The Trains Now Departed

by Michael Williams

  Chapter Sixteen

  The line that came back from the dead

  It was the most romantic and scenic line ever to be axed in Britain. The loss of the Waverley route from England through the Scottish Borders was the bitterest of the Beeching closures. But now, miraculously, the old line has risen from the ashes amid glorious scenery …

  WAS THERE EVER a more grief-filled moment in the two centuries of Britain’s railway history than when the 21.56 Edinburgh Waverley to London St Pancras sleeping car train pulled out of the Scottish capital behind diesel locomotive No. D60? For service 1M82 on the evening of 5 January 1969 was to be the very last train on the legendary 98¼-mile Waverley main line – shut cruelly by Dr Beeching after a 107-year life. It was the longest and most scenic main line ever to be closed, and its demise devastated an entire region of Britain.

  There was to be no slow fade into obscurity for this most heroic of main lines, perhaps more loved by its local community and revered by railway enthusiasts across the land than any other. The Waverley line went out in a blaze of high drama, as a band of people, led with missionary zeal by a pugnacious Church of Scotland minister, blockaded the tracks to prevent the final train from passing. Not some slow rusty puffer this, crawling over weed-grown rails on a run-down timetable, but a haughty express on its final journey between the UK’s two great capitals. Eventually the train was allowed to proceed, but what an operatic night of defiance – more reminiscent of the railroads of the Wild West than the British Isles.

  For many the Edinburgh to Carlisle line was not just a railway, but a symbol of the greatness, passion and romance of the Border country, with its massive castles, grand houses, rolling hills and rivers, a world-famous wool and textile industry, and a tumultuous history of conflict between two nations. This too was a battle played out between London and Edinburgh as one of Scotland’s most emblematic railways was brought low by political machinations.

  While arguments about why it happened have raged over the years, the end of the Waverley line was certainly the most traumatic, the most bitterly fought and by wide agreement the most socially damaging of any closure in British railway history. Romantic in every sense, taking its name from the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott, and stamping ground of the eponymous London to Scotland express train the Waverley, this double-track railway over the steep moorland gradients of the Borders has perhaps the ultimate place in the pantheon of trains now departed.

  Departed indeed. Wasting no time after the final train had passed, the track-lifting crews with their wrecking machinery were ripping up the rails before the buddleia and bindweed had time to grow over the line so brilliantly engineered by the North British Railway between 1849 and 1862. Such was the glee of the officials in charge of the lifting crews that just days after the final train a group of journalists was invited to witness the rails being plucked from the ground in preparation for a new road. This orgy of Schadenfreude must be one of the most cynical exercises ever in the history of railway spin doctoring.

  The track-lifting ritual in front of the press was designed to ram home the fact that no more tickets would ever again be sold in the manorial booking office at the busy station at Galashiels to farmers on their way home from market. There would be no more chatter from schoolchildren heading up the line from Fountainhill or St Boswell’s. Elderly ladies from Eskbank would no longer take the afternoon service for genteel tea and cucumber sandwiches in Edinburgh’s Princes Street. The capacious parcels office at Melrose, so close to Sir Walter Scott’s home, would no longer be taking deliveries, even for the great writer’s big house along the road at Abbotsford.

  Soon there would be only memories of the steeply graded embankments and viaducts, which tested the finest products of the steam age to their limits. Few main lines in Britain have ever hosted so many grand locomotives. Ghosts of the machines that once powered through the Borders include the Mallard, which set the world speed record for steam in 1936, as well as several of her A4 Class sisters – frequently in their dotage in the days they ran here. Here too can be summoned up the shades of the handsome A2 Pacific North Briton or the British Railways Britannia Class Robin Hood, both regulars beating up the incline to Whiterope summit. Memories abound of Strang Steel, the very final loco of Gresley’s legendary A3 Class in service, apart from her famous sister Flying Scotsman. You might catch the spirit of Wandering Willie, one of the D30 Scott Class 4-4-0s, named after the characters from the Waverley novels, which pootered along the line for many years. Even as closure loomed, small boys at the end of the platform at Waverley station were able to cop the latest products of the modern era taking a canter down the line to Carlisle, such as the English Electric Deltics, the fastest diesels of their day.

