Beating Beeching: Part 2 Welsh Railways

50 years ago, almost every part of Wales

reverberated to the sound of steam hauled freight trains.

The livelihoods of hundreds of Welsh communities

depended on the men who ran the railways.

Then, in the 1960s, Chairman of British Railways, Dr Richard Beeching

took an axe to the rail system of Wales.

Depots were closed and jobs were lost as freight was transferred from rail to road

and steam power was scrapped, in favour of diesel.

What could not be erased were the memories of the men who worked the railways of Wales

in the age of steam.

They used to have a code that once the banker got up behind the train,

he would tell the front train by going, beep, beep, beep

and the front one would do the same and off you'd go.

Well, when you look at a steam engine and the men working on it,

there was more to it, especially on the firing side.

Straight away, there was one behind the other, there was no stopping in them days.

You were lucky if you got a bite of your butty because you were that busy.

With the enthusiasm of volunteers, heritage railways have done much

to bring back the joys of steam trains to the people of Wales over the past 40 years.

Enthusiasts like Jim Clemens filmed coal trains and engine sheds before they disappeared.

Much of this invaluable footage has never been seen on television before.

This is a celebration of the glory days of steam, past and present,

and the memories of the last generation of men to work steam hauled freight in Wales.

It's the story of Beating Beeching.

Early morning on a steam gala day at Llangollen Railway

finds staff and volunteers busy preparing the engines for the work ahead.

There is immense pride that all six locomotives have been rebuilt and maintained at the shed.

The engines are an important part of what has made the railway a major tourist attraction.

Many of the people who work here were smitten with steam in their childhoods

simply because their father worked on the railways,

like Dave Owen, chief of engineering.

Well, my father worked on the railways as a fireman and driver in the days of steam.

He worked out of Cloes Newydd at Wrexham.

I obviously, as a youngster, got hooked on steam locos.

Didn't bother collecting numbers, just had to be by a steam engine

whether in was in a shed, on a footplate, just got addicted at an early age.

Just the smell, the feeling of power, the heat,

just became a fascination with the steam loco.

The scene at Llangollen today is the nearest one can get to a lost world of skills

and know-how of steam engines.

A world of experience from engine sheds across Wales before the Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

Then, thousands of men worked on the railways,

many based at sheds like Croes Newydd, Denbigh, Carmarthen,

Newport, Aberbeeg or Swansea.

The shed at Pontypool Road was one of the busiest in the Valleys

and many a young Welshman started work on the railways here.

This film brings back fond memories for Tony Morgan

who worked at Pontypool Road in the 1950s.

We're now at Pontypool Road where I worked as a young lad.

There is Jimmy Watkins, an old engine driver that I knew quite well

with his oil can doing his preparation before he goes out on a train.

There's a small tanky engine which works in the sidings.

I think that's Len Hoff and his driver on one of the sidings.

That's Bill Harris.

That's Ted Ashman, he was one of the good drivers.

This rare footage of Welsh drivers belies the hard life on the railways.

Young lads started their working day at 3am

if they were assigned as a caller to make sure

crews were at the sheds for the first trains of the day.

Early in the morning, they used to send you out

on an old-fashioned bike, a great big sit-up-and-beg thing,

around Griffiths Town and Sebastopol

where most of the engine drivers lived, to call them out,

to make sure they wasn't late to get into work,

two, three o'clock in the morning.

And you'd be no lights, it'd be pitched black

and you'd be walking up the garden path and you'd get to the door

and you'd just go to go on the knocker and the door would open

and the driver would say, "Don't you dare knock this door, wake my wife.

"I'm awake, I'll be in." I said, "Thank you very much," and run off.

Working the coal trains of South Wales was tough.

Railwaymen drew on skills developed over 100 years since the first locomotives of the 1850s.

Firemen had to build the engine's fire to provide sufficient steam power at the right moment

to haul heavy wagons up the steep gradients common throughout the Valleys.

Driver Dennis Jones was a fireman at Abercynon in the 1950s.

You built your fire towards the firebox door

and you built a good platform there so you slide the shovel

and you could direct your coal to any part of the firebox.

Different engines needed different fires

and you'd obviously got to learn about this.

You had the haystack fire, the saucer fire, the hill fire,

each corner fire, each one had a different way and they would steam better.

Here at Llangollen, firemen carefully build their fires in readiness for another gala day.

They use the best coal available but it is prone to creating clinker,

a stony residue made of impurities produced when coal burns.

