Lambourn Valley Railway

Lambourn had been an important agricultural and trading centre, but in the second half of the nineteenth century it was declining. Interested parties suggested a number of ways of making a railway connection, seen as important to revitalising the town, but it was left to the Engineer of the newly authorised Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway, E E Allen. to propose a realistic scheme. This was a tramway from Newbury to Lambourn; the Tramways Act 1870 had enabled a low-cost form of railway to be constructed without some of the legal processes required for conventional railways.

There was considerable local enthusiasm for the scheme and the provisional Newbury and Lambourn Tramway Company was formed in late 1873. A 3 ft gauge single track would be laid at the side of the main road, with several short branches within Newbury. It was to be horse-drawn, the vehicle making two round trips daily at first. The cost was estimated at £30,000 and an authorising Act was obtained on 7 August 1875; one year was allowed for construction. A contract for construction was let and a first rail was ceremonially fixed; the subscribers did not come forward and only shares to the value of £4,000 were taken up. The company could not proceed and at the expiry of the year allowed, it was wound up.[note 1][1]

This was followed by a more conventional railway scheme taking advantage of the Regulation of Railways Act 1868 which, among other things, authorised the construction of a light railway—the first use of the term—subject to conditions that might be imposed by the board of Trade.[2][3][4] An attempt to get an authorising Act failed in the 1881 session due to objections over level crossings, but a revised scheme with a shorter route and fewer level crossings was submitted for the 1883 session, and obtained its authorising Act on 2 August 1883. The Lambourn Valley Railway Company was incorporated, capital £100,000. It was to be a single line built on the standard gauge; the estimated cost of the infrastructure was £80,530; it was authorised as an ordinary railway, not a light railway.[note 2] The engineer was John Fowler.

Actually raising the capital was now the task; the Directors offered a guaranteed dividend of 5% during the construction period, money that could only be paid out of capital. They also employed a new engineer, H O Baldry, who produced a reduced estimate for the construction of £58,068. However, by January 1885 only £23,365 had been subscribed.

In this impasse, the company acquired another engineer, William Gregory, and a new Contractor, Jonathan Edwin Billups, who it seems[note 3] was prepared to undertake the work for £110,000, but he would accept £60,000 of that in shares and £33,000 in debenture stock, only requiring £18,000 in cash. As a means of actually starting construction, this was attractive to the board, although by now they had not even the £18,000: of the £25,930 subscribed £10,000 had been spent on Parliamentary costs—an extension of time had been applied for and granted—and land acquisition, and a further £10,000 was considered to be committed. Nonetheless, Billups was asked to start work, which he did on 18 June 1888.[5]

The actual construction work proceeded satisfactorily until in June 1890, when about two-thirds of the line was ballasted, a serious contractual dispute with Billups arose. The Company went to litigation against him and won, and were awarded costs. Billups left the scene, leaving behind his plant and a construction locomotive Lambourn. The company now decided to progress the works directly, but with almost no money this was a challenge, and no progress was made. Parliamentary authorisation for a further extension of time and further borrowing were obtained in 1892, and the Company approached the Great Western Railway (GWR) for help; the larger company was sympathetic but unwilling to lend the money.

A further extension of time was obtained, and a working agreement with the GWR was concluded, but no progress on the ground took place until the contractor S Pearson & Son of Westminster offered to complete the work for £33,000. A contract was agreed on 30 January 1897. It is not clear how Pearson expected to be paid the money.

Pearson discovered that he had to rework much of the earlier construction, including excavating 60,000 cu yd of spoil in supposedly finished cuttings, and piling the River Kennet bridge and rectifying problems on several other bridges.

Notwithstanding these additional tasks, Pearson & Son completed the work promptly and all that remained was a contract for the actual connection with the GWR at Newbury, also done by Pearson & Son but as contractor to the GWR.

Before opening to passengers, an inspection by the Board of trade inspector was required; Col. Yorke visited on 31 March 1898. His report is entirely descriptive without any adverse remarks, and he approved the opening. A coal train (not needing the official approval) may have run the following day, but the line opened fully to passengers and goods on 4 April 1898.[6]

Continuing to look for ways to reduce cost, the Company applied in November 1902 for a Light Railway Order under the terms of the Light Railways Act 1896. It is not clear what benefit this was expected to give them, but a hearing was held on 31 July 1903 and the Order was refused.

