The North Cornwall Line - what was it really like?

[Andy Kirkham]

There are certain lines which, by reason of their remoteness, seem very seldom to have been photographed from the lineside. Nearly all the photographs you see of such lines are of trains standing at stations. The Carmarthen-Aberystwyth line is one such, and the inland section of the North Cornwall line (i.e. excluding the Wadebridge-Padstow section) is another. About 50% of the published photographs I have seen of this line seem to have been taken at Halwill Junction.

 

I do not know the area through which the line passed and consequently I have a poor notion of what sort of scenic experience the journey would have provided. I always imagine it as mainly meandering over a rather desolate plateau. But was it what you might call a sublime desolation (as exemplified in more extreme form by the line over Rannoch Moor or the route to Georgemas Junction) or was it just rather featureless in a dismal and dispiriting way? (I still recall my disappointment when I travelled on the Okehampton line in 1970 anticipating an experience of romantic Dartmoor bleakness but finding the scenery very unremarkable)

 

The answer is of course likely to be subjective, and highly dependent on the weather conditions in which it was experienced, but I'd love to hear peoples' opinions nevertheless.

 

I know many enthusiasts regard the line fondly and there are many good reasons for doing so - as a holiday line, the last home of the T9s and as a romantic lost cause - But should I should I be mourning it as one of Britain's great lost scenic routes?

[Miss Prism]

I think the general picture you paint is very accurate: a bit desolate, a bit bleak, windswept, comparatively few trees, with much of the middle part of the line on a featureless plateau. As such, I suppose it can't be called a 'great lost scenic route'. That kind of scenery can feel sublime, or inspriring, or romantic, or dispiriting, or forbidding, depending on one's mood. Now throw into it a T9 and a couple of coaches, one passenger in each coach, and the anacronism of all that expensive railway infrastructure becomes greater as the years pass by.

 

http://www.northcornwallrailway.co.uk/ gives lots of pictures, and a good flavour.

[Irishswissernie]

The collection below covers the Southern lines in North Cornwall, covering the lines when they were still in operation

 

 

 

http://railwaysofcornwall.fotopic.net/c1799319.html

 

 

 

ERnie

[AberdeenBill]

There are certain lines which, by reason of their remoteness, seem very seldom to have been photographed from the lineside. Nearly all the photographs you see of such lines are of trains standing at stations. The Carmarthen-Aberystwyth line is one such, and the inland section of the North Cornwall line (i.e. excluding the Wadebridge-Padstow section) is another. About 50% of the published photographs I have seen of this line seem to have been taken at Halwill Junction.

 

I do not know the area through which the line passed and consequently I have a poor notion of what sort of scenic experience the journey would have provided. I always imagine it as mainly meandering over a rather desolate plateau. But was it what you might call a sublime desolation (as exemplified in more extreme form by the line over Rannoch Moor or the route to Georgemas Junction) or was it just rather featureless in a dismal and dispiriting way? (I still recall my disappointment when I travelled on the Okehampton line in 1970 anticipating an experience of romantic Dartmoor bleakness but finding the scenery very unremarkable)

 

The answer is of course likely to be subjective, and highly dependent on the weather conditions in which it was experienced, but I'd love to hear peoples' opinions nevertheless.

 

I know many enthusiasts regard the line fondly and there are many good reasons for doing so - as a holiday line, the last home of the T9s and as a romantic lost cause - But should I should I be mourning it as one of Britain's great lost scenic routes?

 

Very interesting post... "Atmosphere" is something all modellers want to create, but it's not much written or talked about (or photographed). Another example might be the former GNSR lines in north-east Scotland.

 

Bill

[2ManySpams]

If you want to feel for real what a part of the North Cornwall was like have a ride on the Launceston Steam Railway. It's a narrow gauge line running on the old NCR trackbed between Launceston and (almost) Egloskerry. At the Irwell Press launch of the "An Illustrated History of the North Cornwall Railway" a while back i was lucky enough to get a cab ride there and back. This part of the route was far from bleak and it was great catching glimpses of Launceston castle on the return trip.

 

Although photos of trains running between stations on the NCR are less numerous than station shots, there's still a fair few around. These show how the character of the route varied along its length from the lush Kensey Valley to the windswept approaches to Otterham and the beautiful run along the banks of the Camel Estuary to Padstow. A much more varied route scenically than you would imagine from a map. Only you can answer whether or not it's closing was a great loss of a scenic line, after all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I for one have been captivated by it on numerous visits to the area.

[bike2steam]

In a word - quiet, apart from Wadebridge, but as a guide Padstow had, on average, 5 trains a day.

