ronstrutt

Latest snippet from the Archives. In 1956 the BTC had asked each region to recommend suitable branches on which to experiment with lightweight diesel cars (presumably what we now refer to as 'railbuses') and the Southern Region considered the branches to Westerham and Hawkhurst as suitable candidates. These branches were presumably chosen because Kent Coast electrification had just been approved and the steam-worked branches then became a problem. A railbus might have offered a way of modernising the branch at low cost.The SR's choice eventually fell on Westerham because it was already worked by a single train after the 1955 cutbacks but in the event, of course, none of the railbuses went to the Southern. However, it's another traction possibility for the branch. I think that Heljan have just produced a model of one. Their biggest problem was that they were too light to work track circuits reliably and that would have created problems in getting it back to Tonbridge for refuelling and maintenance once the main line had been resignalled. Mind you, I don't think that any of the lines on which railbuses were tried survived, unless they used one on the Braintree branch.

I hate to be critical about such a wonderful model but there's one thing missing from Brasted. On the bank on the far side of the track, immediately opposite the station building, there used to be a cleared ash-covered patch on which the name "Brasted" was set out using white-painted flints or stones. It was a real feature of the station. I have often thought about sneaking out onto the M25 one dark night and painting it on the carriageway. You can just see it in this picture. I'm not sure it had a border by the end though. In fact, come to think of it, after Brasted became a Halt in 1955 it may have vanished into undergrowth unless the PW gang maintained it.

It's on again tonight 11.25pm BBC4

I'm not sure about conspiracy theory. That implies a degree of competency and planning which is quite patently absent both in BR and the MOT in the 1950s and 60s. BR first looked at closing Westerham in 1951. Nothing happened then but it was decided to defer any track renewals as closure was likely in the following few years. The result was that by 1955 the track was falling to pieces and either speed restrictions would be needed such that the timetable would no longer work or the service would have to be suspended. Much of the track was then relaid and the weekday service was limited to peak hours on a one-engine in steam basis. The staff for the branch comprised two sets of footplate crew, two signalman, two porters and two junior porters (the former for general duties at Westerham, the latter to issue tickets on-train at Brasted and Chevening), and four track maintenance staff. Why there were two signalmen is anyone's guess. Westerham box could have been converted into a ground frame with the line worked as a long siding. The box and signalmen were only really needed for the freight but by the 1950s this consisted of only a wagon of coal at each of Westerham and Brasted every other day. (Note how most of the photographs show an empty yard at Westerham.) The coal merchants would have to make other arrangements if the line closed so why not earlier? The same goes for parcels traffic. Most of Westerham goods yard could have been sold off. Yet in the report BR are still talking about staffing any re-opened Westerham as a passenger, parcels and enquiry office. Why? Of the 180 or so passengers a day, the vast majority held season tickets. I need to add the figures up but Westerham can't have been issuing more than 30-40 tickets a day. Couldn't those have been sold on-train too? Weekends saw a much more extensive service than weekdays after 1955, especially on summer Sundays, but the usage figures indicate only a handful of people using each train. Some form of Saturday service would have been needed - many people still worked a 5½ day week then - but most of the weekend trains would have lost money. BR knew that the line was losing money but there seemed to be no serious will to reduce its costs. I doubt whether BR knew anything at all about the South Orbital road. If they did, the plans, which had been around since the 1920s, were for a parkway-style road, offering motorists the opportunity to enjoy a pleasant day out, driving through open countryside, not as an engine of growth and development. In any case, BR at that time would probably have thought that if Westerham did expand, it would need a bigger goods yard.

How are you going to model the Brasted 'voluble man'. DCC Sound Chip?

