Quick March

My train from Peterborough didn’t stop at March. This was a pity as March had intrigued me for years - from right back in the very early 1960s, in fact. The only reason I’d ever heard of March was because a string of Britannia Pacifics were shedded there, at 31B. There they were, listed as such in my locoshed book. But it was surely just the back of beyond? So, why there?

I certainly had no chance of getting to see them from where we were on the other side of the country. The Eastern Region Brits became the subject of train spotting folklore for us on the north west coast – distant, enigmatic and annoyingly out of reach. Why would a whole load of impressive and desirable named locomotives secret themselves away in an otherwise remote Eastern town named after a month of the year, that I didn’t even know existed, previously? I mean it obviously wasn’t exactly a massive hub and it hadn’t cropped up in geography lessons at school as being an industrial centre, holiday resort or even a famous, picturesque market town with a stunning array of old buildings.

I looked at the standard British Railways fold-out map that came at the end of the regional timetable books I bought frequently throughout that time, but they didn’t really offer any clues. Minor routes were spidery red lines, as opposed to the bolder main inter-city routes. I can’t remember for sure, but I bet there weren’t many thick red lines around March. l could see that it was a junction station, but it was just marooned out there on what looked like a boringly flat bit of Britain and some way from places that were more immediately recognisable.

In the long run, I more or less forgot about March. That was because instead of me having to go there to find the illusive Britannias, the Britannias finally came to us, as dieselisation drove them westwards after 1965. Their swan song in the north west of England would eventually leave them looking very forlorn and unloved as they eventually congregated at Carlisle Kingmoor sheds.

I never really did find out much about March. I read later about the formerly extensive Whitemoor marshalling yard, or what remained of it, though it is not visible from the Ely to Peterborough route that I took this week. The closed Wisbech branch that passed the site is still served by track leading from a triangular junction from a point just west of the station. Passing it at speed, March station, looks to be a shadow of its former self, with disused platforms, plenty of rusting sidings round about and lines of stored obsolete bulk carrier wagons. Nothing visible was moving apart from us, though the internet confirms that Network Rail still has an active materials recovery depot on part of the original Whitemoor site.

I don’t even remember seeing photos of Britannias doing their stuff around March, come to think of it. It remains a conundrum to this day. Why were the Brits not simply shedded at Norwich Thorpe or Cambridge? And what did they actually do with those missing Britannias for all that time, anyway?