The Trains Now Departed

by Michael Williams

  Once our journey to the small north Devon resorts of Lynton and Lynmouth, twenty miles from here, would have started at Barnstaple Town station on the dreamy banks of the Taw, aboard what many enthusiasts have long regarded as one of the most perfect little railways ever created through some of the most beautiful scenery on God’s earth. A smart green locomotive, massive brass dome polished to perfection, with a couple of rich brown and creamy white carriages, would have been waiting for the London connection to roll into the bay across the platform. With one or two exceptions, there cannot ever have been so many superlatives nor so many eulogies for such a tiny train.

  Despite its demise eighty years ago, the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway ranks alongside the Darjeeling Himalaya Railway in India and the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales as one of the iconic narrow-gauge railways of the world. Narrow-gauge railways, because of their cheapness to build, were once regarded as the poor relations of full-size trains – operating quarries, mines, paper mills, running humble passenger services off the beaten track. Once there were thousands of them, part of an industrial heritage now forgotten.

  But, unlike these, the L&B – conceived at the end of the nineteenth century and running on a switchback course through the most beautiful parts of north Devon into the romantic hills of Exmoor – became a legend in its own short lifetime of thirty-seven years. Here was poetry compared to the prose of most of its peers, and conceived with the vision of a successful media entrepreneur who believed he understood the future of British taste. The track gauge of just 1 foot 11½ inches enabled it to twist and turn precipitously in the hills. Its cargoes were passengers rather than freight. Yet, although frequently referred to as such, it was no toy, being constructed and operated to the exacting standards of a full-grown railway. Its greatest achievement, perhaps, was that its glories ultimately exceeded even those of the beautiful landscape through which it passed.

  Central to the appeal of the Lynton & Barnstaple was that romantic Keatsian quality long so attractive to the British sensibility – being doomed to die almost from the outset. From its inception in 1898, nearly everything went wrong. The trackbed cost far more to build through the difficult landscape than anyone reckoned, and the ensuing financial burden coincided with the start of the motor age. By the 1920s, road traffic was starting to eat into its revenues, and as the income dwindled, maintenance suffered. In 1923 it was given a fresh start by the newly formed Southern Railway, who bought a brand-new locomotive and rolling stock. Even this hard-nosed company, whose core business was running London commuter services, could not fail to be seduced by the L&B charm.

  But unlike the narrow-gauge railways of Wales, whose heart was in transporting hardware – quarry stone and slate, stuff that could be weighed, measured and costed – the business model of the L&B was more fragile. Even before it had a chance to establish itself, its fickle market of tourists was rapidly turning to the charabanc, with its ability to go where fancy took it along the roads and lanes of Devon. Despite the railway’s quaintness, with its Emmet-like locomotives and their long tall funnels, charming small stations and views from the carriage window which surpassed those of almost every other railway of its kind in Europe, it could not survive the Great Depression. On one dismal day at the end of September 1935 more than a thousand people stood in the pouring rain on Barnstaple station to perform the obsequies as the last train rolled in.

  Today, as I set off in search of what still remains, the scenery is as glorious as ever, although accessing it involves a long journey through the switchback curves and gear-juddering hills of the A39, rolling around death-defying hairpin bends on the fringes of Exmoor. But after a bone-shaking ride of nearly an hour, there in the drizzle alongside the road I spy the unmistakable cloud of steam from a tiny engine at the head of a couple of wooden carriages waiting to depart in a perfect little station, with cosy stone buildings and a name so bucolic you could hardly make it up. WOODY BAY, says the Southern Railway concrete sign on the platform, still fringed with moss as though nothing has changed in the past eighty years.

  As if to complete the sepia atmosphere of time warp, a kettle is boiling in the booking office and the station cat wraps itself around my feet as the ticket clerk pulls an old-style cardboard ticket out of the rack, with his old-world ink-stamping machine at the ready. Could this be a hallucination? I wonder as I think of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his drug-fuelled versifying at Porlock just along the coast. (And no, I didn’t take any quinine tablets for the stomach-churning bus trip to get here.) Here, in high definition not virtual reality, is the most famous station on England’s most famous narrow-gauge railway – and at 1,000 feet above sea level the highest stop in the entire 365-mile span of the territory of the Southern Railway from Kent to Cornwall. It’s as though the clocks have continued to tick on since the last train ran back in 1935.

