The Minor Railways of East Anglia: Development Demise and Destiny

PART I

DEFINITIONS

Fig 8: Railways in East Anglia (page 17) illustrates the pattern of railways which had developed in East Anglia by the beginning of the twentieth century. Parliament had to approve an Act for a railway to be built but, as the nineteenth century advanced, there were few obstacles to schemes which had capital, ambition and support from major land-owners. The railways in East Anglia developed from a number of competing and sometimes conflicting interests, ultimately serving most towns of significance and a number of smaller towns and villages which were often served by branch lines. There was no coherent vision or strategy other than to enrich their promoters. East Anglia lacked the minerals, especially coal and iron ore, which fuelled industrial development in other parts of the UK.

Railways in East Anglia tended to develop from London northwards, or by linking a principal town like Norwich with a port – Great Yarmouth (see Fig 3).

The first railways in East Anglia were built by small companies which were leased and absorbed by the Eastern Counties Railway [ECR]. A unified whole was created by the Great Eastern Railway Act of 7 August 1862. By this Act the ECR changed its name to Great Eastern Railway (GER) and the East Anglian, Newmarket & Chesterford, Eastern Union and Norfolk railway companies were absorbed.

The GER Act was an expression of Parliamentary good sense in bringing together in one Company a diverse miscellany of Company management and operational practices. The principles were good but the practices were more varied; many ‘minor railways’ were part of the GER mix and some few remained independent. This book is an exploration of East Anglian railway variety, which I enjoyed in the 1950s and ’60s!

Fig 3: Railway beginnings in East Anglia in 1844. Edited, with thanks, from East Anglia's First Railways. Hugh Moffat. Terence Dalton. 1987.

CHAPTER 1

WHERE IS EAST ANGLIA?

Ihave previously explained that I grew up in Cambridge and considered myself to be living in East Anglia. I knew that the one-time Kingdom of East Anglia consisted principally of the lands of the North Folk and the South Folk – so modern Suffolk and Norfolk and little of what is now Cambridgeshire. Essex, the land of East Saxons was, in these early times, a separate Kingdom.

I was aware of the strong local loyalties in East Anglia and that Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex were considered to be very different, separate and independent areas by their inhabitants. When I worked in Suffolk I remember explaining that I came from Cambridge which, I believed, was ‘the front door to East Anglia’. The elderly Suffolk man to whom I was speaking paused for a while and then said, with an unarguable finality, ‘Here in Suffolk, if Cambridge exists at all, it is a back door and rarely used.’

A map outlining what I consider to be East Anglia is Fig 4.

To ensure that my definition of ‘East Anglia’ is not entirely arbitrary I have turned to Civil Engineering Heritage – East Anglia. Peter Cross-Rudkin. Phillimore. 2010 so, to quote Peter’s Introduction, I can write – for the purpose of this book – East Anglia is taken to include the four post-1974 counties of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk with minor modifications to include the ancient county of Huntingdonshire and the Soke of Peterborough(neither shown on the Fig 4 map) while excluding those parts of (southern) old Essex lost to Greater London.

Fig 4: Norfolk & Suffolk, which are the principal counties of East Anglia, the northern part of Essex and most of Cambridgeshire westwards.

CHAPTER 2

WHAT ARE MINOR RAILWAYS?

When John Scott-Morgan (my Commissioning Editor) suggested a draft title for this book about minor railways I welcomed the idea and thought that I knew what a minor railway was. I was sure it was like Fig 5 .

Or, to come a little more up-to-date, like Fig 6.

Fig 5: Tollesbury Pier Station, Kelvedon & Tollesbury Light Railway c1930.

Fig 6: BR 4-wheel railbus leaving Wickham Bishops Station en route for Maldon East c1964.

But then my inborn pedantry began to influence my thinking. I was familiar with the terms ‘Light Railway’ and ‘Branch Line’ but where had I previously encountered the term ‘minor railway’? Surely The Re-shaping of British Railways (the ‘Beeching Report’) HMSO 1963 must have used the term? But no; there are references to ‘major amalgamations’ of railway companies but no mention of any ‘minor’ railways which were not amalgamated. Figs 5 and 6 which are visualisations of my concept of a ‘minor’ railway justify a second and perhaps more questioning look and more thoughtful analysis.

The Kelvedon & Tollesbury Railway (Fig 5) was opened as a ‘Light Railway’ on 1 October 1904. It was built to take advantage of the provisions for rural branch lines enacted by Parliament in the Light Railways Act of 1896. Passenger and goods traffic over the whole railway ceased in 1951 and freight services on the remaining Kelvedon to Tiptree section ceased in 1962.

The Witham to Maldon branch line (Fig 6) was opened for passengers and goods traffic on 2 October 1848. The passenger service was withdrawn in 1964; a residual goods service continued until 1980 when the line was closed.

Both these railways would seem to be minor railways but one was a Light Railway and the other was a branch line. I decided I must explore ‘minor’ as a technical term as used by railway men and turned, first, to Alan A. Jackson’s The Railway Dictionary With Index Of Themes (3rd Edition. Sutton Publishing. 2000). No ‘minor’ railways there and the nearest was references to Miniature or Minimum Gauge railways.