To give you a bit of background flavour, I thought you might enjoy this extract from a BR report into the branch. It is not clear who the author is (the document is only initialled) but it is someone fairly senior - the Southern Region's Chief Commercial Manager, perhaps. 12th May, 1960 (For record) PROPOSED CLOSING OF WESTERHAM BRANCH Today, accompanied by Messrs. Dewdney and Cowell, of the Line Traffic Manager’s office, I visited the Westerham branch and Sevenoaks. There were no other passengers on the 9.37a.m. train from Westerham, which is the last service before the passenger train service ceases until 4.20 in the afternoon, and the impression gained on the trip was that of a branch which had long outlived its usefulness. The station buildings at Brasted and at Westerham are in a very bad condition indeed, and even if we retain the branch, it would be impossible to retain them in anything like their present form. The goods yard at Westerham was virtually empty, but at Brasted a rather voluble man was unloading some coal. We toured the area around Westerham, and either side of the main road leading from Westerham to Sevenoaks (Riverhead). Westerham Station is not badly sited, but it gives the impression of being a sleepy little town, and the amount of housing development going on is relatively insignificant. At Brasted there is nothing at all in the vicinity. The road leading to the station is very narrow, and I cannot think of any reason for keeping the place open. Chevening Halt is sited a little better. It lies in a cutting, and almost immediately, good-class housing is found leading away to the south. Otherwise all the housing is located on the main road or just off it, and there is really very little until you gain the outskirts of Sevenoaks. All in all, under present circumstances and with apparently no immediate prospect of housing development in this area, I do not think there is any justification whatsoever for us keeping the branch open. I am sure, however, we would be wise in hanging onto the land in case the green belt “caves in” in the future, and Westerham is allowed to be expanded. In that case we could perhaps put up a very simple modern building at Westerham as a passenger, parcels and enquiry office, possibly in conjunction with the L.T.E. [London Transport Executive], who by then might be encouraged to use some of our redundant space as a bus terminus. The report then goes on to talk about the situation at Sevenoaks. Given the "very bad condition indeed" of the station buildings, you will clearly have to 'distress' your models to a considerable degree and given the off-station area more of an air of somnolence!

Had a fascinating day at the National Archives yesterday except that when I got home and uploaded the photographs I'd taken of over 400 documents, I found that the camera resolution had reset to 640x480 and most of them are barely readable. If you're into "what almost was" BR looked at a number of different options for running the Westerham branch post-steam. These included a 2-car demu, diesel railbus (type not specified), battery electric railcar like the one used on the Ballater branch, diesel shunter plus stock (presumably a class 09, though it wouldn't have been able to maintain the timetable and had no way of heating the stock), but they finally opted for electrification using a 2-EPB. No through workings to London were planned, though.

Remarkable. I think I'll wait for 3D printers to come down in price! ;-)

You're right, I see the edge of the door now. During those early days of photography there were enthusiasts who went round taking pictures of everything - or things that didn't move, at least. Up here in Diss, Norfolk, we had one who ran a photographic studio but when he wasn't busy he would load up all his equipment on a cart and trundle off round the countryside taking pictures. For them the fascination was in being able to record things that previously only an artist would have been able to do. There was also a huge market for postcards - people sent them then much as we now send texts and postage was cheaper for postcards than for letters. This one was sent to apologise for the sender not being able to visit the recipient in Kensington as arranged. Fortunately for us, stations were a popular subject for postcards; they showed that the town was in the modern age.

I just tried posting a hi-res scan of the postcard but I think the site software blew a gasket over it. Second try. I got the postcard on Ebay - I have a permanent search for Westerham pictures to provide illustrations for the planned book. Like you, I've never seen this one before and at £6 I couldn't let it go. Please restrict use to private research and similar purposes. A few things that the scan shows up. Firstly, is that the engine shed (with the 1882 replacement pitched roof) just to the right of the Crown? Secondly, note all the staff (plus postman?) posing in front of the station. Thirdly, are my eyes deceiving me or is the side door to the Crown bricked up? Btw, the National Archives has a photograph of a grave in Westerham churchyard dated 1894 and apparently the station is visible in the background. It must be quite a distant shot, though, because the church is some way from the station. Must have a look when I'm next there. Ron

I recently bought this postcard, which I thought you might be interested in.

This really is coming on apace. It's exciting watching it come to life. I trust that you intend to have a miniature Mr Marples striding out across the backscene, complete with dark glasses, and the infamous David Serpell running up the station approach to catch his train. I just wish that my research was coming on anywhere near as fast. There is just so much stuff to go through. I have resorted to going to Kew at intervals, photographing dozens of documents, and then working on them at home, else I'd spend most of my life in south-west London. But it's all really great stuff. Just as a teaser: It is often thought that the WVRA were at least half to blame for the preservation scheme's demise through some inept handling and KCC the other half. In fact, it turns out that there were some very, very senior figures at the Ministry of Transport and in BR (people far above the normal level for dealing with a tiddly preservation scheme) who, within a few months of the scheme being announced in 1962, were working hard to stop it. No positive evidence to support it yet but the inevitable suspicion must be that they were worried that if the scheme succeeded and the WVRA could run a commuter service at a profit, it would make BR look stupid and it would undermine the whole Beeching closure plan. I have no doubt that Marples himself was at least aware of what was going on. The WVRA people had no idea what they were up against. Another interesting discovery: It turns out that the branch bridges were all too small to officially accomodate full-height Mk1, Bulleid, and Maunsell stock. Either nobody ever thought to check or, more likely, as track was relaid and reballasted over the years, the gap between rail top and bridge undersides lessened. So, I am afraid that as Chief Inspecting Officer of Model Railways I am issuing a prohibition order on your use of such stock. I will take your Maunsell pull-push set off you for a reasonable price. ;-) Ron

