Long day's journey into night:
One of our articles last month looked at the 'traditional' summer holiday and the whole business of reaching your destination resort by train, in particular the West of England; the concluding part is in this issue. The railway embarked on holiday specials on an epic scale and our author looks at the challenges faced, not least by passengers enduring lengthy journeys from London, the Midlands and the North as late running tested their patience to the limit and beyond. We might, as enthusiasts, salivate over double-headed trains on the Devon banks, even pairs of 'Kings', and note how often a restaurant car was included to provide civilised catering, but we shall see that going on holiday required stoical resolution. At least there was the exciting prospect of arriving at the seaside eventually- but as for going home...
Back in the 1960s the favourite destination for our summer holiday was Scarborough and somewhat to my disappointment we never made the journey by rail. This was because a direct seasonal bus ran every Saturday from Bury and I don't doubt that my parents found it a cheaper option. Nevertheless it was an ordeal in its own way in travel experience! The bus was laid on by the estimable Ribble Motor Services and departure time was scheduled for 8.00am but it would be gone three o'clock in the afternoon before would finally alight in the resort.
You need to remember that this was in the pre-motorway era and back then long-distance journeys were protracted undertakings. After calling to pick up more passengers in Heywood and Rochdale, the crossing of the Pennines was by a moorland road over Blackstone Edge (where the first bleak road-house refreshment stop was made) before dropping down into Halifax where another booked call was scheduled. From there we proceeded through the West Riding into Leeds for another stop at the coach station before heading towards York. The ring roads around that ancient city were still well in the future and so it was through York's narrow, winding and congested thoroughfares that we slowly picked our course until we came out on the other side, pulling in then for our next refreshment break. It was as well to take advantage of its facilities, because the most tedious stage of the itinerary was still to come...
Only a few miles on we would encounter the back of a creeping, crawling, often stationary, queue of traffic which stretched ahead all the way to the town of Malton where everything had to negotiate its streets and the level crossing over the York-Scarborough railway line. In the 1960s the railway was still busy with seasonal trains and the gates were being closed to the road with considerable frequency. Even in 1964 the timetable showed that between 9.00am and 4.00pm Scarborough sent out eighteen departures in the York direction and presumably about the same number was heading in, along with any 'extras', so the gates were being swung at least every ten minutes. And so onwards we inched - and it would take an hour and more to come through to the far side of Malton and at last make for the coast. Quicker by train, certainly - but the coach was simply more affordable. Not until 1978 did Malton gain the salvation of a bypass - but by then the holiday rail traffic was very much reduced and it was the bypass that was becoming increasingly busy.
I never persuaded my mum and dad to take the Scarborough train but I was more successful in 1966 when for a change we holidayed in Aberystwyth -forthe main objective of visiting the narrow gauge railways I'd read so much about. And behold, there was a train all the way from Manchester, through coaches to Aberystwyth and up the Cambrian Coast to Pwllheli, dividing at Machynlleth. A proper holiday train at last - with electric, steam and diesel motive power in stages along the way - and a trolley service!
A later holiday adventure was on an overnight service from Manchester to Newquay, departing in the late evening and finally showing up in our Cornish destination well before breakfast time. The two of us were able to commandeer a compartment to ourselves for the entire journey and those long sprung seats of fond memory gave the welcome facility for reclining into slumber as we progressed steadily south westwards through the dark, with the small hours disturbed by fitful wakefulness as we reached major centres such as Birmingham New Street and Bristol Temple Meads. Eventually we came to as the sunlight began to spread across the Devon coast, but even after making it to Newquay we still had time to kill before being able to book into our hotel and get outside some bacon and eggs.
The fact that we were able to recline in somnolence serves as an indication that, while the train was reasonably patronised, the volume of custom was nothing like it would have been in the pre- and post-war boom years or even in the '60s when such a train would have been fully booked and possibly requiring a relief service as well. Imagine that journey, whether it be taking all day long or the seemingly endless hours of the night - with every compartment seat occupied by people crammed elbow-to-elbow, fractious children, the weary attempting to sleep, someone snoring, a group trying to have a midnight or midday picnic - what determination and tolerance holidaygoers would be obliged to show! And then there was the going home... Perhaps it's no wonder they took to their cars when they could; those tiresome jams on roadsand motorways lay ahead...
My mother used to declare that going on holiday and enjoying yourself was hard work which needed taking seriously. How right she was! And it was hard work for the railways as well and they took very seriously the massive commitment to transport the people of Britain in great numbers across the length and breadth of the land to revel in their hard-earned week or fortnight at their seaside haven. The planning of timetables, the allocation of rolling stock, the diagramming of motive power, the rostering of crews-all this was a huge exercise of co-ordinated organisation on a scale quite beyond the railway of today, yet the railway of yesterday took it in its stride. All right, that stride got out of step at times but that wasn't surprising given the intensity and complexity of the whole thing. Different times - of course, in the changing attitudes to railway economics of the 1960s the resources devoted to the seasonal holiday programme were deemed thoroughly uneconomic... and then there was the rise in the popularity of the private car. But the railways took the population on holiday,as farand as wide as they wanted to go,then returned them home again. Their achievements are worth considering and acknowledging.