Perhaps George Ottley’s A Bibliography of British Railway History (2nd Edition. HMSO. 1983) could be more helpful? He was, but not entirely as I wished because he suggested alternatives in his very comprehensive index. See:

•Light & narrow-gauge railways

•Narrow-gauge railways

•Industrial railways

John Glover’s Modern Railways Dictionary of Railway Industry Terms (Ian Allan Publishing. 2005) does not include ‘minor railways’ but does quote the Transport & Works Act 1992 s67(1) which is usefully pertinent for this book:

Railway

A system of transport employing parallel rails which:

(a) provide support and guidance for vehicles carried on flanged wheels and

(b) form a track which either is of a gauge of at least 350mm or crosses a carriageway (whether or not on the same level) but does not include a tramway.

The Dictionary also offers a definition of a Branch Line:

Branch Line

A secondary route from a terminus which acts as a feeder to the main trunk line. Terms based on the likening of railway infrastructure to that of a tree.

Next I turned to the several contacts who kindly responded to my request for help in defining a ‘minor railway’.

Tony Jervis, my predecessor as Editor of the R&CHS Bulletin, is widely-read and a very good source of unusual railway information. He responded thus in August 2018:

‘Rob, regarding your agonising over what could constitute a ‘minor’ railway, I thought the late Edwin Course might have solved it in his trilogy on railways in southern England. Following The Main Lines and Secondary and Branch Lines [I hoped for Minor Railways but he concluded the trilogy with] Independent and Light Railways (Harper Collins. 1976).

‘Searching for other possible definitions … the nearest that approached your tentative title was C.J. Gammell’s book The Branch Line Age – the minor railways of the British Isles in memoriam and retrospect (Moorland Publishing. 1976). This is [primarily] a book of Gammell’s photographs [but the brief Preface does include a pertinent sentence: All minor railways conveyed their passengers with a purposefulness and leisure that belonged to the 19th century – the age of the horse, the years before the all-too-common motor vehicle would infiltrate into every country lane and village].

‘… both the Branch Line Society (BLS) and the Industrial Railway Society use the term minor railways to mean industrial and preserved (heritage) lines and, in the case of the BLS, narrow-gauge and miniature railways in parks and gardens intended solely for leisure use.’

Tony’s reference (but not quoted above) to searching in his own extensive reference library encouraged me to look again at my shelves and I took down Minor Standard Gauge Railways. R.W. Kidner, the Oakwood Press. 1971. In his ‘Introduction’ Kidner does not define ‘minor railways’ but he does suggest ways in which such railways can be recognised or distinguished from other railways:

‘A factor common to most minor standard gauge railways was more or less permanent penury. The reason for this is that undertakings which tapped an ample source of traffic were snapped up by one of the bigger lines, usually before they opened. Often however, the true potential – or lack of it – was not apparent until after traffic began and minor railways were sometimes well-endowed to begin with, at the expense of the shareholders, who later found they had lost their money. The crunch came when this initial equipment began to wear out, and the traffic had not raised the money to pay for new equipment. At this point the purveyors of second-hand engines and carriages came into their own, including of course the larger railways themselves, who were glad to accept £60 for a carriage or £200 for an engine which they had intended to scrap anyway. This stock was usually almost time-expired, and did not last long under its new owners, so that it was laid aside and fresh bargains sought for – thus such lines often had a great deal of stock on their books, little of which was in working order.’

Another of my helpful contacts is Robert Humm, book seller, railway history researcher and author. He shares with Kidner a similar vision of the typical ‘minor railway’:

‘Dear Rob, We all know a minor railway when we see one: usually short, weed-grown track, ancient rolling stock, elderly motive power, lack of traffic, sometimes [in its history] presided over by Colonel Stephens. The problem, as you say, is one of definition.

‘The expression is, I suggest, a recent coinage by enthusiasts and authors. Ottley (1966) has no specific titles beginning minor railways… and none of Ottley’s alternative categories are suitable definitions. For example:

• Light Railways – The Totton & Fawley branch was built under an LRO but [in the 1920s the largest oil refinery in Britain opened at Fawley and subsequently expanded so] by 1960 the branch was equipped with heavy rail and carried over 1m tons of oil traffic each year.

• Narrow-Gauge Railways – … the metre gauge Minas A Vittoria carries 32,000 ton iron ore trains. The Welsh Highland [operates with] Beyer-Garratts and 10-coach, corridor, well filled trains, and brand new stations at both ends.

• Industrial Railways – Same problem. The Port Of London, Manchester Ship Canal (MSC), Corby Steel Works and Quarries were major systems each with 60-70 locomotives. MSC in its heyday carried over 2M tons of freight a year, more than many BR main lines.

• Miniature Railways – I do not think that the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway would regard itself as a minor railway!

• Cliff Railways – Very short but often carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers a year.

‘I do not find it surprising that minor railways are not referred to in the Beeching Report because:

(i) The expression was not in general use in 1963;

(ii) Some minor railways, however defined, were deliberately excluded from the Transport Act 1948 (eg. Talyllyn).

‘Most of those ‘minor railways’ acquired by the British Transport Commission (BTC) had already been closed:

°Kent & East Sussex

°Kelvedon & Tollesbury

°Mid-Suffolk Light Railway

°Welshpool & Llanfair

°Rheilffordd Corris

‘The principal concern of the BTC in the 1950s (and of Beeching a little later) was