The Holiday Line The Train Now Departing

Archive programmes chosen by experts.

For this collection, Gary Boyd-Hope has selected programmes

celebrating Britain's steam railway legacy.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

OK, so it's another crowd at a railway station.

Except that this crowd isn't even going anywhere.

We'll be back here. That'd be... Well, roughly, roughly there.

That Union Jack...

This is Woking 150,

an event to celebrate 150 years of the London South Western Railway.

Everyone was delighted - well, fairly delighted -

to pay homage to the old days.

To steam in particular, even if it just shunted back and forth.

60,000 people came to record the past, each in their own style.

With or without a child to make the task that much easier.

As for children, who may or may not

want to become engine drivers these days,

they could get to grips with simple non-electronic joys.

Once upon a time, Barry Smith was a small boy, fascinated by trains.

And he, too, queued to see a piece of the past he used to know so well.

The high spot of his early life was the annual holiday -

by steam, of course - down to Devon,

of which the journey was the very best part of all.

I've come here today because it's the first time that I've seen

so many Southern steam engines, since they went in what...21 years ago.

1967.

It really is a marvellous sight. Working steam engines here.

Most of them are Southern Railway and southern regions.

And I'm amazed, actually, there are so many people here today.

There are literally thousands and thousands.

It's absolutely marvellous. I must admit,

I never thought I'd see the day again when I'd see

so many Southern Railway engines. A lovely sight.

It all brings it all back, quite honestly. They're really fabulous.

Of course, one of the great attractions for me here today

is the City of Wells, and that is running on a steam special

from Salisbury down to Yeovil in the next two or three weeks.

That should be hauling it. It should be a lovely sight.

I'm looking forward to that.

TRAIN HOOTER SOUNDS

BAND PLAYS "A Life On The Ocean Wave"

Life on the ocean wave today

is life on the same old jam-packed 8:32.

And it's possible not to see the romance of a railway terminus.

But the railway terminus has seen it all.

The comings and goings, the partings, the sweet sorrow,

as well as the fairly miserable sorrow and all the other kinds.

For the young Barry Smith, it was all joy.

And his particular heaven started at Waterloo,

where the Southern Railway began its journeys to the coast

for holidays when the sun always shone throughout the stay.

There we are, Waterloo Station.

Things have changed a lot since I was here 40 years ago.

No steam, very little noise.

Plenty of people, still. The fabric's still here.

Let's have a look.

Waterloo - it's an incredible place now, I think.

You could virtually eat a meal off the floor, it's so clean.

It's more or less like a supermarket. You walk in here...

Look around you. You can get some spectacles over there.

You can have those made while you wait!

And you can walk down there and buy a pair of underpants.

A full chemist over there, selling everything under the sun.

You've got fast food all the way around here.

You can have a meal, you can sit down there and have a drink.

The whole thing's changed so completely.

I like it. Yes, I do, I like Waterloo now.

It's important to remember the rivalry of the old lines

and how the London and South Western Railway listed its destinations

much like battle honours in some war.

For those of us today, it is a bit odd that you can go to the South West

either by the Southern from Waterloo, or the Western from Paddington.

But it was a war, in a way, with both sets of tracks capturing new land,

awkwardly meeting at Exeter

and then conquering different parts of Cornwall.

For Barry Smith and all the others, 11am was the famous hour

when the Atlantic Coast Express pulled out of Waterloo.

TRAIN HOOTER SOUNDS

There are still small Barry Smiths today, still hooked on trains,

even if they are just diesel, and still getting down the numbers.

So will they become sentimental about the old days, the late 1980s,

when they grow up and trains no longer look as they do today?

One didn't have a worry in the world then.

But I'd like to go back knowing what I do now and have another go at it.

Just to see if it's at all possible.

I have my doubts, actually, because we don't have the steam,

although there is going to be some steam further down the line.

It'll be exciting, without a doubt, because of all the various places

that used to have engine sheds, for a start.

I don't know what's there now. It's going to be an exciting journey, yes.

I'm going to look forward to it, I think.

Past Nine Elms, for a start, now all fruit and veg,

and it used to be railway sheds.

So will this nostalgic journey work,

this attempt to relive a little of the past with so much change -

gantries without the old signals and rain instead of sun?

Oh, well, there is always Ian Allan and the train man's bible,

which he wrote.

Yes, Ian Allan, his ABCs, they really were marvellous.

Very, very difficult to get hold of in the war.

In fact, they were rationed.

You really had to know somebody to get hold of one of these.