[Oldddudders]

I knew the line slightly in the late 50s/early '60s, holidaying in Port Isaac. Comments in this thread are spot-on. This is lonely, restless countryside, undulating and fertile, but always at the mercy of Atlantic weather. I've even seen snow in May! The few trees out of the valleys tend to be deformed - hunched against the wind, if you like. All that said, this isn't the Lune Gorge, Shap Summit or Blea Moor. By the time I travelled it, the pointlessness of the route was absolute - only the throughout trip from Waterloo made sense, and no railway can thrive on a few weeks' traffic in the Summer. The Middleton Press books on lines to Padstow and Bude provide interesting statistics showing traffic decline - up to 50% between 1928 and 1936! The fact that there was seldom a Sunday train beyond Launceston, even in the early days, tells us something.

 

The Irwell Press book is also a most enjoyable read, and does include some shots away from stations, as well as lots of detail, including significant and well-researched contributions by 2manyspams (see above) himself! Definitely a recommended buy if you want to know more.

 

As for the plethora of Halwill Junction shots - well it was the key to both Bude and Padstow, despite actually being in Devon, and as I'm building some sort of model, those pics are really quite popular here! I would suggest that Okehampton, Halwill and Wadebridge were the only 3 locations where real "operations" could be seen, most of the other stations boasting a passing loop and a couple of sidings at best, although Launceston had a bit more to it, and Padstow and Bude had the usual terminus advantages of locos shunting etc.

[edcayton]

Yes, but Launceston had the terminus of the GWR branch from Plymouth adjacent to the N Cornwall line station, and in BR days the GW station was goods only, so GW trains terminated in the N Cornwall one. That gives some extra traffic plus some variety in stock.

 

Ed

[Guest 34008Padstow]

Finding this a real intresting read. i find the section between padstow and wadebridge is quite picturesqe, unfortunatley been to young to know what the line was like, i imagine not much has changed scenery wise. Also the section from st kew highway garage to trellil tunnel is quite a nice walk, albeit quite overgrown in places.

[Penlan]

Not directly related to the 'NCL', but depending what period your modelling, the trees today in Cornwall are far more numerous than say 100 years ago, or indeed 50 years ago.

 

Down at the bottom end of the County, the road from Zennor to Penzance starts off bleak and windswept, and then within the village of Newmill it all changes into lush green scenery. And It's surprising just how different a bleak to green scenery change is.

 

My area of interest - the Welsh Valleys, well greenery galore now, but 50+ years ago, mostly bleak.

[Oldddudders]

Yes, but Launceston had the terminus of the GWR branch from Plymouth adjacent to the N Cornwall line station, and in BR days the GW station was goods only, so GW trains terminated in the N Cornwall one. That gives some extra traffic plus some variety in stock.

True - and I do recall seeing GW locos there in passing. The essential problem for the whole North Cornwall railway was that there weren't many trains! That's why I nominate the three stations which were capable of humming for at least a part of the day. Okehampton obviously benefitted from the Plymouth trains as well as those to the NC routes, and some trains split there to serve both or all three destinations. It also had the to-ings and fro-ings of Meldon Quarry. Halwill seemed to split or join most trains - a convoluted process in steam days, including much work sorting & amalgamating freight services from Wadebridge, Bude and even Torrington. Halwill's layout permitted parallel departures from the Down Main to Bude and from the bay to Padstow - yet the only photo I've ever seen of this useful facility being deployed was in diesel days! Wadebridge had the additional services from Bodmin North and the WR services from Bodmin General - many of which didn't run on to Padstow, thus making more work at Wadebridge - plus local freight customers and industries.

 

Launceston would make a fine model, but the modeller would need to identify just how many trains would be moving in a typical operating day, and whether that bothered him/her. For people who want a model with a purpose, that can be an important factor.

[Guest 34008Padstow]

Ive often thought about making a model of Wadebridge but ATM i dont have the room for it. i was thinking of building the area around east box. a good excuse for WR and SR engines.

[Miss Prism]

Apropos Penlan's tree message, the situation is complex. Try this fascinating pdf from the excellent www.cornishhedges.com site.

[Penlan]

Thank you Miss Prism, that's a site I had not seen before, very interesting.

 

Further to the second picture down - I have a couple of elms growing out of one of my Cornish Hedges too, just hoping the tap root has well and truly found it's way into a firm base!! At least mine look a lot healthier than those in the article.

 

Currently, a lot of visitors are finding the narrow lanes near me hide harder material than the visible soft green vegitation in/on the Cornish Hedge. ...... and when it says 'Max Width 6' 6"' why do they still think they'll get a 7' vehicle through, or a big 4x4 with a caravan - oh what joy as I sit out in the porch watching them struggle.

