Reading on Trains Number 25: Six Reasons Why I Like Heritage Railways

This slightly longer-than-usual post reflects my enthusiasm for the heritage railways of Britain, which I wrote about in my book, Steam Trains Today

There are about 150 heritage or preserved railways in Britain. They traverse roughly 500 miles of track, employ 4000 people and engage 22,000 volunteers. Were they not such enjoyable places to visit, there might almost seem something disturbing in such a large-scale attempt to burrow back into the past. What does it say about the preservationists’ view of modern British life?

The first heritage railway is taken to be the Talyllyn, brought back from the dead in 1951; the main decade for reopenings was the 1980s, but the root cause was the trauma of the 1960s, when the withdrawal of steam locomotives coincided with Beeching’s line closures. Railfans would not stand for this, so they reached for the reversing gear (to use a steam engine metaphor).

Here are some reasons to sample these lines.

1. The Proximity of Steam

Being close to a steam engine is frightening and fascinating, like being close to an elephant (and, in a jungle in Assam, I stroked the trunk of an elephant to which I’d only recently been introduced). Steam and water leaks from unexpected places, usually quietly, but sometimes the engine angrily ‘blows off’, a great geyser of steam shooting from the safety valve. This is often a faux pas on the part of the driver – they’ve let the steam pressure get too high – but sometimes they do it deliberately, showing their impatience to be off. And if there’s steam drifting over a station platform, I’ll try and find a footbridge, so as to be immersed in it. It’s like being in an outdoor sauna.

Many of the lines offer steam engine driving courses, for a week or a day. Five years back, I did a day on the Bodmin & Wenford Railway, firing and driving (under close supervision) a 6400 Class GWR tank engine – a pretty modest machine but 25mph on the footplate of a tank engine feels like 100. It shakes and swings like a fairground ride, so you feel you need to hold on to something, but what? Everything is hot, mucky or covered in oil. When the fire door opens, you’re dazzled by the whirling white flames, and if you happen to be wearing anything synthetic (not advised) you can almost feel it melting. Firing is back-breaking if you do it wrong. It’s not really about strength. I once talked to a young woman who fired on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (although she insisted, ‘I am called a fireman’), who was also a musician – a violinist – and she said, ‘A sense of rhythm definitely helps.’

As for driving, the chief control is a long metal lever (the regulator) that you might move half a centimetre to stop the engine. Beginners tend to jerk it. On the Bodmin & Wenford, a dining car was attached to the engine – empty except for one volunteer doing some paperwork, but my instructor pretended this unseen chap was eating his lunch, and every time I overdid the regulator, he said, ‘Nose in the soup again!’

2. The Carriage Interiors

The carriages occurring most commonly on the heritage lines are the BR Mark 1’s, dating from the 1950s and 60s and everything about them except their crashworthiness is better than a modern carriage. (And since trains on heritage lines are confined to 25mph, crashworthiness ought not to be a factor.)

Like a good pub, they are wood panelled, sometimes with the type of wood named in a little plaque (‘Crown Elm, Britain’, say). The seats are wide and well-upholstered, with armrests big enough for your arm, and beautiful moquettes, either elegantly geometric with warm reds and greens, or with figurative patterns: gold horse chestnut leaves on rich blue, for example, or an Egyptian-looking blazing sun motif. The seats are aligned to large windows, the tops of which you can open for ventilation. Sometimes the seats are in ‘open’ formation, in which case there is usually a table big enough for any four people sitting at it to play, say, Monopoly with all the peripheral piles of cash and room for drinks or coffee at their elbows.

Sometimes the seats are in compartments, which was very useful for the heritage lines at the time of Covid, because a family could by seclusion by booking a compartment for itself, just as rich people going on holiday used to do. First class seats are usually available at no extra cost, and even seconds are wider than modern firsts. A trip to the ‘bathroom’ on a Mark 1 is always a pleasure. The walls are of wood-lined yellow Formica, so the space is bright despite the frosted window glass. The sink is wide, with silvery taps you can press down with your elbow like a nurse. The paper towels are paper napkins in effect. There’s a lemony cake of soap like a small chocolate bar.

After your ‘visit’ you might care to stretch your legs in the corridor or by standing near the open droplight window in the shaking vestibule. You might wander along to the guard’s van where you will probably find some ‘spare’ volunteers’ sitting on empty packing cases and holding a symposium on the line’s ‘project’, because most of them have a project, usually a push on to the next village, which represents the hammering of another nail into Dr Beeching’s coffin, many of the lines being re-openings of Beeching closures.