years late.The regionaln
@@frederickmiles327 Except that if we want a proper, connected railway system which includes rural areas, we can't expect all sectors to be making a profit. Unfortunately the concept of social cost wasn't a part of Beeching's briefing. I don't recall any real debates about subsidising roads, particularly in rural areas, only about the costs of railways. In hindsight, I put that down to vested interests eg. Mr Marples. Rail planners would now give their eye teeth for the extra capacity that Beeching took away. With soaring pollution, road congestion and constant delays and cancellations on the railways, restoring lost tracks is really a 'no-brainer'.
Plashetts station under water, not kielder, Kielder viaduct water a few feet up the arches, This was preserved because of the unusual skewed Arches of the viaduct, as far as I know all the other buildings were pulled down, that were under water
Of course there are now studies being made about the possibility of extending the reborn Waverley through Riccarton and on to Carlisle. Sadly the borders county will never be reborn as some of it is under Kielder Water.
So what? If the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales, a narrow-gauge line, can build a new section, including a tunnel, to bypass a reservoir, anyone else can do it. And look at how the re-opening of the Waverley line, from Edinburgh to Galashiels has been so successful. All that’s lacking is imagination.
@@petermolloy6142 A Political Stunt by the SNP ,truth is,the line should never have been closed in the first place. I was a teenager in that era,another political stunt,this time by Labour. Towns the size of Peebles,Hawick,Gala,without a railway ? What a MORONIC Concept.
The poem at the start is Bellingham Show by Billy Bell (it continues on TH-cam with Johnny Handle at th-cam.com/video/3sHJjDTpFXg/w-d-xo.html . Or you can read it on Kindle or in print “Billy Bell, Redesdale Roadman Border Bard”. Coincidentally Billy Bell was born at Riccarton although his parents lived at Byrness. His mother’s family came from Newcastleton - which is where the presenter at the start, Eric Robson, is from
I'm not one for so called modern day "progress". Sadness is the word I am thinking of after watching this. Another reason why I think I was born in the wrong era. I just don't fit in.....and I'm 68 now. This world now and especially England is horrible. It's not even our own if you think too deeply about it? No, wrong date of birth I have. My mind's back in far off days way before I was born. I just don't fit in and never have.
Know how you feel,althouh I did enjoy the seventies and eighties even the nineties. Hated the way they were doing away with railways and trams when I was a kiid though. I lived in Glasgow and Broughty Ferry before moving to Bishopbriggs. Everything tram and many railways were gone by 1967/68.
![The Railway to Riccarton [ZTR 126] - Side One](/img/n.gif)
How charming, genteel and well spoken are all these people. Takes me back to my youth and my own parents, honest good working class people. Where has the world gone ? So sad.
Great memories, my parents and I travelled this line after the war. I was10 when the war ended, we went from Newcastle to Tarset from there it was about a mile walk to our destination Greenhalgh where we would have a week long holiday staying with our neighbours parents. Sometimes we would go to Bellingham instead of Tarset as a bus went near the village once a week on a Thursday. It only went to the lane end as it was called as it was a steep hill from there to the village less than quarter of a mile but in those days it probably would struggle to get back up the hill. Once we took the bus from Newcastle it was full and there was a steep hill which the bus could not climb so the men had to get out and walk up the hill, I can still hear the bus labouring up the hill in crawler gear.no body complained it was a way of life.
When I watch something like this my first thoughts are how soft we have become, Britain has changed so much since those days and certainly not for the better,a lovely reminder of how we used to be,thankyou for that lovely look back in time
Yes, maybe soft in some ways, harder in others.Can you imagine the railway bosses being happy with helping the country folk now if they found out staff were carrying butter or whatever FOC. Business doesn't see the bigger (and humane) picture. It's all forms and tick boxes these days especially in education which was my work background.
Ok boomer.
@@TheMusicalElitist one day you will be being called the equivalent of so called 'boomer' too mate.
Ironically its the people who pine for the olden days that oppose greatness.
