ABSTRACT
On a September evening in 1964 a branch line terminus in the north of England waited for the Beeching Axe to fall. As the last train from Carlisle pulled into the tiny terminus at Silloth, the usual diesel replaced by a steam locomotive for the occasion, passengers in the packed coaches gasped to see a crowd of between 5,000 and 9,000 people spilling across the tracks and serenaded by a group of folk singers performing The Beeching Blues. The police had already ejected the local Labour Party candidate from the platform and as the train prepared to return to Carlisle they repeatedly removed a placard which read ‘if you don’t catch this you’ll never get another one – unless you vote Labour’ from the front of the locomotive, which was also adorned by a wreath. The final departure was delayed, first while the police removed detonators from the rails and then as they removed ‘dozens of “teenagers” ’, sitting on the line to shouts of ‘remember it’s your train they’re stopping as well as ours’. As the locomotive inched forward, the driver released hot steam and then hot water to clear the last of the demonstrators sitting on the tracks before the train pulled away to the sound of Brian Poole and the Tremeloes’ Do You Love Me? playing on the crowd’s transistor radios. As it pulled into Abbeydown, police cars raced to the station in response to a bomb hoax. In 1883 a group opposing Sunday working, armed with clubs and sticks, physically prevented fish being carried from Strome Ferry station by the Highland Railway, but it is much easier to stop a train than to make it run; at Silloth the crowd departed, some of them in tears. The following Friday, the Carlisle Journal reported this ‘great train robbery’ in uncompromising terms:
With one swift cut of your scalpel, Dr Beeching, you have severed a vital life-line . . . a line that can mean the difference between prosperity and poverty to the once booming seaside town of Silloth. You have threatened the livelihoods of many people. You have deterred industry. You have discouraged the ‘bucket and spade brigade’.