  Authentic though the scene might seem, the works plate on the little green engine – a 0-4-2T tank called Isaac – gives it away. Built by the famous locomotive engineers W. G. Bagnall for a South African platinum mine in 1953, the old L&B was but a memory by then. But no time to ruminate now. Ticket in hand I’m off, jolting along on slatted wooden seats, a heady cocktail of steam and Atlantic spray percolating through the old-fashioned windows, which drop down all the way with a tug on an old-fashioned leather strap – once so beloved of schoolboys with penknives, who would take them home for souvenirs.

  After a mile we squeal to a stop, and Driver Pete and Fireman John crank the reverser before running the engine round the train for the return journey to Woody Bay. What? Journey over already? ‘We’ve done very well to get this far,’ John tells me, explaining how the preservationists of the present-day Lynton & Barnstaple only started on their mission to rebuild the line in 1979. But so far it’s just a resurrected fragment of what was once constructed across these moors to such great hopes and dreams.

  The inception of the original line in the 1890s was as eccentric as the brief years between its birth and death. There cannot be many railways that share their heritage with Page 3 of the Sun, but the Lynton & Barnstaple owes its conception to the media baron Sir George Newnes, who lived in Lynton and made a fortune from the mass-circulation magazine Titbits, direct forerunner of today’s tabloid press. Newnes was also publisher of the Strand Magazine, in which Arthur Conan Doyle made his debut with the Sherlock Holmes stories, but it was his entry into the sleepy world of north Devon that really shook things up. Until the middle of the nineteenth century the remote twin villages of Lynton and Lynmouth had been in decline, with populations falling and the local herring shoals fished out. But with its spectacular Exmoor location, the Lynton area of north Devon was beginning to develop a tourist industry, even though local transport was so poor that able-bodied passengers aboard the horse-drawn coach services were forced to get out on steep hills and walk – and sometimes even push.

  Enter Sir George and Lady Newnes, touring the area on holiday in the 1880s. They fell in love so madly with the area that they bought their own grand house in Lynton. And so powerful was the influence of this metropolitan grandee on the local economy that it was no time before he sponsored a rail link to the outside world. The first sod was dug at the site of Lynton station by Lady Newnes on 17 September 1885, and her husband was in buoyant mood when he gave an interview in 1898 to the Railway Magazine, declaiming (in the style of a man who clearly knew how to work the media), ‘I believe that Lynton has for some time enjoyed the distinction of being the only place in England extensively visited by tourists, despite the fact that it is twenty miles from any railway station … Almost by the time these words are in print, the iron horse – or should I say iron pony – will be journeying every day to the Switzerland of England.’

  But not everyone was so bullish. There were plenty of detractors too, even from as far away as Yorkshire, where the Sheffield Independent ran an editorial bemoaning the fact that ‘the very mountains of England may soon become no better than the hills of the Rhine – many
of them adorned with a rack-and-pinion railway, a restaurant and a promenade. Some may rejoice that Lynton was delivered over to the clutches of the steam monster; but there are a select few who will mourn, and mourn with reason.’

  These ‘select few’ weren’t the only ones who wished the new railway ill. It was jinxed well before the first ticket was ever issued. The building contract for the line had been awarded to James Nuttall of Manchester, whose £42,100 tender was considerably less than the £48,000 submitted by the local firm Jones Brothers, who had expected to get the job. But this was a disastrous error, and the construction of the line turned out to be a financial shambles, with Nuttall finding he had to hack a hillside railway through rocky outcrops, rather than laying a surface line through the easy-going clay that he had been expecting. Worse, the railway was also forced to overpay for the land, parting with a sum described by Newnes at the opening ceremony as ‘daylight robbery’. Work fell behind schedule, and the line opened a year late, with the contractor suing the company for a further £40,000. Although Nuttall went bankrupt and the L&B was spared by a court from having to pay, it lost its first year’s maintenance contract and started its working life with a financial albatross around its neck. The dismal reality was that it would never recover.