The reason we were great was we were international leaders, we built forwards and embraced new developments, we were the first to build railways, first to heavily industrialise and yet now a person can't even build a house to live in without a 5 year study and everyone within a 20 mile radius giving them permission to build on their own land.
I mean just look at the decades wasted arguing about a single job speed line which has wasted over £32bn just on complaining (seriously)
The younger generation just wants to get on with life but the older ones seem intent on holding the country back then acting bewildered when the economy stumbles.
@@haroldofcardboard YES ! AND it will probably begin with A to.
Excellent. Nice to hear ‘railway stations’ referred to rather than the modern US influenced ‘train stations’
Yeah
@@Crosby2016 I think a lot of Americans refer to them as depots, the train depot or railroad depot, or just the depot.
I've always thought the term 'train station' rather childish...
Great point. In Australia so many call them 'train stations'. Ugh!!
An absolutely fascinating piece of history. Thank you.
6.29 on the video i noticed my dad standing on the platform just behind a couple of people new it was him by his cap this picture must have been taken early sixties .he retired late sixtys with ill health passed away 1971 it was very special seeing this video.
This film beautifully represents what railways meant to Britain in the first half of the 20th century. A poignant reminder of a time now lost.
living in us the city of St louis MO and into ILL is the metro link like a subway but above ground wont use it not safe shooting muggings ect aint worth it to me
Yeah, almost like time has moved on.
My granddad's favourite line as a driver.
Brilliant video, I love to see the old railways and mourn their passing.
I loved the old railway's, and I'd love to see them and not have to Mourn their passing.
Its frightening to thing that this program is closer to the line closure than we are to it here in 2021.
Great to see this film preserved, from a time when people could still remember the old line first-hand and how the community functioned.
Absolutely, I'm glad someone had the foresight to record those memories.
I agree entirely!
Wonderful programme that provides a great reference point to the people that kept those trains running and provided a service that communities relied on ❤️
These films are such gems they really are thank you👍🏴
Train line, life line, time line, end of line.
A nice reminiscence by all of a calmer period, without too much intrusion of our complexer world of today.
Remarkable film, some interesting characters and a timeless window into life in the 50's. Why did we fail to preserve this community?
Sadly, not everything can be subsidised. The railways were a complete money pit for the govt after WW2 and roads started to eat into the railways freight business. I agree, it does seem sad to lose what we had, but sometimes its just the way it is.
People wanted change themselves. Life was hard in those communities, and as people became able to afford modern comforts and conveniences, they wanted them. Car use shot up in the fifties and sixties because people were better off and wanted more comfortable lives. You can't blame them.
Money.
@@johncourtneidge ...and the fact that corrupt Minister of Transport Ernest Marples wanted the railways run down so he could make himself money by building Motorways. So he brought Dr Beeching in and told him to run things down.
@@spanishpeaches2930 The Roads Were Not I Take It.
The Transport Minister for the First Half of The 1960s was Chairman of The Bigest Construction Company in The UK.
Guess who he Awarded All Motorway and Road Development Contracts to.
Mr Ernest Marples Was in 1973/74 investigated for Thirty Years Worth of Tax Evasion,did a Runner Overnight,From London to Luxembourg,then Surfaced in France Where He Was Found to Have a Chateux. No Doubt Also Tax Payer Funded.
This is the Guy Who Appointed Beeching, Who Gets The Blame.
On One Occasion In Scotland. The Local Police Found The Civil Servants Sent To Investigate Closure of The Peebles Line,'Jugging It Up' in one of The Local Hotels with The BR lot sent to Close The Railway. Said Civil Servants Not Having Turned Up at a Local Resident Protest Against Closure.
Corrupt Politicians Are Not Simply A Modern Phenomena.
What a lovely film,with wonderful memories, thank you
Nice to be reminded of this old documentary again this morning. Superb production.