  As for the passengers aboard the Anglo-Scottish expresses, there was hardly a rival in the world to the panorama of scenic majesty through the carriage window, as the train made its way north from the Gothic magnificence of George Gilbert Scott’s St Pancras. Here was a double dose of splendour as the train traversed the roof of the English Pennines via the Settle & Carlisle line, only to be transported through yet another feast of scenic riches on the rest of the journey into Scotland through the Borders landscape.

  But hold on a moment – let’s freeze-frame the nostalgia. Today, nearly forty-five years on, I’m sitting in a field of giant hogweed amid some derelict mine workings in an unprepossessing part of south-east Edinburgh next to a concrete mixer busy helping to build the first bridge on the route of the brand-new Borders Railway. Here is a grand project indeed, and the superlatives abound. With a budget of £294 million, the old Waverley route is being painstakingly rebuilt mile by mile with backing from the Scottish government. By the time it reaches its terminus at Tweedbank, just short of Melrose, 30 miles away, a grand total of 93,000 sleepers will have been laid. Add to that more than 800,000 tons of earth moved and least 2,000,000 man hours – not to mention the 25,000 bacon rolls consumed by the construction team. This is the first domestic main line to be built in the UK for well over a century – or to put it another way, the longest-distance reopening in British railway history.

  Jolting along on the X95 National Express bus up the switchback A7, which parallels the old railway, you can see huge machines shovelling, lifting and excavating everywhere along the route. Track is hammered into place and the ballast machines follow, tumbling clouds of aggregate in their wake. A thousand contractors are on site installing platforms, signals and all the other paraphernalia of the new railway, their orange high-visibility jackets and helmets dotted across the landscape like exotic ladybirds. As if to demonstrate the faith of the Scots in the project, the Edinburgh Evening News is reporting a boom in house building close to stations along the route in anticipation of the start of the service in 2015.

  As well as the new construction, some of the old Waverley line infrastructure is being resurrected, reinvigorating memories of a grander era. The magnificent twenty-two-arch Newbattle Viaduct at Newtongrange is still as good as new after 160 years. Its stern sandstone piers have withstood decades of mining subsidence, and the viaduct has been used by the railway contractors’ spoil lorries to avoid damage to the local roads. Environmentally minded builders have even gently scooped rare lampreys from the Gala Water and relocated them out of harm’s way.

  The bus journey along the long and winding road to Carlisle is a reminder of the callous way in which at the end of the 1960s a whole swathe of Britain was deprived of decent public transport. Here is the worst of slow travel, which sizeable communities such as Galashiels and Melrose have been forced to rely upon since the closure. Hawick, 56 miles from Edinburgh and 42 miles from Carlisle with a population of 16,000, acquired the dismal accolade of being Britain’s largest town so far from a railway station.

  By contrast, eighty years ago the route could be traversed in supreme comfort aboard some of the finest and most softly upholstered corridor carriages of the day, complete with restaurant cars riding on cushioned bogies, haul
ed by some of the most modern and sophisticated express locomotives. Today’s journey is a nausea-inducing bumpy ride along a two-lane road in a utilitarian bus with no toilets. Right up until closure the train ride from Galashiels to Edinburgh could take as little as fifty minutes. Today the bus takes an hour and twenty minutes. No wonder the closure of the railway was described at the time as ‘the rape of the Borders’.

  Unlike the Settle & Carlisle line – the only surviving British main-line rival to the Waverley route for scenic grandeur, luckily saved in 1989 after a long and hard-fought campaign – the official axe fell swiftly on the Edinburgh–Carlisle line as the mandarins in London, set on closure, outsmarted the locals. The first indication of doom came in the 1963 Beeching Report, where the railway was identified as one, in the anodyne phraseology of the time, from which it was ‘intended to withdraw passenger train services’. Beeching hammered an especially devastating nail into its coffin by describing the Waverley route as ‘the biggest money-loser in the British railway system’. At this stage closure was not certain – several Scottish lines given the kiss of death by Beeching are still with us today, including the Far North line from Inverness to Wick and Thurso and the ‘road to Skye’ from Fort William to Mallaig in the West Highlands – but the local campaign against closure was too slow and too late.

