October 26th 2023 to November 2nd 2023

It was very quiet around these parts this last week. Nothing much of note to report on the rails of Dorset as far as I’m aware. Storm Ciarán hit the South West in the early hours of Thursday 2nd November with the BBC reporting train lines ground to a halt, with some rail operators telling commuters to work from home – and drivers in the south and west of UK were told to avoid coastal roads. South Western Railway (SWR) ran a revised service during the day and warned of the weather conditions ability to cause flooding, landslips, low adhesion from increased leaf fall and debris on the tracks. Across the South West of England, there were no Great Western Railway (GWR) services in Cornwall because of flooding and fallen trees. The line was also closed between Exeter and Taunton, Salisbury and Southampton, Reading to Gatwick and a reduced service to Heathrow.  Locally, SWR Weymouth services terminated at Bournemouth with an hourly shuttle service between Bournemouth to Weymouth providing half the normal frequency.  The line between Bournemouth and Hinton Admiral was blocked for a time due to heavy flooding. A pair of two-car SWR Class 158 Diesel Multiple Units No.’s 158884/886 then formed a shuttle service between Bournemouth and Brockenhurst. CrossCountry (XR) services to Bournemouth were also disrupted with several services stopping short at Brockenhurst. Brittany Ferries cancelled most of their services on Wednesday and Thursday, while Condor Ferries suspended all sailings on these two days.

Tuesday evening I was in Winchester visiting the Cathedral to see “Poppy Fields” an immersive light and sound show by Luxmuralis. Billed as a “spectacular light and sound show which takes you on a mesmerising journey of reflection and hope”, the art installation did not disappoint. Developed from the concept of “son et Lumiere” Luxmuralis is a collaborative team combining artists from different backgrounds and artistic disciplines who create works across multimedia and presentation formats whilst exploring the development of fine art tradition through new media ultimately taking the medium onto the streets and providing access to visual artwork in public as well as unexpected places.

“Poppy Fields” was sponsored by South Western Railway and was presented at Winchester Cathedral from 31^stOctober to 4^th November 2023. Appropriately enough, we took the train for our visit, arriving in the City in good time for our ticketed time of 2000. By good judgement of the stewards in attendance we were allowed early access to the cathedral due to the wet weather and joined a queue of other eager first night attendees.

Unfortunately our usual good time keeping was lacking for our return journey and this, compounded by our SWR service departing Winchester early meant that we were left on the station platform with the last train west of Poole disappearing into the night. Taking a screen grab from Real Time Trains of evidence, one of our party had the foresight to contact the SWR helpline to advise of the situation with the result that within the hour we were heading home in a taxi (which had come all the way from Southampton to collect us!) provided by the railway company. While our transport was on its way, I obviously took the opportunity to see a couple of freight trains passing through Winchester amongst an assortment of SWR Class 450’s, 444’s and a XR Class 221 Voyager.

Winchester railway station was opened on 10th June 1839 by the London and Southampton Railway as a temporary terminus for the Winchester to Southampton section. Another station was opened at Basingstoke on the same day, which acted as the temporary terminus of the London to Basingstoke section. The line connecting Winchester and Basingstoke completed in March 1840.

Another line was constructed to run via Guildford, Farnham and Alton, which joined the main line north of Winchester. The present day line runs via Aldershot instead of Guildford, and the line finishes at Alton. British Rail closed the line from Alton to Winchester in 1973 but a section from Alton to Alresford is preserved as the Watercress Line.

The Great Western Railway had their own line having absorbed the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway which opened in stages between 1882 and 1885. This used a separate station on the eastern side of Winchester, when opened called Winchester Cheesehill, which I think is an excellent name but this was later changed to Winchester (Chesil). It was renamed again in 1949 when the brackets were dropped and the station became known as Winchester Chesil, whilst Winchester’s main station was renamed Winchester City. When Chesil closed in 1966, British Rail (BR) changed the station name from Winchester City during the following year to Winchester as it is known today.

In other news, the government has cancelled rail industry plans for the mass closure of ticket offices in England, saying they failed to reach the “high threshold of serving passengers”. You may recall The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) had announced over the summer that it intended to shut almost all of the nation’s 1,007 train station ticketing outlets in an effort to reduce costs after a ‘post-COVID fall in passenger numbers’. Following a public outcry over the three week public consultation period running from 5th to 26^th July as originally proposed, this was hastily extended to 1^st September.  Although the cost-cutting proposals were made by the train operators managing the station offices, they were widely understood to have been pushed by a government eager to trim the subsidy for rail. According to the passenger watchdogs managing the survey after receiving over 750,000 responses to the consultation, with what is believed to have been a figure of around 99% of which were objections, the Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed he had asked train operators to “withdraw their proposals”.

The government announcement on Tuesday 31st October came after watchdogs Transport Focus and London TravelWatch said they opposed every single planned closure due to concerns over the impact on passenger accessibility. During the previous week a cross-party transport committee of MP’s also warned the plans went “too far, too fast” and described the consultation as lacking in transparency.  Prime Minister and private jet enthusiast Rishi Sunak said in September that closing ticket offices was “the right thing for the British public and British taxpayers” because “only one in 10 tickets are sold currently in ticket offices”.  However, Mr Harper said in his statement on Tuesday that the government had made clear to the industry throughout the consultation that its proposals “must meet a high threshold of serving passengers”. He added; “We have engaged with accessibility groups throughout this process and listened carefully to passengers as well as my colleagues in parliament. The proposals that have resulted from this process do not meet the high thresholds set by ministers, and so the government has asked train operators to withdraw their proposals. We will continue our work to reform our railways with the expansion of contactless Pay As You Go ticketing, making stations more accessible through our Access for All programme and £350m funding through our Network North plan to improve accessibility at up to 100 stations.”

A lot of words this week, and not many visuals! Thank you for visiting and for your comments. We’ll be back soon, in the meantime take care and….. be seeing you!