Heritage Line Loco Power Requirements

Something to do with with the way the switch to diesels was managed perhaps? I know far more about the modernisation process over in Ireland than what happened here!

 

A lot of services on the LMR which were dieselised with DMUs also closed not many years afterwards.

 

Although no amount of marketing would have improved the location of Ilfracombe Station, and even many stations close-ish to places they were supposed to serve had little passenger traffic out of the holiday season, the closure of the Budleigh Salterton line always seemed like an own goal.

 

T9s started to go much earlier

 

I think he must be a closet big chufferite because if you enquire why so and so machine cannot work a given service you get reams of statistics which "prove" you require something twice the size.

Sorry Tom!

Just to explain my own attitude to the "big stuff". I have no objection to them as such but there are no more than two or three places that really need them. With the prospect of major civil engineering works coming up, costs need to be watched.

PH

 

1957 for Southern Region D.E.M.Us

 

Southern Region, who operated the lines concerned at the time?

 

Ahem, on the Withered Arm?

 

The truth is these lines were doomed the moment they became under the control of Western Region, The GWR, never accepted the Southern Railway in what they saw as their territory once the lines west of Salisbury were handed over, old rivalries came to the fore, singleing much of the Southern route to Exeter west of Salisbury, closure of the majority of the branches, closure of the northern route to Plymouth, basically the management did not want any competition to their route, it has to be remembered that the management of western region, were GWR managers, and the majority of cuts and line closures were at the cost of the former Southern lines, then GW branches how did loe survive, or falmouth? they were just as remote as the likes of ilfracombe, its probally luck that Barnstable was not closed could more had been done? well local services could have been done better, tieing into other routes such as Ilfracombe to paignton stoppers. or by making better use of what stock was available.

 

Wasn't that quite an early closure?

 

There were times when this was debatable!

 

Similar applied to the Somerset and Dorset. The GWR and it successor never forgave it for selling out from under them to the Midland and LSWR.

They were an unforgiving lot at Paddington and Swindon! And with long memories.

 

It could be a bit suprising then that the WR took DMUs to work the branches, after all, they didn't originate from Swindon, with the exception of the class 120..

 

Thanks, I assumed it was earlier than that. I associate it with Spam Cans and T9s I suppose