  On 17 August 1966 British Railways gave formal notice that the line would be shut from 2 January the following year. Reluctant porters expended buckets of paste sticking up posters at stations along the line announcing an end to their own livelihood and potential disaster for their communities. Disingenuously the managers in London argued that there would be no disruption to services between Carlisle and Edinburgh since trains would be diverted along other routes. This was to ignore one of the primary functions of the railway over more than a century, which was to serve the people of the Borders and the economy of the region.

  A total of 508 official objections to the closure came in over the statutory six weeks, and a temporary reprieve was announced, with a public hearing held in Hawick on 16 and 17 November 1967. But it was to no avail. On 15 July 1968 Richard Marsh, the minister of transport, issued the final order that the line would close on Monday 5 January 1969. Never mind the massed ranks of the Scottish Economic Council, the Scottish Transport Users’ Consultative Committee and the Borders Consultative Group, which had all declared that the line should stay open. Ignored also were the views of David Steel, MP for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, as well as Edinburgh grandee the Earl of Dalkeith. (His family had endorsed the horse-drawn Edinburgh to Dalkeith line of 1831, the city’s first railway and the template for what was to become the Waverley route.) No comparable area of Britain had ever been stripped of its public transport since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

  The outcry against closure reverberated across the region and beyond. But it was futile. Even a petition piped in across the steps of number 10 Downing Street, heralded with placards proclaiming THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. RAILWAY MURDER WILL BE PROSECUTED failed to save the day. The battle for the Waverley line was over.

  At least that was how the authorities saw it. But the fight didn’t end there. British Railways, with what many regarded as complete insensitivity to local feeling, organised a special train called Farewell to the Waverley Route on 3 January, three days before the axe finally fell. Railway enthusiasts were urged to boycott it, and it was greeted by 400 protesters wearing black armbands carrying a mock coffin. The train was further delayed by a bomb hoax, and there were even reports of a plot to blow up the Royal Border Bridge on the east coast main line south of Berwick. However, the 400 passengers on the train were able to take their final nostalgic journey without further interruptions.

  But the trouble continued. A final special on Sunday 5 January, hauled by one of British Railways’ most powerful locomotives, Deltic Class No. D9007 Pinza, had a struggle to climb out of Riccarton Junction. Not surprising, since a group of north of England railway photographers had ensured that the rails were lubricated with grease for about 200 yards. The wheels slipped furiously as the locomotive strove to get a grip. The very last train on the line was the 21.56 sleeper departure for St Pancras, hauled by Peak Class diesel No. D60 Lytham St Annes, in the charge of driver W. Fleming from Edinburgh’s Haymarket shed. In the second seat was Fireman G. Patterson. (In those days the fireman grade still existed despite the fact there were no fires to stoke – certainly not on Lytham St Annes, which was then one of the most modern and powerful locomotives on the railway.)

  Fearing demonstrations against the final train, local managers sent a pilot engine along the line in case of trouble – which, indeed, there was. Fog detonators had been placed on the tracks by local enthusiasts, spaced to replicate the beat of the cylinders of the much-loved Gresley V2 Class locomotives, which had been one of the modern mainstays of traffic on the line. But these were less of a problem than what was to follow. The exploding detonators were just the beginning of a night the like of which had never been seen in the history of the railways.

  Cunningly, the authorities arranged for the final train to arrive at Hawick station ten minutes late at 23.27 so the stop would be minimal and it could pull away quickly from any protestors. But in vain. According to a report by the Berwick, Selkirk and Roxburgh Constabulary, there were 200 people on the southbound platform, and someone had booked a black-painted cardboard coffin onto the train as a goods parcel for delivery to Richard Marsh in London. It bore the words ‘Waverley line – born 1849, killed 1969, aged 120 years’. The coffin was paraded along the platform accompanied by a piper, before being loaded with lingering ceremony into the guard’s van.

