Why did the Welshpool & Llanfair survive as long as it did?

[johnofwessex]

It struck me recently.....

 

There were very few 'public' Narrow Gauge railways in the UK

 

All I suggest unique and mostly associated with specific industries

 

So in terms of being a 'public' railway how did the W&L manage to hang on into the mid 50's?  Its easy to see how WW2 might have extended its life with petrol shortages but it carried on hauling freight until 1956, despite the obvious costs of transhipment onto a line only 8 miles long.

 

Did it have some sort of a Fairy Godmother in BR Management?

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Surely the fairy godmother, if there was one, was the GWR.

 

In the early years, British Railways closed very few railways it inherited, and most of these were because of an urgent need to spend money on the formation or track. Corris closed in 1948 and Red Wharf Bay closed in 1952, both in need of repairs. The Canterbury and Whitstable closed in 1952 when Whitstable Harbour became unusable.

 

The Mid Suffolk Light Railway was probably the first line British Railways closed on purely revenue versus operating costs grounds, in July 1952, and other closures followed at a moderate pace. The Welshpool & Llanfair hanging on for another four and a half years probably matches its status in British Railways' hierarchy of loss-making lines.

 

However, it might not be a coincidence that the local MP, Clement Davies, was leader of the Liberal Party until September 1956, and it is easy to imagine his campaigning for the line to be kept open. He was a friend of Churchill's, who apparently offered him a cabinet position in his 1951 government, and probably had more political power than his party's number of MPs (six) might suggest.

[pete_mcfarlane]

I reckon that lines like Welshpool and the Corris had the financial advantage (over, say, the Ffestiniog) of not having full time staff. Towards the end of their lives the lines were freight only and didn't operate every day of the week, and so the loco crew, guards, platelayers, fitters etc came out of a larger pool of GWR/BR(W) staff and were only 'billed' to the line when working on it. 

 

The extreme example of this being the Tralee and Dingle opening once a month for fair traffic towards the ends of its life. 

[Ben B]

I've always liked the 'what-if' approach with these lines, to imagine if BR had persevered like they did with the Rheidol.  Corris Falcon and Tattoo tanks in unlined BR black, the Llanfair "Earl" and "Countess" in lined blue, trundling through Welshpool, maybe a couple of VoR coaches re-gauged for an experimental summer passenger tourist service.  Would BR have invested in narrow gauge diesels (maybe 'mainline' versions of locomotives being built by Hunslet for export or the mines?  Narrow gauge railcars or railbus services in Regional Railways livery?

 

I'm playing with this theme for the new garden railway :)

[Andy Kirkham]

On 10/05/2024 at 07:26, johnofwessex said:

 

 

Did it have some sort of a Fairy Godmother in BR Management?

 

Possibly yes, in the form of Oliver Veltom, https://www.countytimes.co.uk/news/23502684.letter-powys-railway-owes-thanks-shropshire-man/

[Matt37268]

52 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

 

Possibly yes, in the form of Oliver Veltom, https://www.countytimes.co.uk/news/23502684.letter-powys-railway-owes-thanks-shropshire-man/

Wasn’t the VOR nicknamed Veltoms Own Railway? 

[Steamport Southport]

There was enough traffic for it to still be of use. Especially livestock traffic. 

 

Notice the amount of horseboxes in these images of it just pre war.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/welshpool_1st/index7.shtml

 

Don't forget the huge mixed gauge cattle dock is still there.

 

 

 

 

Jason

 

[Tom Burnham]

On 10/05/2024 at 09:25, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Surely the fairy godmother, if there was one, was the GWR.

 

In the early years, British Railways closed very few railways it inherited, and most of these were because of an urgent need to spend money on the formation or track. Corris closed in 1948 and Red Wharf Bay closed in 1952, both in need of repairs. The Canterbury and Whitstable closed in 1952 when Whitstable Harbour became unusable.

 

The Mid Suffolk Light Railway was probably the first line British Railways closed on purely revenue versus operating costs grounds, in July 1952, and other closures followed at a moderate pace. The Welshpool & Llanfair hanging on for another four and a half years probably matches its status in British Railways' hierarchy of loss-making lines.