The locomotive Ealhswith required an overhaul, and a third locomotive was procured from the Hunslet Engine Company, paying by instalments.

In 1902 the GWR made an offer to purchase the line for £45,000. At this time the company had debts of over £27,000, but they rejected the offer outright, relying on optimistic ideas of improving income on the line and the Directors' willingness to fund necessary outgoing s personally. The offer was repeated in 1904 with an offer of £50,000 but was again rejected.

Unabashed, the GWR now suggested that their new railmotors would be useful on the line; specially developed to reduce costs on lightly trafficked lines, these consisted of a passenger coach with a small steam engine incorporated at one end. The railmotors could haul one or two goods wagons or a trailer coach. The Board considered this to be an attractive idea, and applied to the Board of Trade on 3 May 1904 for sanction to operate them. This was necessary because the axle load of the railmotors, at 12 tons, exceeded the authorised rolling stock weights.[note 5]

Col Yorke of the Board of Trade made an inspection on 7 May 1904, in which two railmotors were passed over the underbridges together; some brickwork repairs were pointed out, but the proposal was approved. Yorke made the comment that:

for all practical purposes the line is now a light railway, though neither of the clauses referring to the Lt. Rly Act of 1860 nor the Lt. Rly. Act of 1896 apply to it.[8]

The railmotors were put into service on 15 May 1904, and the goods train was discontinued four weeks later; porters were also dispensed with at the intermediate stations. The company's locomotives and rolling stock were removed to Swindon and auctioned, and Archer-Houblon finally got his loan repaid.

The offer by the GWR to purchase the line was evidently still alive, and agreement was reached, for the sum of £50,000; they considered that £75,000 needed to be expended on the line to make it suitable for their purposes. The formal transfer took place on 1 July 1905.

In the final months of independent existence, the Company found that the hired railmotors were giving trouble; this was traced to the very hard water at Lambourn which was adversely affecting the small boilers in them. Conventional rolling stock was substituted temporarily.[9]

In the mid-1930s competition from road transport became serious, and it affected all the lines' traffics. The GWR considered how economies might be made, and at length on 5 February 1937 an AEC diesel railcar, no 18 started operating on the branch. The railcar was capable of hauling a limited trailing load. If necessary this was a passenger coach; the station pilot at Newbury was used to shunt the trailing coach off the railcar on arrival at the bay platform there. The railcar was based at Reading, and Lambourn engine shed was closed. Competing bus services were attractive, and at this period the heavy racehorse traffic became largely transferred to road.

Steam haulage was reintroduced on the branch trains in 1956 but by this time revenue on the line was in serious decline, and closure was proposed. Goods services would continue to Welford Park, and the branch would remain open to that point for the USAF traffic. Some improvements were made there to the public goods facilities. The last passenger train ran on 4 January 1960.

The residual branch line was handed over to the USAF in 1970, but by June 1972 they had transferred the movements to road, saving them $100,000 per annum, and the line was closed completely; on Saturday 3 November 1973 a special passenger service was operated as a "farewell" event, and that was the end of the line.[12]

There are no plans for reopening the line. There is a long-distance footpath, the Lambourn Valley Way,[15] which uses the trackbed of the former railway in places.

From the opening of the line on 4 April 1898 until the delivery of the LVR's first locomotives in late 1898, the line was worked by a locomotive loaned from the GWR. This was their no. 1384, a small 2-4-0T which they had acquired from the Watlington and Princes Risborough Railway in 1883; it was built in 1876.[16]

Altogether the LVR owned three locomotives:

• Aelfred Chapman and Furneaux 0-6-0T, built October 1898 (works no. 1162)[17]
• Eahlswith Chapman and Furneaux 0-6-0T, built November 1898 (works no. 1161)[17]
• Eadweade Hunslet Engine Company 0-6-0T, built June 1903 (works no. 811)[17]