The quality of coal has always been an issue for firemen.

The goods sheds used to get rubbish coal, really.

They used to mix it with good coal and bad coal

and we used to have to put up with it and you'd get a lot of clinker.

I think the best coal was kept for the passenger turns, from Llandawr.

They used to get the best coal on the London runs.

But the goods sheds used to get a bit of good stuff and rubbish mixed

and we had to clean the fire more often.

The main thing, of course, is to keep steam

and you had to learn the best way to keep steam

because there's different types of coal

Now with the Welsh coal that was great stuff, that was,

because it would just expand and keep the heat going all the time.

When you had coal coming down from Derby Brights, they called them,

you put a shovel full in and it was gone in no time

and it wouldn't maintain the bed of the fire.

Before the Beeching cuts, Welsh railways carried all kinds of freight,

be it coal, cattle or food.

Alongside sheds like Pontypool Road, were vast shunting yards

where the assembly and sorting of wagon loads into freight trains took place.

At the Neath Railway Club, retired railwaymen meet to talk over old times.

Among them is Ray Stephens who worked as a shunter at Neath Yard.

He had his own way of keeping track of the work.

All up here, all in your head.

Neath Yard was on a gradient so once you take the brake up,

the wagon was gone. So you had to take them down carefully

up to the upside where the shunters were forming the trains then ready

to get all the loaded out going up to Margam first

and then going from there further up to London.

Shunting yards were notoriously hazardous places where all sorts of tricks were used.

I remember one day, Griff John, he was from Port Albert, I think.

Griff John, he was about six foot two and about 17 stone

and he put his, he put the brakes down with his behind.

He'd sit on the brake and it took two of us to get the brake back up,

because it would go into the last hole.

But Griff used to sit on them and you could hear him laughing as he was doing it.

He knew we couldn't get the brakes up for the wagon.

The movement of freight trains up and down the lines of Wales

was kept under control by the signalmen.

Many of the enthusiasts' films show engine crews and signalmen

exchanging tokens just as they do today at Llangollen.

Harry Loundes, who worked as a signalman in North Wales in the '50s and '60s,

remembers it well.

The token system was a machine you had and there was 3, 4 or 5 tokens in the machine

and they covered single track where there was only one...

one engine in steam allowed along that track at one time.

When the train come to the signalbox, you'd take the token out of the machine

and hand it to the driver.

These films of the axed lines to Brecon capture the atmosphere of a vanished world of branch railways

as crews and signalmen exchange tokens.

No matter how many single track sections there were on a line,

the token system ensured trains would never collide.

Bryan King worked the Neath & Brecon line.

The system we worked on the N&B was that the signalman had a little frame outside he'd stand in

and you give him yours with one hand and grab his with the other, you know.

You used to be pretty quick at changing and it was a bit hairy,

and I have dropped them on occasion and you have to stop and go back for 'em.

The driver wasn't too pleased then.

Many of the signal boxes along the Ruabon to Barmouth line

oversaw single track sections.

One of these was near Bala Lake at Llanuchlyn.

There's been a signal box here since the line was built in the 1860s

and although this line was axed by Beeching in 1965,

the box still survives as part of the restored Bala Lake Railway.

John Roberts is returning to Llanuchlyn where he first started as a signalman in 1955.

Now we're entering the signalbox,

pretty much the same as it was within my time here.

There was the two instruments, the token instruments for through to St Anne's there

and the token instrument for Bala junction there.

The frame's pretty much, well, it's exactly the same

but it has a number of white levers now which are not operated with what it is today.

John Roberts is pictured with the station master in 1964

a few months before the line closed.

The mostly Welsh-speaking signalmen would talk to one another by the wall phone

that connected every box along the line.

During the years of steam hauled freight,

the signal boxes of Wales handled far more traffic than at any time since.

And for signalmen, the work was hard and more dangerous than it seemed.

Some levers they operated pulled a cable

that could be connected to a distant signal several miles away.

When you're looking at levers and you're thinking, "Now where is the signal positioned?"

If it's close to the box, quite easy to pull off

but if you're pulling three mile of wire, that's a different kettle of fish.

It gets very, very heavy to pull the wire.

I've known that you put your foot up to get hold of the lever and give it a good tug over

and many a time I've had it that the wire snapped and you put your foot against the thing

and you'd be pulling and it just snapped and I went back straight in to the glass windows

that was at the back of me.