I've kept them all. I've still got them to this day,

with all my original numbers in and suchlike.

I occasionally look at them, as well, and I find them fascinating reading.

Nowadays, you can go down to Exeter and back in a day

and you don't think anything of it, really.

But, in those days, it was a huge adventure.

You started off from Waterloo, with all that atmosphere of Waterloo,

and it was a whole day's trip. It took a long, long time to get there.

It wasn't until tea time.

Whereas nowadays, people go off every weekend now.

But when I was a child,

it was the one holiday in the year, really.

It was an adventure, yes, without a doubt.

You didn't really know what you were going to see, quite honestly.

It was all new.

Even though you'd done it in the past several times,

it was still all very, very new.

Different things to look at. There were always things to see.

This was the great thing.

Plenty of railways and plenty of locos all over the place.

Past proper signals in the old days,

and full steam ahead for the first stop out of Waterloo, for Salisbury.

STATION ANNOUNCER: This is Salisbury.

For the young Barry, it was all quite magnificent.

Salisbury is a lovely place because

virtually, in those days, everything changed engines there.

So you got two engines for the price of one, shall we say.

One came off and another one came on.

A lot of those engines were for Exmouth Junction.

And the Exmouth Junction engines, in those days,

didn't work through to Waterloo.

So they were quite rare engines. So it was a lovely place.

There was plenty of smoke and steam and noises

and all sorts of things there.

And of course, everything stopped there.

So what's left of the past?

Well, there's still the old water tank,

which supplied the thirsty engines.

The coaches are still parked, as formerly,

and the station entrance smacks of that different age.

And so do other bits and pieces scattered here and there

from a period when there seemed to be more time to make

such things as pleasing arches.

But for those making the excursion,

there is nothing a station can provide

quite so attractive as a locomotive.

Although, horror upon horrors, this proved not to be the City of Wells,

as had been promised, but an alien machine from quite another line.

It was a shame, really, because there was the City of Wells at Woking.

I've been hauled behind it years and years ago

and I was most disappointed to find it wasn't running.

And also, of course, it wasn't a Southern Railway engine

or ex-Southern Railway engine.

We're talking about this LMS goods engine.

It wasn't even a passenger engine.

So, quite honestly, I was horrified when I saw that.

It's still steam, I know,

but, to me, it wasn't quite right.

Be that as it may, Salisbury was and is the gateway to further west,

even if the LMS, for heaven's sake, was on the Southern.

But this was emphatically phase two of the sentimental journey

out of Salisbury and onwards to the west.

I suppose when I stood on Clapham Junction that day back in 1967

and saw the last steam trains on the Southern,

I never thought I'd travel west of Salisbury behind a steam loco.

And yet here we are today.

OK, we've got the wrong engine. It's an 8F, a Stanier 8F,

which never, ever came onto this section of line.

I've been back through my records and I can't find one at all.

They came into Salisbury

and they up came up to Templecombe on the Somerset and Dorset.

But, actually, on this stretch of line,

I think we can say this is unique.

Nevertheless, it's steam. One mustn't complain too much.

We haven't got that lovely noise of a Bulleid up at the front there,

which we used to have.

Haven't got that lovely hooter. That lovely Bulleid hooter.

We've got a Stanier.

A Bulleid is from Oliver Bulleid, the famous railway engineer.

As against the Stanier of Sir William Stanier,

also a famous railway engineer.

And both men made certain their hooters weren't the same.

Of course, all things have changed outside here, outside the window.

Where are the telephone wires? You look outside here,

there's nothing at all.

Dipping and up they went, down and up and down.

But the smell is there, yes. That doesn't change at all.

It's good coal, plenty of smoke, smuts in your eyes,

if you're not very careful.

So we've got all that back and that was part of childhood.

I don't know about going back 40 years,

but I've gone back quite a few years in this today, yes.

Yes, that smell. That was the joy.

I always envied the firemen in those days.

I must admit I'd loved to have been an engine fireman,

I really would. The family wouldn't let me, this is the trouble.

A friend of mine two doors away, he was a locomotive fireman,

but, um, parental pressures, unfortunately,

prevented me from doing that.

But I wouldn't mind having a go up front now, behind this Stanier.

It's back-breaking work. Absolutely. Shovelling coal.

But, I mean, in those days they did it hour after hour,

ton after ton they were shovelling.

A tremendous job it must've been.

But, nowadays, I mean, when steam came back again,

they had to have two firemen,

one just couldn't cope with shovelling the coal.