  Still, the quaint little 2-6-2T tank engines, bought from engineers Manning Wardle for £1,100 each, were jolly enough – named Exe, Yeo and Taw after the local rivers. Sixteen carriages were also supplied, including observation cars, specially ordered to Newnes’s specification so that the scenery could be enjoyed at its best. So enthusiastic was the motive-power department that another engine – a 2-4-2T tank called Lyn – was ordered immediately from the American Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia. Initially traffic seemed to justify it, with 1,200 passengers a week carried after the opening on 16 May 1898.

  In 1903 the L&B played its part in British transport history by providing the first ever feeder service of motor buses to and from a railway station. Two six-horsepower Milnes-Daimler vehicles were provided for connections from the intermediate station of Blackmoor to the seaside resort of Ilfracombe. They were bizarre vehicles with no windscreens, seating twenty people in five ascending tiers, like theatre seats. Passengers in the back rows had to climb a six-rung ladder to reach their seats, and there were no doors. The experiment was brought abruptly to an end, however, when one vehicle was pulled over by the police for reaching the terrifying speed of 8 mph! To quote the local newspaper, ‘One of these cars was travelling at a little over 8 mph on a bye-road when the police interfered, a prosecution was instituted and a heavy fine was inflicted.’

  But in these early days, while never exactly prosperous, the company managed to make ends meet, with a small excess of income over expenditure every year. In 1909 and 1913 profits topped the £3,000 mark, and the directors managed to squeeze out a 0.5 per cent dividend. Even in the World War I years, pit props provided good business and another 0.5 per cent was paid in 1919. It is while these glory days are still bright, before the sad years of decline and closure, that we might rub the lamp of the railway genie and recreate a journey along the line in its heyday.

  Let’s imagine the early-morning train at Barnstaple station, where two platforms were sufficient for both the main-line trains and the L&B services. From 1899 onwards there were five services a day. The first one down, at 6.22 a.m., would connect with the overnight train from London, bringing the newspapers and the mail. The first up train – leaving Lynton at 9 a.m. – would convey passengers onto the London train, which eventually became the Atlantic Coast Express, the most superior train on the Southern Railway.

  The locomotives were always beautifully kept and must have looked very smart in their original livery. The crews at Pilton sheds, outside Barnstaple, buffed away with pride, working the polish into a fish-scale pattern, while the brasswork – chimney, cap, dome and safety-valve covers – was invariably glittering. The basic colour was a deep green, often referred to as dark emerald or holly green. This was originally offset by a broad black line with a narrower orange line inside. The frames, cylinders and other gear below the tank sides and running plate were painted in a reddish brown, while the buffer beams and headlamps were vermilion. ‘A beautiful sight,’ as one early passenger put it.

  No sooner are we out of Barnstaple, than we’re climbing – no better way to get the feel than in the words of the Ward Lock Red Guide to Lynton and Lynmouth:

  In order to avoid the expense of tunnels, long embankments and bridges, the line was made to wind and twist so that its course resembles a mountain torrent. At more than one point the turns are so sharp that even a short train may be on both sections of an ‘S’ curve simultaneously. Heading north from Snapper Halt, the line crossed and re-crossed the River Yeo, before turning onto the Chelfham Viaduct (pronounced ‘Chilham’) the line’s major engineering feature, with its eight arches, 70 feet high, spanning the Stoke Rivers Valley.

  Built of yellow Marland bricks, this still stands today, although in the days of the railway the high parapets frustratingly obscured the views of the surrounding scenery.