When the steam trains were going,

there was a lot more steam trains about in goods

and you had to regulate what to let go and what to hold back.

Straight away, there was one behind the other. There was no stopping in them days.

You was on the go from when you got there till you went home.

You were lucky if you got a bite of your butty because you were that busy.

On steam gala days at Llangollen Railway,

they like to simulate the working activity of stations in North Wales before the Beeching cuts.

After the axe fell on the Ruabon to Barmouth line,

goods trains once again steam back and forth along the eight miles

between Carrog and here at Llangollen station.

The revived railway has come a long way since it was started by a few enthusiasts in 1975.

Dave Owen joined them the same year.

We used to have the workshops under the signalbox in the platform.

There was no track here, just a few lengths of line on the station.

Bit by bit, it just became a desire to move the thing forward

and try to replace something that had been taken away.

Freight such as slate, stone and cattle was transported through here originally

but in the new age of steam at Llangollen,

the station is busier than ever, beating Beeching at its best.

John Roberts also worked at the signal box here in the 1960s.

-Hello, Charles.

-Hello, John, how are you, nice to see you.

-Ah, nice to see you.

-Nice morning.

John Roberts has popped into see his friend, Charles Wilson,

signalling inspector at the revived railway.

We're dealing with probably more engine movements here now

than what John was when the line was open

because this box was normally switched out and they only used to open it for excursion traffic

or dropping goods wagons off into the sidings behind the signal box,

or putting a locomotive in the spur at the other end of the bridge.

So it's probably more busy now than it was in John's day.

I'll admit to that, yeah.

It is different.

With these short frames, you know, you could just stand by your frame.

You'd never move.

But with the frame of 50, 55 levers at Bala junction and Barmouth and places,

you had to walk along the frame and work it, you know.

-Put it back that one, number two.

-Put this one back?

Oh, it goes back, doesn't it?

I didn't expect to see that going back so...

Go on, John.

Another pull, I'll have a bad back now.

There we are.

Today, there are very few drivers alive who know what it was like

to take 700 ton coal trains up and down the steep gradients of South Wales in the age of steam.

Among footplate crews, this was known as "incline working".

Here with the men at the Neath Railway Club is Dick Jones,

now one of the oldest surviving drivers of steam freight trains in Wales.

He worked for 45 years on the footplate, 25 of them as driver,

based at the Glyn Neath shed.

I wasn't nervous.

We're all individuals, and some were nervous on the job.

I was working a train one day and we had a guard from Neath,

and I didn't know the guard at all.

I was coming back from the docks with a train of empties

and when we got to Glyn Neath, he said to me, "Driver, do you know,

"I was on my hands and knees in the van coming up."

"Why?" my fireman said to him. "Were you cleaning the van out?"

"No, I was asking the Lord to take me home safe!"

LAUGHTER

Some gradients were so steep, it needed the power of a second engine pushing from behind.

This was called banking.

Going up a gradient at Glyn Neath to Aberdare,

it was 1 in 49, it was a steep gradient.

You'd have an assistant engine with you as well.

It would bank you up, you know, and we'd have about 30 wagons, loaded wagons on, you know.

They used to have a code that once the banker got up behind the train,

he would tell the front train by going, beep, beep, beep

and the front one would do the same and off you'd go.

Though it seemed hard work for crews and engines taking a train up the steep inclines of the Valleys,

it was much more precarious bringing it down the other side.

In this remarkable footage, a steam engine on a gradient with heavy coal wagons

cannot keep control, even with brakes down hard

and sand being poured onto the rails for extra grip.

At Llangollen, a staff member demonstrates how the crews

operated a braking system practised throughout the age of steam-hauled freight.

When you're coming down an incline, the guard come down, or the brakes man you call him,

and you start pulling away quietly and he'd be putting the brakes down.

When you knew you had sufficient brakes down,

you just blow two on the whistle for him and then he'd go back to the guard's van and away you go.

It comes through experience, because you knew by the stroke of the engine,

the power of the engine, you know. You knew there was sufficient brakes that you could come to a stand.

Two particular steep gradients were either side of Quakers Yard

on the Merthyr to Pontypridd line.

As a fireman, Dennis Jones knew the line well, so he was immediately alert to a misunderstanding

between his driver and guard at Quaker's Yard,

an error that was to result in a runaway train.

We came out of Black Lion Colliery, which is Merthyr Vale Colliery

and we approached Quaker's Yard and we came to the top of the bank.

Then we waited for the guard to come down.