This was a great insight into the line and an invaluable piece of history. The station at Saughtree features a great deal and I have just been to stay there as the station has been preserved and offers superb B & B accommodation. The pine trees you see in the pictures of Saughtree were planted in 1951 according to records. The current owner has re-instated part of the track and a working diesel shunts wagons and a Brake van on a short length of track - well worth a visit. Strangely, on the way back from Keilder to Saughtree by road, I spied a bridge and climbed up to photograph a tree through the arch - only to find this is the same picture on the closing credits, the bridge is crumbling a little now but the tree is still the same shape, just a lot bigger! It's a wild and beautiful place.
My uncle was a doctor at Bellingham 1938-46. He spoke of putting medicines on the trains for the settlements and stations further up the valley.
Thanks goodness for those who went to the expense to record these lines before so much was lost.
Back in the day when the BBC made programmes of interest...
God how the BBC has fallen ,you are so so right
Unfortunately we are the minority like the railway line.
@@Jules-zo3ds Thought the BBC favoured the minorities.? 😗 Oh not if you're indigenous.
100%, the great documentaries in the late 70's and 80's, like a year with fred dibnah, good drama's, brilliant sit coms..................all gone.
Still do, but elderly racists don’t acknowledge either of those facts.
absolutely gorgeous. thank you.
Marvelous film! I wish there were more like this.
I am so glad to see this on TH-cam. I have a rather poor quality VHS copy made from the initial broadcast. So it's great to see this excellent documentary, about one of the most fascinating railway lines in that region of the UK, preserved on line. Thank you!
Fascinating story, many thanks for sharing.
Lovely Northumbrian accent spoken with the uvular R, in other words, the Northumbrian Burr. Please do not let is die out.
Haunting. A reminder of times when community was real, and not just a PR buzzword, when people were real, too.
A reminder of just how far we have fallen in the space of 60-odd years.
Every era has good things and bad things. If you were female or LGBT this era as pretty shitty.
@@melanierhianna Interesting you should bring that up, because it has useful illustrative purposes. "Society" nowadays has become fragmented into multiple isms, everyone defined by their own group, or subgroup label. And has that made us happier or more contented? Not if the suicide and mental health statistics are anything to go by. For ten years I worked in a predominantly LBG profession. We just got on, and it was great fun, but that was before all the labelling started. Since then, we seem to have gone backwards.
Back in the first half of the 20th century, was being a woman really such a disadvantage? Endless drudgery, childbirth, hard work and routine, weighed against the male's lot of 12- hour shifts in factories or down the pits. That's if they weren't being packed off to Belgium to charge headlong into German bullets. Honours even, I'd say. There was no privilege in our society, not if one was working class, anyway.
And that's why these folk had to stick together. Because they mutually supported each other, and made life just that bit more tolerable.
And that is why our society today is falling apart at the seams- because everyone seems to belong to their own inwards looking sub-group, and the rest can go to hell. We may have all the comforts, and the labels, but we are not a happy people.
An understatement Mark but so very very true.
wonderful film. Thank you.
A great wee documentary, thanks. Enjoyed the whole thing. I look forward to watching more from your channel.
The loss of a railway *service* when train crews collected prescriptions, newspapers and groceries for the isolated communities along the line, replaced by a railway *business* keeping a close eye on "the bottom line" is mourned, but in reality, these non profit-making branches were very vulnerable. BR HAD to stem the losses, but the way it was done was brutal. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, some of these lines (I'm thinking particularly of the Waverley Route) could have, should have been saved and would most likely be well-used in these traffic-choked days.
Thats what happens when government tries to run a business. They destroyed the aircraft industry too IMHO although De Havillands Comet didn't help!
Yes, I agree about the "bottom line". Ticks in boxes drive things these day. The word "brutal" is probably exactly right.
