Saturday, August 29, 2020

The last day of the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire

Members of the Stephenson Locomotive Society cling to the brake van on the last day of the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Light Railway, 20 March 1960.

The line had a complicated history. As the Colonel Stephen Society website records:

With bus competition daily passenger services ceased in 1933 and the Great Depression of that decade caused a severe decline in revenue. By 1940 partial closure loomed but the line was taken over by the Army for servicing a network of munitions stores and in this guise the Railway survived in army use till 1960

Colonel Holman Stephens was involved with the operation of 16 minor railways around Britain. He was named Holman after the artist Holman Hunt and his father was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

If you click on the image above you will see footage of the last day of the line, followed by a sudden switch to Ambergate on the Midland main line,

No comments: