In this archive article, C. Hamilton-Ellis recalls the Midland & South Western Junction Railway and its North Express service. Drawing on his own memories of the railway, he describes its history, locomotives and the journey through the Wiltshire countryside, accompanied by his railway painting.
The North Express and its origins
SUCH a title as the North Express might mean to us, nowadays, anything from a train on its way from Inverness to Wick, to another heading for the Baltic. But this North Express was to be seen at the head of Southampton Water, and on Salisbury Plain, and threading the Cotswolds. So to its origins.
There were several thorns in the side of the Great Western Railway, distinct from the London & South Western, which became rather a sort of sciatica. A true thorn was the Somerset & Dorset, which the dastardly Midland Railway and the unspeakable South Western had jointly snatched in the 1870s. Another was the Midland & South Western Junction Railway. In spite of its name, this was sturdily independent. It linked the Midlands with the Deep South, with the benevolent support of Paddington’s two old enemies, adding insult to injury by getting running powers over stretches of the Great Western.
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The Junction Railway’s beginnings
Beginnings of the “Junction”, which so improbably extended from Andover to Andoversford, about sixty miles northward, had been modest and penurious. The Swindon, Marlborough & Andover Railway reached Marlborough in 1881, to push on to Grafton and ultimately to Red Posts Junction, a little west of Andover on the South Western main line. The Swindon & Cheltenham Extension Railway reached Cirencester from Swindon (GW station) in 1883. Desperate, with no apparent friends, the two companies amalgamated next year as the Midland & South Western Junction Railway. Through traffic, crossing over the Great Western at Rushey Platt, began in 1891.
A Receiver was in possession, but Midland, and LSWR, now had their eyes on this second potential dig at the GWR. The South Western released its promising Chief Storekeeper, (Sir) Sam Fay, to be the new General Manager of the MSWJR in 1892. Himself Southampton-born, he moved-in-fast and fairly licked the staggering outfit into shape and solvency. He got running powers, willingly granted, over the South Western from Andover Junction to Southampton Terminus. There were General Offices in an agreeable Victorian villa overlooking Swindon Town Station, run by Old Swindon. In 1899, with mission accomplished, Fay went back to Waterloo as Superintendent of the Line, before going to the toiling Great Central as General Manager in 1902.
The North Express service
For the first time, with the northern extremity completed, the “Junction” prospered. Under Fay, in 1893, came the forerunner of the North Express, with through carriages from Southampton to Sheffield, and a corresponding South Express. The company had then one express engine, a modest 4-4-0 by Dübs & Company. By 1914 at latest, starting early in the afternoon, it was quicker to ride from Waterloo to Cheltenham than from Paddington, thanks to a smart connection at Andover Junction. One recalls arriving at the latter, from London, and seeing the red North Express waiting on the left-hand curve from Andover Town, having left Southampton at 1.45 p.m. It went on to call at Swindon Town, then without a stop to Cheltenham, 35¼ miles, over the Cotswolds, in 54 minutes.
Memories of the railway
That is the train I have painted, with fond memories from long ago. My picture (reproduced overleaf) shows it, in 1915, coming down through Burderop Woods, above the head of Coate Water just south of Swindon, in the heart of Richard Jefferies’ beloved country, the scene of his best books. Almost continuously the line traversed country of singular beauty: along the eastern flanks of Salisbury Plain, through the Marlborough Downs and so by Chiseldon down to Swindon Town. Then came Cirencester, a delightful town to this day save that now its nearest railway station has to be Kemble Junction on the old Great Western line north to Gloucester.
At Cirencester, too, the company had its locomotive shops, and the handsome through station called Watermoor. (The Great Western had but a picturesque terminus, haunt of fussy rail-motors, on the other side of the town). Alas, poor Watermoor! Last time I saw it, twenty years ago, the buildings were deserted; vandalised and mucked-up by young yobos, such as occur even in such a nice borough as “Ciren”.
The locomotives
Going over the Cotswolds entailed marked contrasts, from the windswept plateau by Foss Cross to the delightful passage of Chedworth, and north of its double-tracked tunnel, a lovely descent to join the reluctant Great Western line out to Kingham. So, by running powers, the trains reached the welcoming arms of the Midland Railway.
Midland & South Western Junction trains scarcely resembled those of its mighty allies, save in the beautiful Midland crimson for engines and carriages. The engine tenders proudly bore the company’s initials in gold, in an extremely florid sort of italic script, all curved and scrolled, possibly inspired by that on the splashers of London & South Western express engines during the Adams period. The locomotive in my picture was one of a pair built in 1914, the last of James Tyrrell’s standard express engines. These two, Nos. 4 and 31, had each two domes, that on the second ring containing top-feed apparatus and being surmounted by a pair of Ross safety-valves, highly polished. This made the engines very exotic in the eyes of the small boy who once was I. There was virtue in the carriages, too. All too rarely for that time, all had electric lighting, even the horseboxes. The lavatory tanks were partly raised above the camber of the roofs, rather suggesting Holland.
The end of the railway
All gone, and for a long time now! Under the Railways Act 1921 this railway passed into the Great Western net, though not without a rearguard action lasting into the summer of 1923, the Government’s deadline. The Great Western gradually ran it down to rather a shadow of its old self. Yet it still served faithfully through the second world war, as well as the first conflict. But, as in other parts of the West Country, Paddington was to win in the end.
C. Hamilton-Ellis