Which is not surprising,

because they were just sitting down most of their working lives.

Whereas now they have suddenly got to shovel coal.

So, of course, it was very, very hard work.

TRAIN HOOTER SOUNDS

Going back to those old days,

it must've been absolutely horrendous up in the front,

because there was the noise, there was a continuous vibration,

there was swaying about, trying to keep your foot,

and also trying to shovel coal into a fairly small fire-hole door.

When you are doing 70mph or 80mph

and you've got to shovel a ton an hour, it's very, very small.

I'd love to have done it, I must admit. I wish I'd had the chance.

Can't have been any easier inside the tunnels, when smoke, smuts,

vibration, speed and darkness were all part of the job.

For those today who long for steam,

they should try and remember the tunnels,

when smoke became a sorry substitute for nice fresh air.

After Yeovil, in the old days, would come branch-line country

on the Southern, with many connections leading to the sea,

practically all of which have gone today.

So far as the steam excursion was concerned,

Yeovil was now the end of the line, causing yet another change of trains.

Only this time, for Barry Smith trying to find the past,

it was back to diesel and modern times.

But at least there was a line and a train, of sorts,

to carry him on his nostalgic voyage.

For the young Barry, Yeovil and Dorset, with Devon still to come,

was simply more excitement.

I think we're very fortunate to be travelling on this line,

because if one looks at the Beeching proposals and on the maps,

there was going to be nothing west of Salisbury.

There's a regular service, of course, Waterloo to Exeter,

but it's a shame, really,

because we have so much single track here now.

Beeching had to come about, there's no doubt about it.

If it wasn't Beeching, it would have been somebody else.

It was a shame for the enthusiasts, of course, because we lost out.

All these lovely branch lines all went.

But, coming to reality, which I think one has to do, it had to come about.

And what came about was the closing of branch lines,

as to Lyme Regis from Axminster.

But, of course, the closing of each branch meant its connecting junction

was that much less busy,

so no longer do trains puff up and down from Lyme Regis

as they used to do.

We've got the Lyme Regis branch,

which, in fact, is frequently worked by just one coach and an engine.

So you've got, straightaway, a staff of three.

Then, of course, you have the stations which were fully staffed

with station master and ticket collector and porter.

Then, of course, the signalmen all the way down the line.

The track itself was maintained virtually to mainline standards,

in excellent condition.

And, looking all round,

it was quite tremendous the amount of staff they had on these lines.

So, really, it was no wonder that they went to the wall,

because it was only in the summer

that a branch like the Lyme Regis branch fully worked.

TRAIN HOOTER SOUNDS

At Axminster, it's no longer "all change for Lyme Regis".

It's just "get off if you want Axminster"

and the car you left in its car park, and the town,

and, of course, the carpet factory,

or a bit more travelling.

Feniton used to be Sidmouth Junction,

before they cut off the line to Ottery and Sidmouth.

Now, it's just Feniton.

And memories. As for Alan Powell, who works here in the family tradition.

My grandfather was a signalman here, back in the last century.

And I had an uncle who was signalman here.

Er, not my father, but then I took on in the 1950s.

When I joined, I counted up a total of about 16 altogether.

Station master, three signalmen,

two booking clerks, two shunters,

a couple of crossing keepers and four of us on the platform.

Not all on at once, of course.

People would come in from all the villages,

three or four miles around, to get trains away.

And it was very much a railhead, so it was really lively then.

On a summer Saturday, you would probably have a train

going through about every quarter of an hour,

some of them stopping, some not.

And, of those that stopped, you had connections to the branch line

to Sidmouth and Exmouth. Quite busy, generally.

Now, of course, it's a very scaled-down sort of operation.

Er, you get about half the trains that go through stopping here.

We cater for a steady trickle of passengers, not a flood, these days.

First stop on the branch line was the station, now gone,

for the market town of Ottery St Mary.

Well, Ottery still lives, but not its old railway line

leading either to Sidmouth or Budleigh Salterton.

The closures had to come sometime, because there was so much opposition

from the bus services and there was a very good bus service

between Ottery and Exeter and on into Axminster,

that it was a foregone conclusion.

With the goods traffic gone from the station -

you understand that took up the road transport system,

which was cheaper, more economical,

and the trains seemed to get so far behind, it was a foregone...

There was a lot of controversy and a lot of sympathy for the railway.

in the council I was on, the urban council, at that time.

And there was a lot of talk

and, in fact, there were meetings with the railways and bus services

to see how many buses were going to connect up with the railways.