Yes, it was the building of the A21 bypass that really finished off the preservation scheme. Kent CC wanted the preservationists to pay for a bridge over the line rather than filling in the cutting and even then the trackbed might only be available for a few years. Clearly, minds had been made up that it was to be used for the M25 by then if not long before. Using the cutting as a handy spot to get rid of some excess spoil would explain why they didn't bother to demolish the platform first. I will certainly let people know when the results of my latest research bear fruit but don't hold your breath! There is still a mass of material to go through.

What a fantastic model! I never knew Westerham pre-1961 but I certainly knew it post-closure and I knew several of the people involved in the preservation attempt. A bit of the line still exists in my back garden - a rail chair that accidentally fell into my friend's car boot one afternoon during a visit to Westerham. It was one of those lettered "S.E. & C.D.R" when the combined network couldn't quite decide what to call itself. A few year;s ago I walked much of the line on the anniversary of the closure (not the middle bit, obviously - I had to drive that) and I took the railchair back to the spot from which it came. Westerham's major feature was the spaciousness of the site. Even though you have had to compress it, that feeling of spaciousness remains. I am currently working on an article and/or new book that will extend Gould at each end of the line's life and a few points from my research may be of interest. It would be quite in order to run an electric unit on the line for the simple reason that one did. The problem that the Southern Region had was that something had to be done with Kent Coast electrification nearing completion. While it seemed to expect that Hawkhurst would close, it clearly expected Westerham to survive and to need electrification. An EPB unit (I know not whether it was a 4- or 2-car version) was hauled over the line by an H Class to test clearances. In addition, concrete cable troughing was dropped on the lineside for a mile or so out of Dunton Green. Similarly, I have seen a photograph that shows the branch train on a stretch of line which had conductor rail 'pots' dropped alongside the track. I have been told that someone finally realised that the branch was just too long to get away without another sub-station. Without one, the voltage drop at the far end of the line would have been too much for a train pulling away from rest but to add a sub-station would have pushed the cost far too high. If only the line had gone through to Oxted, as was planned on occasions; Oxted line DEMUs could have been used. The major problem with the branch was that it ran to Dunton Green and not Sevenoaks because of problems with an anti-railway landowner. Dunton Green is at the foot of the climb up to Polhill Tunnel, much of it at 1 in 143, so stopping fast steam-hauled services there to pick up branch passengers was never an option and with only a stopping service to connect into the branch was never going to be a massive success. By contrast, up trains leaving Sevenoaks had the advantage of 1½ miles of descent at 1 in 160 to build up speed before tackling the bank. There are, of course, theories that the line was sacrificed to build the M25. The official line has always been that this was not the case. However, as you have noticed, the M25 seems to take a definite 'kink' to make use of the trackbed. West of Westerham the motorway had to run far enough north of the new Westerham bypass to allow room for the proposed Westerham interchange which never got built. It is fascinating that the Godstone to Sevenoaks section of the M25 was about the only stretch of the whole road that was built to the original plans. That suggests to me that the intention all along was to use the trackbed. I am still hopeful that something to support the theory will turn up in my searches at The National Archives. The whole preservation scheme hinged on the original proposal to run a commuter service, probably using ex-GWR railcars, saving BR the cost of subsidising the replacement buses. Once the WVRA dropped that idea in favour of running only steam 'heritage' services the die was cast. I have to say, though, that a preserved railway running for half its length right beside the M25 might not have proved too popular with tourists and there must have been concerns about motorists getting distracted by a steam train on the other side of the fence. Finally, as far as I am aware, Chevening Halt is still there. I visited when the cutting was being infilled and the half-covered platforms were still visible at the bottom. It was probably unnecessary to fill in that bit of cutting that had the halt in it as nothing has subsequently been built on top of it.