  Meanwhile there was another reception committee lying in wait further south at Newcastleton. When the pilot engine arrived ahead of the express, the driver found the level crossing gates had been blocked by a posse of angry villagers. Ignorant of the obstruction, the express, running behind it, continued on its journey south. What happened next is lyrically recalled by passenger Iain Purdon.

  For this part of the journey, ours was the last revenue-earning train of any sort to traverse the line, and circumstances combined to make sure nobody would forget it. As we stormed through the rolling hills, lit in black and white by a ghostly full moon, graced with sub-zero temperatures and the odd snowflake, the night was lit by further showers of sparks from the wheels as the train frequently came to unexpected mysterious halts. It may be that the communication cord was in on the secret, but no one was actually seen to operate it.

  Purdon continued with the drama, related by David Spaven in his book Waverley Route:

  Many houses on the hills were conscious of the passage of their lifeline. Against the bright background of lit doorways and windows could be seen Border folk, still up and about, watching the passing train. Some waved, others stood sullenly. It was the end of an era. What happened next was undoubtedly the climax of the drama. To a shower of sparks we came to a very decisive halt halfway down the platform at Newcastleton. The station lights were burning yet it was very difficult to see why we had stopped. Attempts to get out of the train to investigate were subverted by worried policemen and furious BR staff.

  Ahead of the train a group of people led by the local vicar had chained and wired the crossing gates. Following a long tradition of troublesome priests, the Reverend Brydon Maben had straddled the tracks and squared up to the railway officials who attempted to move him. According to Maben’s account, the driver of the pilot locomotive, now just in front of the express, said, ‘Are you going to stand there?’ Maben replied, ‘I am going to stand here.’ The local railway traffic inspector then told the driver to ‘put pressure on the gates’. But the driver replied, ‘If you want to drive the bloody engine, you can drive it yourself.’ Maben recalled afterwards – perhaps not entirely in the spirit of Christian conciliation – that the traffic inspector was ‘an idiot’. ‘He nearly had one under the jaw from me, I can tell you.’

  Peace was eventually br
okered by David Steel (then a young liberal MP and now Lord Steel of Aikwood), who was travelling in a sleeping compartment on the train. He recalls,

  The train halted and I was aware of my name being called. I opened a top window and there was a railway inspector standing with a swaying lamp looking at me. ‘The people are blocking the line and you are the only one that will persuade them to move,’ he said. I dressed hurriedly, clambered on to the line, and was escorted alongside the carriages in freezing darkness. [There was] what looked like half the population of the village – at least two or three hundred people.

  Newcastleton is a village newly created by the building of the railway and they felt more strongly than most about the loss of employment as well as transport. I was met by the parish minister. ‘They’ll expect you to make a speech,’ he said. ‘It’s midnight and the temperature is about ten below freezing,’ I replied. ‘So it will be a short one.’

  Too short clearly for the Reverend Maben, who responded, ‘I suggest we stay here till we are forcibly removed’ – whereupon he was promptly dragged away by the police to roars from the protestors. Eventually Steel got the crowd to disperse through a deal with the constabulary to release the clergyman with no charges. The final train eventually limped into St Pancras two hours late. For Steel, who was later to become leader of the Liberal Party, it was a lesson in diplomacy that would serve him well in the future.

  The tribulations of its final day were typical of the challenges that had faced the line since its difficult parturition. The Waverley line, like many others celebrated in this book, was born out of the railway mania that gripped the land from 1844 onwards. Here was what seemed to be a perfect get-rich-quick opportunity, and Britain’s track mileage simply grew and grew, with 4,128 miles added to the network in the space of eight years. But inevitably, amid what sometimes seemed like a great opportunity for small investors, the larger companies became dominant, using their muscle to squeeze out weaker competitors and blocking off rival routes in a giant game of chess.