Although produced by two different manufacturers, the three were generally similar: they were outside cylinder 0-6-0T locomotives with 3-foot-7-inch (1,090 mm) wheels, but Eadweade was slightly larger than the others: its wheelbase was 10 feet 6 inches (3.20 m) and it weighed 24 long tons (24 t) as opposed to 9 ft 6 in (2.90 m) and 23.5 long tons (23.9 t) for the other two.[18] Eahlswith and Aelfred were painted dark blue, lined out in black and white.[19] Eadweade was painted similarly, but had a copper-capped chimney and a brass safety valve cover. Nameplates were brass, with red backgrounds.[20]

On 15 May 1904, the LVR hired two steam railmotors from the GWR, and the locomotives were put up for sale.[19] They were sold to the Cambrian Railways in June 1904, where Eadweade became no. 24, Ealhswith became no. 26, and Aelfred became no. 35.[18] Under the Grouping, the Cambrian became a constituent of the enlarged GWR, and so these locomotives entered GWR stock on 1 January 1922.[21] There, they became GWR nos. 819–821 in the order of their Cambrian numbers.[22] Their ultimate fate varied: 820 (ex-Ealhswith) was withdrawn by the GWR in March 1930, and sold to a Somerset colliery in March 1931, from where it was sold for scrap in early 1945.[19] 821 (ex-Aelfred) was withdrawn by the GWR in October 1932, sold to a Glamorgan colliery in May 1933;[19] after working for another colliery, it was scrapped in 1942.[23] No. 819 (ex-Eadweade) remained on the GWR, being withdrawn in March or April 1946,[19][22] being scrapped in 1947.[23]

The two hired steam railmotors were GWR nos. 1 & 2, which had been built in October 1903[24] for £3477-4-0d (equivalent to £398,575 in 2021[25]) for the pair;[26] the LVR hired them for £420 (equivalent to £48,140 in 2021[25]) per year, again for the pair.[27] They had an axle loading of 12 long tons (12.19 t), and since the line had been designed for a maximum axle load of 8 long tons (8.13 t), the bridges needed to be inspected with both railmotors upon them before they could be approved for use.[27] When they were temporarily returned to the GWR for maintenance between October/November 1904 and January/February 1905, their replacements were nos. 19 & 21,[27] which had been built in July/June 1904.[28] In July 1905, one of the railmotors covered a duty which on Mondays to Saturdays began at 07:45 and ended at 19:52, covering 125 miles (201 km); it was supplemented on Thursdays and Saturdays by the other which began at 12:40 and finished work at 17:11, covering 52 miles (84 km). On Sundays just one railmotor was required, between 10:00 and 14:00.[29] The highest speed attained by the railmotors was 23.1 miles per hour (37.2 km/h), with an average speed of 22.2 miles per hour (35.7 km/h). One railmotor could handle a tail load having not more than 28 wheels.[30] After the GWR took over the line on 1 July 1905, the two railmotors remained a few weeks more, but were replaced by normal GWR locomotives and coaches from August/September 1905.[27]

The GWR used, at various times, steam railmotors, diesel railcars and an ex-M&SWJR 2-4-0.

For the opening of the line, four coaches were bought from Brown, Marshall & Co of Birmingham; they were paid for by Col. Archer Houblon, who sold them on to the LVR on a hire purchase basis. Two were composites, each carrying 8 first-class and 24 second-class passengers, as well as some luggage space; the other two seated 32 second-class. They had four wheels, and were 21 feet 7 inches (6.58 m) long, measured over the body. The body livery was plain wood, with gold lettering shaded red and black.[31]

Originally there were eighteen goods wagons; a brake van was acquired by April 1899. All of these were second-hand purchases. The livery for twelve of the wagons was dark brown, whilst six were slate grey.[32]

On 24 November 1904, the remainder of the railway's rolling stock was sold by auction at the GWR's yard in Swindon. At this time, there were four composite coaches, a passenger van, fifteen goods wagons and a goods brake van. One of the coaches was bought by the Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Railway, and the other three went to the West Sussex Railway.[23]