Too many lines were butchered and killed off without a seriously good reason. Beeching was a scapegoat & a puppet, put in place by that moron Marples, the minister of transport,who should never of had that job as he was co owner of one of the biggest road construction companies in Britain and was intent on destroying the railway network in order to force people onto the roads, so (a) falsely generating a need to build more roads (so generating more contracts for his company, and more money for his pocket, and (b) generating more money for government coffers (in road tax (of which very little actually goes towards road maintainence) and fuel tax (plus tax on everything else associated - batteries, tyres etc). And further, the sacking of so many (1000's) of railway staff from the closure of goods depots, passenger stations, signalmen, track and infrastructure, and other maintainence workers, office staff of all grades, etc., May have cut the railway wages bill, but that then put 1000's of people on the DOLE, so creating a huge drain on the country's finances which would have virtually negated any savings made overall by closing any railway which was just, or not quite, breaking even.. Marples made sure the spotlight was on Beeching and not himself,while he made life an uncertain misery (with a cut in income and an uncertain future) for a huge part of the British population, while he himself made a huge sum of money out of it all (on the sly/behind the scenes, until he got found out for swindling his tax returns big time fiddling the books. Sadly, he got wind of his intended prosecution (for tax fraud), and fled Britain to the Mediterranean with his ill gotten gains.
Timber and biomass from Kielder through intermodal traffic not mentioning passenger traffic.
The real crime wasn't the closure of lines and stations, but the building over the track beds that followed.
And leave useful land vacant in case it is ever needed again? And who but the taxpayer would be paying for this useless land.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 It wouldn't require any additional money from the taxpayer, to let the land lie fallow. It would, however, save a fortune in re-purchase costs should the line be restored later.
@@bigalb1913 mothballing a line costs money. You have to maintain it and all the structures you are responsible for, such as the bridges carrying the railway (bridges over the railway, other than footbridges, are more often than not are for the local highways department to maintain). For example, the mothballed March to Wisbech line, which there are plans to reinstate, is unusable because of the growth of buddleia and birch trees; although to put that line back in to service they'll need to reinstate all the level, crossings and build a bridge for the A47.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Minimal maintenance, surely, for structures not in service - compared to the cost of re-purchase of land and property. Just look at the massive costs of HS2, much of which is down to inflated land and property prices.
@@bigalb1913 so you've gone from no cost to the taxpayer to some cost. Yes, it is lower than the cost if buying land, but it us still a drain on the finances. BR would be spending money in your scheme on route miles that are not earning a penny. But which route miles would be worth the investment? And over what period? It is 60 years, thereabouts, since the Beeching reports and we've had 3 financial crises and half a dozen recessions since they came out.
I visited the Plashetts Station in 1976. Now under Kielder Water.
What a great film, explains a lot. Thanks for sharing.
They still burry there heads in the sand ,now there permanently berried 👀📸 Wonderful footage the fantastic beautiful Northumberland 🌈👌
I was just researching the this line the other day. What a wonderful documentary!
The comments the gentleman made at the end of the film, reflect what is sadly missing in our society today.
People caring and looking after each other. For all the advances in technology etc I fear we have regressed as human beings.
I suspect we will come full circle. Only the well off will be able afford electric cars. The freedom of the road will be denied to most.
Oh how we will regret the missing railway lines 😢.
Women and LGBT people wouldn't think so.
@@melanierhianna I think you make a very good point there. A lot of people back then lived under a huge weight of societal expectations and pressures, and there were a lot of very miserable people who couldn't live the way they wanted. While it's nice to be nostalgic about this stuff, lines like this have disappeared because society has changed, and because people legitimately wanted better lives, that they fought to get.
Yes: that's capitalism..sadly
@@leeosborne3793 I lived through it as a kid and I was not miserable,I did'nt notice any miserable adults around me either,quite the opposite in fact. Most had been through a war and survived.
Really enjoyable. Some fabulous footage and memories. Thanks!
Sad that no-one had anything to say of the men who had BUILT this line, in those remote places, and with such a harsh climate . . . Heroes!
I was thinking of the higher, isolated parts of the route - around Riccarton, where "severe" could describe winter conditions. Maybe you didn't watch the later parts of the video? I'll bet the pay they got was lousy.
Amazing video. How life has changed
Brilliant item of precious nostalgia, thanks for showing us!
These have a charm all their own. I watched one, perhaps from the same stable, about the old lady who had lived all her life in the familly farm. I will put a link to this charming into my (G)Olden Times playlist so maybe others will come across it. I'll subscribe now since I like this kind of thing. Valuable social history that could otherwise be lost.