He started putting the brakes down.

I'm looking back for the guard.

He was on the van. I said, "You haven't whistled for sufficient brakes, have you?"

The driver said, "No, I haven't."

I said, "The guard's back on the van, give me the tip."

I said, "You haven't got enough brakes down."

We couldn't stop, there's no argument about that.

We were picking up speed all the time.

There's a one in 40 bank.

So we came to Abercynon station, the signalman was hanging out of the window

and I was motioning to go... That I wanted a straight run.

Luckily, the signalman was able to divert the runaway train

onto a level siding sufficiently long for the engine and coal wagons to come to a stop.

That was a nasty feeling really because you lose all control

and you cannot do anything at all about it.

You've just got to sit and wait or jump.

The line from Blaenavon Yards to Pontypool Road was built in the 1870s

to transport coal from Big Pit, high up on the moors of Blaenavon.

The gradients here were some of the steepest in the country.

In 1980, Big Pit and the surrounding collieries closed.

But the very same year, enthusiasts started the Pontypool and Blaenavon Railway

and since 1983, steam trains have travelled again on a short section of the old line.

Dennis Jones worked the coal trains here as a young fireman in the late 1940s

and can still remember the challenge of the gradients.

I can relate coming up here actually, it was years ago,

a very steep part of the track which you had to be so careful

and it is a complicated road to manoeuvre.

We knew exactly what was required on incline working and, to me, it was a fine art.

The many inclines and gorges of the Valleys presented

plenty of challenges for the Victorian builders of the railways in South Wales.

But transporting the coal was paramount and, no matter where a mine was located,

bridges, tunnels or viaducts would be built.

The spectacular Crumlin Viaduct spanned the Ebbw and Kendon valleys on the Vale of Neath line.

Opened in 1857, this engineering marvel stood 200 feet at its highest point.

Tony Morgan fired trains over it a century later.

There were several viaducts but there was nothing like Crumlin Viaduct

because when you were up there, the wind it was quite high.

There was only a small door on a Western engine

so it was right through and it would be blowing you.

Very exciting, really, because you were way up

and I used to go over there all hours of the night and all hours of the day.

The Crumlin viaduct which had stood for over a century

was demolished within three years of Beeching's closure of the line in 1964.

For the people of Crumlin, there is very little left for them to remember of this symbol

from Wales's glorious railway past.

Restored railways have had great success in bringing the experience

of steam railways to a modern public.

But since Dr Beeching finished off steam hauled freight in 1967,

it is simply not possible for these railways to convey the reality of working steam trains.

Taking 70 wagons of coal up and down the valleys of Wales

is preserved only on enthusiasts' films and in the memories of railway men like Tony Morgan.

Here we have an old video and, after watching it, I just could not believe it.

It took me back right to when I was a young lad working on the railway.

And the sounds, the smoke, the smell

everything was great on the railway

and it was lovely to put your head out through the side and just smell.

At Llangollen, volunteers and staff do still run goods trains at special steam galas.

They have earned a reputation for their expertise

in bringing steam engines back to life.

Often, these engines had spent many years slowly rusting away at Woodham's Yard, Barry Island.

Here in 1968, nearly 300 former British Rail engines awaited their fate.

Over the next four decades, enthusiasts sought to beat Beeching

by buying these scrapped steam engines.

Llangollen started rebuilding its first steam engine, Austin 1, in 1975.

Dave Owen was there at the start.

There was no handbook on how to repair or restore an engine,

but even steam locomotives are pretty basic machines.

So if you've got engineering nous or engineering background

you can apply that experience into problem solving and manufacture of new items

because you can't go out to buy a part any more, you've got to manufacture it.

Llangollen has built up a valuable skill base in the heritage engineering of steam locomotives.

Foxcote Manor is a fine example of what has been achieved here.

Rescued from Barry scrap yard after spending much of its working life in Wales,

it has been resident at Llangollen since 1986, longer than its years with British Rail.

It's such a beautiful looking engine, that just might be my biased opinion,

but because it's been here so long, been overhauled twice here,

it's its natural home.

Therefore I think we all think of it as the railway's flagship.

I think it just sits well with this countryside.

Like all restored lines across Wales, Llangollen Railway is dedicated to keeping engines alive.

The story of the remembrance and preservation of steam railways

is one of triumph over tragedy, pride in the past and hope for the future.

Dr Beeching had no idea of the thriving heritage industry

he would create when he axed the steam hauled railways of Wales.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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