Leominster

Leominster station on the Welsh Marches line has just two platforms today, but there is evidence on the east side of a former third facing platform edge and some overgrown track, and a bit of research shows there were two more past that one in days gone by. These once served branch lines west to Kington and Presteigne and east to Bromyard and Worcester, both of which were closed in the 1950s. 

It was reassuring to see that the ticket office is still operating, although on a part time basis. The booking clerk suggested that he was expecting this to continue under the management of Transport for Wales. As with many country stations where original station buildings still stand, there are a number of boarded up former offices and waiting rooms which have not attracted any small businesses, or where such initiatives have subsequently failed. One wonders just how attractive the railway companies make these spaces to potential entrepreneurs, in terms of favourable rental terms.

I was pleased to see a south-bound locomotive-hauled passenger train in the form of Class 67 No. 67017, propelling four carriages and a dummy front-end Class 82 heading for South Wales. Our short journey from Ludlow was my first with a Class 67.

 

Hereford Revisited

My first visit to Hereford was in May 1973 to watch King Class No. 6000 King George V being prepared for action in the Bulmer’s siding. A lads’ train day saw us back in the city in April 1992. Hereford was our destination from Crewe, travelling behind Coronation Pacific Class 8P No. 46229 Duchess of Hamilton.

Last week we let the train take the strain from Leominster for a day out in Hereford. It’s a bit of a walk from the station to the centre, something that would not even have crossed my consciousness in earlier times. The Grade II-listed Hereford station, with its rather grand and extensive façade, is now managed by Transport for Wales, which seems a little strange on the face of it, with Hereford still being firmly in England. It was opened in 1853 for the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway and later the route was run jointly by the GWR and LNWR. As well as serving the Welsh Marches line linking north to south Wales, it has an hourly West Midlands Trains connection to Birmingham New Street and is the terminus of the GWR Cotswold line to London Paddington, via Worcester and Oxford.

On the inside, the station is spacious and pleasing to the eye, though some parts would benefit from a lick of paint. There are some well-tended, raised garden beds on the island platform. Four platform roads are separated by two central tracks for the apparently infrequent freights. 

Brush Type Fours at Ludlow

We called in on Ludlow station while we were on a youth hostelling tour by bike on 12/4/65. By chance, I photographed a northbound express behind a two-tone green locomotive powering through the station without stopping. The Brush type fours were then quite new. The Class 47s, as they later became, were built between 1962 and 1968 at Crewe works and at Brush’s own HQ at Loughborough.

On 29/7/23, 58 years on, I returned to Ludlow station again, this time to photograph the returning Shrewsbury to Weymouth special Pullman train after a day out at the seaside. It was topped and tailed by examples of the class - one two-tone green, one BR blue, large logo - though sadly the light had faded by 10.00 p.m., so the resulting shots are a little blurred. 

  

Berrington and Eye station

The attractive station buildings still stand as a private residence on the north to south, Welsh Marches route between Ludlow and Leominster. It was opened in 1853 on the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway, becoming part of the GWR/LNWR Joint Railway. The station closed in 1958. The main line is still a busy double-track link through the border country. Before the re-routing of most inter-regional expresses via Birmingham, this was an important line taking traffic from the north west to the south west of England. We used it for family holidays from Liverpool as far as Taunton in 1963 and Bristol Temple Meads in 1964. I travelled south under this bridge on 27/7/63, hauled by Castle Class No. 4087 Cardigan Castle. Today Transport for Wales operate services connecting the north and south of the country, though by way of a sizeable English diversion. The bridge at Eye on the minor road west from the National Trust property at Berrington Hall crosses the line here. The wall is high and the bridge parapet makes taking pictures a little more demanding than usual.

   

Mappa Mundi

The oldest map of the then known world that exists in the world today was made in Hereford in 1300. It’s to be found in Hereford cathedral in a much more recently added display space near the entrance to the chained library - itself a fascinating collection of ancient books. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the map shows predominantly ecclesiastical centres with Jerusalem at the centre, surrounded by Europe, The Middle East, Asia and Africa.

On the way in, we passed the nameplate Mappa Mundi, which was carried by two diesel locomotives, in turn. Class 31 No. 31405 bore the name from 1991 to 1997, followed by Class 47 No. 47767 between 2003 and 2009, as the accompanying plaque makes clear.

  

Worcester

It took me a little time to get my bearings. There was a gap of 59 years since I last stepped out onto these platforms. The sheds were still full of steam locos on our special train trip in 1964, hauled from here by Castle Class No. 5054 Earl of Ducie. There were 7 other Castles on the shed on that day -7005, 7022, 7034, 7013, 5042, 5096 and 7025. We were heading for a shed bash in South Wales, and I remember that the engine that was meant to take us back to Crewe from Worcester, A1 Class No. 60114 WP Allen, failed. The sheds complex was certainly very substantial at that time.

The Georgian-style Shrub Hill station building dates from 1865. It has operated as a joint GWR/MR station throughout its history. The delightful Grade II listed Victorian waiting room on platform two, decorated with Maw’s tiles, has been refurbished in recent times. Shrub Hill is well-known in the railway community for hanging on to its array of semaphore signals [for now] and especially the almost unique large main aspect “banjo” signal on platform one. Café Loco, on the same platform has entrances from the booking hall as well as from the platform. There are framed prints on the walls of some recognisable railway paintings.  

Support walls for the former train shed which was dismantled in the 1930s are evident, but a lot of the original station building is currently covered with cladding while some further intensive restoration work takes place behind them and thus hidden from view. Both platforms are bi-directional and there is a small bay - platform three - at the north end. Both Shrub Hill and Foregate Street are well served by a range of services – including to Birmingham via different routes, Cheltenham Spa, Oxford, London Paddington, Hereford, Bristol and South Wales.

The Trainspotter’s Notebook

This book by Francis Bourgeois is imbued with infectious enthusiasm. I never imagined that there was so much fun to be had with diesels, having hardly welcomed them in in the 1960s, as steam gradually gave up the ghost. I had to adapt pretty quickly and, certainly begrudgingly, I came to accept them as the main actors thereafter. After all, I kept on spotting them, travelling behind them and photographing them.

I admired the HSTs when they were new – screaming through Goring and Streatley in their bright blue and yellow kit. The loudest noise I ever heard a diesel make was a Deltic under the roof at Leeds Central. Sudden blasts from both engines - the loco’ had appeared dormant up to that point, which shot powerful jets of blue smoke up to the rafters. Why it did that, I have no idea, but it was very theatrical. I copped my last Western diesel – D1028 Western Hussar – at Newton Abbott. As it approached in its maroon livery, I had a premonition that this was finally the one – and it was.

Francis Bourgeois is an excitable young man and the first ever celebrity trainspotter, through his action videos and the TV appearances that followed. I guess I had never even thought of that as a possibility. He is very candid in this very readable account about how trains play on his emotions, as well as on his positive relationships with his fellow spotters, his dealings with those he comes across while following his obsession and his friendships amongst the railway community - such a large proportion of whom have always been enthusiasts at heart.

Effervescent personality springs from every page of this book, and there is abundant warmth and humanity, too. It made for perfect bedtime reading, reminding me perhaps about how reserved and almost embarrassed I might sometimes have been in the past about proclaiming my hobby. I should have simply rejoiced in it quite publicly, as Francis Bourgeois manages at every turn.