Once the Waverley line is restored throughout maybe the Border Counties should be next. The roads in the area are totally unsuitable for the increasing number of heavy logging lorries.
It looks likely to happen, given that there are only 2 lines into Scotland and can be done for around £1 billion - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borders_Railway. You could not sort the roads for that amount of money.
@@hairyairey They never tell you what the roads cost though. It would gob smack most.
thanks for this lovely video. I feel inspired to walk. or cycle to Riccarton Junction maybe from Bellingham when this lockdown is over.
Wonder what happened to Eric Robson; he was always the presenter on these BBC north-east produced programmes.
Superb film , thankyou for your efforts. That Britain is now lost to us . I am 73 and watched it happen, but didn't realise what we were losing. The railways are almost an analogy for what went wrong with our country. Socialism almost worked, didn't it. Until Blair screwed it.
Thinks of the tourists who would pay well to travel thru such isolated areas..
Yes, now some lines like the one in the Scottish borders, are being re-opened.
@@TerryMcGearyScotland Callander to Crianlarich is another line that should have remained open.
@@philiprufus4427 FormerGlen Ogle line to Killin is another cracking ramble and must have been great on the steam train. Some of these old lines were not Beeching cuts apparently. Some were just private and non-viable sadly. Not enough freight and tourists didn’t come.
@@philiprufus4427 Thanks for the reminder of the video. Lovely stuff.
Lovely, time caught in an era, watching it now in 2019! Expect if you look closely could still find remnants by walking.
There's a lot less there now sadly. I wonder what happened to that old coach?
@@melanierhianna I think the old coach just rotted away I can remember seeing it from the road bridge in the late seventies
@@melanierhianna The remains of the old camping coach at Chollerford were burnt by vandals in the late eighties and what was left removed.
Moved many a load of timber out of riccarton down to workington and beyond . The house above the old station at riccarton supposed to be haunted so im lead to believe .
It's certainly pretty creepy!
All Aboard for another Big Railway Adventure. It's only just a whistle away. Peep Peep.
Note the chap hurrying to the station carrying his coat! He made the last train.
How sad, but what great tales from the railway men who worked the line. Sadly missed, but that's apparently progress....
....delightful film; the line closed 7 years before the Beeching axe fell!
2,900 miles closed pre - Beeching, 2,300 closed after Beeching. Puts things into context.
You're underestimating the Beeching impact, there; the mileage lost under Beeching was much higher than that, closer to 5,000, and a lot of it was secondary main (and in the case of the Great Central, primary main that was being run down due to turf wars inside of British Rail) whereas the mileage lot prior to Beeching was almost entirely remote rural branches.
Absolutely. When the WR took over management of the former SR West of England lines they became subject to the turf wars you describe, with devastating consequences for many communities. There's a parallel here with this railway and that to Halwill Junction and beyond.
4000 miles in 1952-1962 before Beaching incuding quite extensive networks in East Anglia in 1959, carrying only a handful of passengers per train and some lines of significance in South England and in 1962 the notorious Okenhampton- Halwill 24 miles 3 daily trains, 2 passengers a week. In Jan 1963 10,000 main line steam engines were in service and in many ways modernisation had failed. The GWR warship and western hydraulics had taken out the most primitive main line steam Castles and Kings, but were thenGWR warships were essentially Nazi fast attack boats, jumbos with only 3 year life at top 80-100mph performance. The nationalised railway system was still run like 4 independent company's with outright warfare between GWR warships and Southern Bulleid.Pacific's (*still being rebuilt as effectively new BR express steam in 1962; and the GE and NE region were still rebuilding the entire old.A1A3 flying Scotsman class in 1961/2 and at the same time reconstruction of 159 class 5 BR 4 6 O finally made them work as express engines by fitting.,.double chimneys and firing them with the.volume of.a GWR King, that meant they had the power of an express engine but much higher coal and carbon production. In 1963 Breeching report was.accepted because contuation of steam in South England and London was no longer possible to staff and.the pollution and social problems were becoming impossible. The cost of fully modernising the system was by the impossible, and.Breeching offered a necessary justification for completing.diesalistion in five years at the cost.of hatcheting out a third of the passenger services and some significant secondary main lines. It was the same radical hatchet job as doe by.Healey on defence and RN.and inevitably then lines selected for closure were often the wrong runs and it.destroyed the coherence of the rail.system. because as in the US the duplicated main lines meant.one should have been used for passengers and another for freight.