[2ManySpams]

Currently, a lot of visitors are finding the narrow lanes near me hide harder material than the visible soft green vegitation in/on the Cornish Hedge. ...... and when it says 'Max Width 6' 6"' why do they still think they'll get a 7' vehicle through, or a big 4x4 with a caravan - oh what joy as I sit out in the porch watching them struggle.

 

Mmm, in my 'yoof' i found out the hard way that the lower green bits in Cornish / Devon hedge banks are actually sharp rocks carefully hidden by locals under flowers and weeds to shred car body panels (Not funny at the time though)

[2ManySpams]

Apropos Penlan's tree message, the situation is complex. Try this fascinating pdf from the excellent www.cornishhedges.com site.

 

Goes to prove my theory that every niche subject, no matter how far from the mainstream, now has at least one website and a following!

[dibber25]

I noticed, on a recent visit to Kidderminster (SVR), that lying outside the museum is the concrete running-in board from Camelford, which I used to think was one of the 'bigger' places on the NCR. However, driving through it, blink and you'll miss it and the station is miles out of town. The running-in board for this little place reads 'Camelford for Boscastle and Tintagel' but all three places put together wouldn't muster enough traffic to warrant a station. Its remoteness - bleak in bad weather but otherwise just remote - was what made it so damned attractive. Why are we enthusiasts always drawn to these lost cause railways, I wonder?

CHRIS LEIGH

[Xerces Fobe2]

I have 2 DVD's that I would recommend, both by B&R Video Productions http://www.bandrvideos.co.uk/ which have some good footage of these lines

 

Volumne 69 - The Jim Clemens Collection No.3 - The Withered Arm (The Atlantic Coast Express)

 

Volume 129 - The Jim Clemens Collection No.22 - Steam into Cornwall

 

 

 

Xerces Fobe

[Penlan]

...... Camelford, .....driving through it, blink and you'll miss it and the station is miles out of town. The running-in board for this little place reads 'Camelford for Boscastle and Tintagel' but all three places put together wouldn't muster enough traffic to warrant a station.

TIC - Oh Chris, you may be use to 'The Big City' etc, etc, but for those of us down in the principality, that's plenty of traffic generated to warrant a station or two..... Lifes not all Clapham Junct.....

 

I must find my copy of the GWR traffic at stations book, that should help quantify some statistics (and prove me totally wrong).

[Gwiwer]

From a Great Uncle who drove from Launceston and Wadebridge I can advise that the crews generally found the route unforgiving, bleak, cold, damp and with anything but a light load on it could be taxing. Most loads were very light however but wartime troop trains not so. Regular passengers were few and far between away from local market days, the occasional school traffic and of course the summer holiday brigade. Most of those however used the line only on a few days of a year.

 

The countryside is a windswept upland, some of it on a plateau and elsewhere rolling green pastures with some steep but not deep valleys. This ensured that the line meandered indirectly between the thinly-scattered and small settlements it served. Whilst well-intentioned by its original promoters and builders there are arguments as to whether it should ever have been built at all so poor was potential traffic in the hinterland.

 

Olddudders has described the area superbly; he and I both have a good knowledge of that part of the country. I have probably walked and cycled every lane over the years.

 

The line wandered through farmland and, despite the sometimes undulating scenery, was not blessed with a large number of bridges to act as photographic vantage points. Other access points were somewhat restricted due to the rural nature of the area. With light traffic much of which was similar day after day it was never the most photographed route and pictures away from the stations are less common than on many other lines. Surprisingly few pictures seem to exist of Trelill Tunnel as well, which is one of the major structures on the line.

 

As well as having a driver amongst us the line was used at times by my family on occasional business into Wadebridge from Port Isaac Road and has been described as a "bleak and damp" experience not usually enjoyed but endured. Trains were wont to be delayed due to single-line running in later years as well.

 

Anyone who has visited the area may know just how biting the Atlantic winds can be, howling in at gale force with the sleet horizontal or tame as a kitten with just enough breath to disturb the soaking wet fog which also envelopes this area frequently.

[Oldddudders]

TIC - Oh Chris, you may be use to 'The Big City' etc, etc, but for those of us down in the principality, that's plenty of traffic generated to warrant a station or two..... Lifes not all Clapham Junct.....

 

I must find my copy of the GWR traffic at stations book, that should help quantify some statistics (and prove me totally wrong).

Quoting from the Middleton Press "Branch Line to Padstow", in 1928 Camelford issued 6263 tickets - in 1936 it was 3504. Given the 6-day a week service, that 1928 figure is around 20 tickets a day, although in the same year they collected nearly 11000 - 35 a day. As Chris Leigh suggests, apart from Launceston, Camelford was indeed the busiest station between Wadebridge and Okehampton.