 

The Sheppey Light Railway closed in December 1950 to both passengers and goods. The Southern Region at least was reviewing loss-making lines by then.

It is surprising the W and L lasted so long given that goods could be transhipped into a lorry just as easily as into a narrow gauge wagon.

[D9020 Nimbus]

Perhaps the standard of the local roads was an issue? Most of the Austrian NG lines remained open until the "credit crunch" in 2008 (remember that?) Some still are open but mostly only for tourist trains. And no longer fun by ÖBB.

Edited July 12 by D9020 Nimbus

[009 micro modeller]

38 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

The Sheppey Light Railway closed in December 1950 to both passengers and goods. The Southern Region at least was reviewing loss-making lines by then.

It is surprising the W and L lasted so long given that goods could be transhipped into a lorry just as easily as into a narrow gauge wagon.

 

29 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

Perhaps the standard of the local roads was an issue? Most of the Austrian NG lines remained open until the "credit crunch" in 2008 (remember that?) Some still are open but mostly only for tourist trains. And no longer fun by ÖBB.

Wasn’t a lot of the traffic at the end incoming (presumably household) coal? Which to be honest doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing that couldn’t be just as easily transshipped to lorries at Welshpool.

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

The Sheppey Light Railway closed in December 1950 to both passengers and goods. The Southern Region at least was reviewing loss-making lines by then. ...

The Southern ( Railway ) closed the Lee-on-the Solent, Kemp Town, Basingstoke & Alton, Devil's Dyke and Elham Valley lines - and others that don't come immediately to mind - long before 1950.

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

Perhaps the standard of the local roads was an issue? Most of the Austrian NG lines remained open until the "credit crunch" in 2008 (remember that?) Some still are open but mostly only for tourist trains. And no longer fun by ÖBB.

They also had a good number of standard gauge Lokalbahnen built, like the 760mm gauge railways,  to open up underdeveloped (because unserved by railways) areas of Austria. I explored several of those between Vienna and the Czech border in the mid 1970s when they were a late hangout of standard gauge steam.(I even got to travel on a mixed train on one line) 

Though operated by ÖBB more or less as branch lines, albeit with simplified signalling, their routes were very much those of contour hugging  light railways and speed wasn't their forte with an average speed (including stops) of around 25 km/h, a bit less for the mixed train (though it only shunted twice on my run).

At that time that part of Austria still had a lot of unpaved roads with a surprising number of horse drawn farm carts using them. The small network did though reach the edge of Vienna at Stammersdorf (on the unfashionable side of the Danube) where it connected with the end of one of the city's tramlines. The Dobermannsdorf-Stammersdorf line closed in 1988 but some of the others remained open for a few years more.

I have heard it said that one of the reasons the Austrian 760mm gauge lines survived for so long was that the gauge was a better balance between cost and capacity than the 600mm/2ft gauge (cheap to build and run but too slow and low in capacity) or metre gauge (cheaper than standard gauge but not enough to counter the extra costs of transhipment and not being able ti run through trains) and it was of course used extensively in the Austro-Hungarian empire (hence a journey I made in the 1970s between Caplinja (the then interchange with the standard gauge) and Dubrovnik in the then Jugoslavia)      

[russell price]

On 26/06/2024 at 00:20, Steamport Southport said:

There was enough traffic for it to still be of use. Especially livestock traffic. 

 

Notice the amount of horseboxes in these images of it just pre war.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/welshpool_1st/index7.shtml

 

Don't forget the huge mixed gauge cattle dock is still there.

 

 

 

 

Jason

 

The horseboxes are of course standard gauge and no doubt there was a horse sale on. The main road to Llanfair is the main  road used by the brummies to get to the coast, it would be gridlocked at the weekends all the way down the Golfa and into pool. My grandfather used to go to school by the W&LLLR and it was always referred to by old Welshpool folk as the Llanfair Ginny. Never heard it called that by the railway fraternity.

Im building a layout based on Welshpool and hoping to include the W & LLR. I was born in  Welshpool and it is home really.