My own view is that in 1963 the three most ridiculous, uneconomic and almost impossible to work lines in the UK were the Isle of Skye, Somerset and Dorset and Central Wales line which was never actually closed, but was actually intended to be the first major post Beeching Government by the MacMillan and follow on Alex Douglas Home governments in 1963 but fact it ran thru 10 marginal electorates meant this line, increasingly poorly patronised and transversing many other lines catchment never closed. In 1966/ 67 the operating prosperity of the 6 regions of the six regions of BR was basically determined by which region was landed with former Cambrian rail system and the Central Wales line both of which ran from the ECML at Shrewsbury - when this part of the Welsh system transferred from the Western Region,.the WR made operating profits and the London Midland Region went into the red by adding the.Welsh system despite the.final completion of the.London Manchester ECML electrification in 1966 3-4 years late.The regionaln
@@frederickmiles327 Except that if we want a proper, connected railway system which includes rural areas, we can't expect all sectors to be making a profit. Unfortunately the concept of social cost wasn't a part of Beeching's briefing. I don't recall any real debates about subsidising roads, particularly in rural areas, only about the costs of railways. In hindsight, I put that down to vested interests eg. Mr Marples. Rail planners would now give their eye teeth for the extra capacity that Beeching took away. With soaring pollution, road congestion and constant delays and cancellations on the railways, restoring lost tracks is really a 'no-brainer'.
Kielder station now under reservoir
Plashetts station under water, not kielder, Kielder viaduct water a few feet up the arches, This was preserved because of the unusual skewed Arches of the viaduct, as far as I know all the other buildings were pulled down, that were under water
Must visit rickety old Riccarton.
Hurrah! Thank-you!
Yes, sad.
Of course there are now studies being made about the possibility of extending the reborn Waverley through Riccarton and on to Carlisle. Sadly the borders county will never be reborn as some of it is under Kielder Water.
So what? If the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales, a narrow-gauge line, can build a new section, including a tunnel, to bypass a reservoir, anyone else can do it. And look at how the re-opening of the Waverley line, from Edinburgh to Galashiels has been so successful. All that’s lacking is imagination.
@@petermolloy6142 A Political Stunt by the SNP ,truth is,the line should never have been closed in the first place. I was a teenager in that era,another political stunt,this time by Labour. Towns the size of Peebles,Hawick,Gala,without a railway ? What a MORONIC Concept.
Poignant
The poem at the start is Bellingham Show by Billy Bell (it continues on TH-cam with Johnny Handle at th-cam.com/video/3sHJjDTpFXg/w-d-xo.html .
Or you can read it on Kindle or in print “Billy Bell, Redesdale Roadman Border
Bard”. Coincidentally Billy Bell was born at Riccarton although his parents lived at Byrness. His mother’s family came from Newcastleton - which is where the presenter at the start, Eric Robson, is from
🙂🚂🚂🚂
I'm not one for so called modern day "progress". Sadness is the word I am thinking of after watching this. Another reason why I think I was born in the wrong era. I just don't fit in.....and I'm 68 now. This world now and especially England is horrible. It's not even our own if you think too deeply about it? No, wrong date of birth I have. My mind's back in far off days way before I was born. I just don't fit in and never have.
Know how you feel,althouh I did enjoy the seventies and eighties even the nineties. Hated the way they were doing away with railways and trams when I was a kiid though. I lived in Glasgow and Broughty Ferry before moving to Bishopbriggs. Everything tram and many railways were gone by 1967/68.
Nothin of automotives
Lovely, time caught in an era, watching it now in 2019! Expect if you look closely could still find remnants by walking.
th-cam.com/video/LL_VWQ5CYRg/w-d-xo.html