 

I believe that today Cornwall is one of the "poorest" counties in England, despite, or perhaps because of, the gazillions of contented retirees moving there. The Port Isaacs do very well in the wake of Doc Martin (and Poldark before him), but indigenous work and wealth are scarce. Perhaps that was always so, thus travel wasn't much afforded in a county where, in any case, people from beyond the Tamar are "foreigners"!

 

In contrast to the NCR, now gone more than 40 years, one looks at railways in the far north of Scotland - it is clear that the lines up there are still regarded as a part of the essential passenger network.

[Gwiwer]

people from beyond the Tamar are "foreigners"!

That's "Furriners"

 

With Camelford issuing something like 20 tickets a day on average and being the busiest station between Launceston and Wadebridge we can only imagine how much traffic ever originated from Otterham, Tresmeer, Egloskerry and the like. Most trains called there for no apparent purpose.

 

In contrast with the Far North, which is much more remote and sees fewer trains than the NCR did, there is the parallel GWR route through Cornwall which links most of the major centres of population directly. Only Launceston and Bodmin are any significant distance away from the railway among the major towns and the latter has had a good bus link for all the years since BR withdrew the occasional passenger trains up the hill from Bodmin Road. Callington is still linked to Gunnislake and Tavistock (and also to Plymouth) by buses which are more frequent than that train service ever was.

 

The NCR / SR route was always seen as more a competitive strike to prevent the GWR having everything its own way and the more so as holiday traffic grew quickly in the early 20th Century. Had the proposed line between Padstow and Newquay have been built history may have been different but as things were the SR has always had the secondary route to the south west while the GWR had the lucrative and faster main line. That the SR nobly maintained, developed and promoted its own services to the extent it did, and invested in such operations as the ACE and Devon Belle, speaks volumes for their "try hard" approach against the odds.

 

Reverting to the NCR section I for one would have been less than enthusiastic about standing around a fairly isolated and probably windswept spot waiting for a train only to capture what, in many cases, would be an unremarkable view of a loco hauling a few coaches / vans on a single line through fields. In some respects such a shot could be taken in the proverbial "anywhere".

[The Stationmaster]

 

I believe that today Cornwall is one of the "poorest" counties in England, despite, or perhaps because of, the gazillions of contented retirees moving there. The Port Isaacs do very well in the wake of Doc Martin (and Poldark before him), but indigenous work and wealth are scarce. Perhaps that was always so, thus travel wasn't much afforded in a county where, in any case, people from beyond the Tamar are "foreigners"!

 

 

Some of them got around a bit Ian - my wife has been doing quite a bit of research into her family's past and one of them definitely travelled from the deep west of the county to Bodmin where he spent a few years in 'all found' accommodation while another even had a free trip to Australia (and it seems that all he had done was try to start a few fires ).

[Oldddudders]

Some of them got around a bit Ian - my wife has been doing quite a bit of research into her family's past and one of them definitely travelled from the deep west of the county to Bodmin where he spent a few years in 'all found' accommodation while another even had a free trip to Australia (and it seems that all he had done was try to start a few fires ).

Bodmin gaol doesn't sound like a very nice place to spend your days, I must say - we'll leave Rick (Gwiwer) to tell us about Oz, (I am fairly sure he went there under his own steam!). My wife also has Cornish forebears, with a big house near Blisland featuring, but her maternal grandfather had a change of religious conviction, gave up the life and moved to Wimbledon. A barrister who never practised, he became a genealogist, which is why she has been able to trace her lineage back to before 1400AD.

 

I fear we have rather betrayed the OP's entirely valid question. Perhaps the very lack of patronage and urgency about this essentially lonely country railway in North Cornwall has added to its appeal to enthusiasts and modellers alike. The latter group also find it very sympatico by its offering 2- and 3-coach trains on a single line, pulled by Pacifics in the post-war years, thus suiting our space-constrained layouts while enabling authentic big-engine appeal. Few other UK prototypes can match that, perhaps.

[Gwiwer]

(I am fairly sure he went there under his own steam!)

 

Nah - I was transported on the instructions of SWMBO who is Aussie by birth but (like myself) of Cornish ancestry. B)

 

it seems that all he had done was try to start a few fires

 

Exactly the sort of person Australia does NOT need; it's already the most bush-fire prone nation on Earth without having any extra help

 

Perhaps the very lack of patronage and urgency about this essentially lonely country railway in North Cornwall has added to its appeal to enthusiasts and modellers alike. The latter group also find it very sympatico by its offering 2- and 3-coach trains on a single line, pulled by Pacifics in the post-war years, thus suiting our space-constrained layouts while enabling authentic big-engine appeal. Few other UK prototypes can match that, perhaps.

 

Nail - head - hit. That and the facts that it was essentially a railway known to most only from holiday travels and had the curiosity of the Beattie well-tanks near the far end.