  At Bratton Fleming station you might just catch sight of a stag in full cry as the train climbs ever higher. ‘It was a line of little things,’ said Frank Box, a photographer whose images have left later generations some of the most charming memories of the line. ‘It seemed a marvel how, on a gauge of only 1 ft 11½ inches, a coach seating four a side could be safely poised,’ he wrote. ‘As one jogged along there was ample time to observe the simple everyday scenes of the countryside; the litter of pigs and the primroses near Snapper; magpies slowly winging their flight from copse to copse; the morning newspaper flung out by the guard as one climbed near the farm at Chumhill; the wild daffodils and some beautiful velvety-coated carthorse foals below Wistlandpound – lovely name.’ Other highlights for Box were a ‘white-walled homestead perched so prominently above a sensational horseshoe curve; rabbits in their hundreds on a sunny hillside near Parracombe. Then the train would stop suddenly while the driver alighted and tenderly lifted into safety a small lamb which had strayed onto the “two-foot”.’

  Buried away in the Devon backwoods, it not surprising that the line had its share of eccentricities. On one occasion a party of American tourists chartered a locomotive and brake van so they could view the scenery in appropriate Edwardian style. Naturally they provisioned themselves with a lavish hamper and some fine vintages of the best wine, and when they arrived at Lynton they presented the leftovers to the crew. It turned out to be a merry evening, and as dawn broke the men woke up with sore heads in a quarry some way from the station with the horrible realisation they were booked to drive the managing director to Barnstaple. Worse still, when they got to their engine the fire was out. Some frantic chopping of sleepers got it going, and they managed to start the train. But the pressure was low, and little did the unsuspecting executive realise that the journey was only accomplished by coasting down the gradients under control of the handbrake, operated by a crew with thick heads. Another favourite trick of the staff, when the trains weren’t running on Sundays, was to place an inspection trolley on the track at Woody Bay and speed down on it to Lynton using only a piece of wood for a brake.

  Drink played its part in many an L&B escapade. The stationmaster at Woody Bay was partial to an evening pint or two, but the general manager had a summer hut in the grounds of the neighbouring hotel, where he liked to spend weekends. To cover himself before popping out for a snifter, the stationmaster would ring along the line and ask if ‘Mumble Mumble’ was on his way. All the staff knew Mumble Mumble’s identity and would tip him off accordingly. But this backfired one night when the stationmaster rang the next station and asked whether Mumble Mumble was on the train. ‘This is Mumble Mumble,’ came the reply.

  For better or worse, the local fauna played its part in the operation of the line – frequently delaying the trains but also providing the crews with a ready supply of fresh meat. Chickens would fly squ
awking from under the wheels of the engines, which had to stop frequently for cattle to be cleared from the line. Then there were obstinate pigs, which would only move with a slap from the fireman’s shovel. But a red deer trapped in the fencing wires would provide a rare treat for the crews, and some delicious venison would be on the menu for days.

  And so we head on to the terminus at Lynton – where the station, at 700 feet above the sea, was unpopular with the locals, who weren’t prepared to huff and puff up the steep hill. There were some who even ascribed to Newnes a nimbyish reluctance to let the railway spoil the ambience of his own mansion, Hollerday House. But there is no doubt that the location of the station, one of the highest buildings in the town, contributed to the line’s undoing. Even so, it’s hard to disagree with the words of the Southern Railway’s official guide – Devon and Cornish Days, written by E. P. Leigh-Bennett in the early 1930s: ‘In no other train have you ever been taken through such excitingly lovely country. It goes rather slowly with you, for which you are profoundly thankful, because if it rushed along, like its main-line colleagues, you wouldn’t be able to feast your eyes on the scenery as you are now doing. Delightful little stations, too. The bumptious little engine gives a falsetto shriek of pride on approaching and leaving all of them. Perfect!’

  But perhaps too perfect to last. In 1922 receipts dipped below operating costs for the first time, and the Southern Railway – one of the big four companies formed from the grouping of 1923 – agreed to take it over. Track was relaid and the line generally spruced up, but apart from summer tourist traffic, patrons vanished at an ever-accelerating rate to the roads. By 1935 the accountants up at Waterloo had had enough and the axe fell. Even then, the authorities could not quite let go. As the closure notices went up, the company sent out an oddly sentimental sales pitch for the final summer season. ‘Make sure,’ it urged, ‘of a trip this holiday over the romantic light railway between Barnstaple and Lynton, through the beautiful scenery of the miniature Alps of North Devon, along the edge of Exmoor. The line will be closed on 29 September 1935.’