You'd have a marvellous service to Ottery St Mary and suchlike,

but it never came about.

I mean, the promises were never carried out.

So what about those branches? Jeff Vinter of the Railway Ramblers.

Unfortunately, because the railways

were in a very difficult financial circumstance

when these closures took place,

the lines were sold off,

sometimes for very small sums of money,

without any view to their re-use whatsoever.

So, nowadays, the land is in a very fragmented state.

If, 25 years ago, we had had a co-ordinated policy

for the re-use of these abandoned railway lines,

we could have ended up with a fabulous network of green lanes

suitable for cyclists, walkers, interconnecting all over the country.

You will have been in the position where, for example,

you might have travelled to somewhere like Barnstaple,

walked out to Ilfracombe, or Bideford, Torrington.

Walking down old railway lines is like passing through a gateway

into a lost way of life.

Into a past world when lines were regulated

not so much by getting things done as fast as possible,

but by the measured coming and going of the branch-line train.

You'd find yourself in cuttings

hewn out by sweat and toil by pick and axe,

which now become private nature reserves,

unknown to all but a few people like us who pass through them.

Walking down an old railway line isn't just a matter of striding out

with six or seven friends and hoping for the best.

You've got to get involved in finding out who owns the land,

tracking them down, getting permission, and all the rest of it.

So it's quite a major undertaking.

It can involve a lot of letter writing,

or, perhaps, travelling around, actually knocking on doors.

In itself, that's quite interesting.

It becomes extremely so if you should knock on the door

of an old station and discover, for example,

that the former station master still lives there.

For the young Barry Smith, unaware that a Dr Beeching

and hard times for the railways were both looming,

the impending arrival of Exeter held an excitement

which had nothing to do with its cathedral,

but everything to do with the majesty of its loco shed.

Oh, Exmouth Junction, now that really was a shed.

I love Nine Elms, and, of course, Salisbury,

but Exmouth Junction had a ring about it, I think,

because you could see the whole yard as you went by on the train.

And, of course, trains were beginning to slow down then,

because as you were getting close to Exeter,

you didn't roar past at 60 or 70mph and see nothing.

And there were lines of engines, everything.

So it was a lovely place. Gorgeous building.

It was at Exeter that the two competing railway lines,

the one from Waterloo and the other one from Paddington,

met and still do meet.

And, on Barry Smith's journey,

Exeter Central was the place of finding yet another train.

Of course, at Exeter Central, I changed trains here to get

the branch line down to Exmouth, in this bay here,

which I don't think is used any more now for the branch-line trains.

But the great thing, of course, about this branch is it still survives.

It's the only surviving branch

off the main line from Waterloo to Exeter.

All the others have gone.

After this station, of course, it'll be the end of the line, Exmouth.

I don't know what I'm going to find there.

There's a station there,

but what sort of station, I just can't imagine.

We'll soon find out, anyway.

It doesn't take all that long to go down the line.

Well, the River Exe may still be there, but the old M7 tank engines

have long since vanished from this lovely piece of line.

Exmouth Station was a lovely little station.

I honestly can't remember the full details of it,

but it seemed, if I remember, about three platforms.

And, of course, it had an engine shed,

which is always an attraction itself.

It was a very small, one-rowed engine shed,

which housed the loco off the branch.

It always seemed a busy station.

I think there must have been freight, because there were goods yards,

so there was obviously a freight service, bringing coal and suchlike.

It was a lovely little station.

I just hope that it hasn't been altered too much.

Well, here we are, journey's end.

Exmouth. Sunny Exmouth!

But what a lot of changes.

Engine shed's gone, the yard's gone, the station's gone.

Lovely station. Gone.

When I came here, it was never like this, for a start, pouring with rain.

I don't think it was. It was always sunny. Glorious Devon.

This was the adverts in those days. It was gorgeous.

ARCHIVE VOICEOVER: Apart from its wonderful stretch of coastline,

golden beaches and clear blue seas, Exmouth has a lovely river.

BARRY SMITH: I would call it a disaster, quite honestly.

I'm absolutely appalled at what they've done to this station.

No, I don't think it's a good experience at all, quite honestly.

I don't think I'd recommend this to anybody, to come back.

I think I'd prefer to remember it as I did, 40 years ago,

with the smell of steam and...and as it was.

ARCHIVE CONTINUES: As we take our last look at Exmouth,

and remember our journey through the Raleigh country,

pride mingles with regret at having to leave it all too soon.