A film I copied from ageing VHS to dvd which documents the last few years of the Penrith to Keswick railway with lots of footage of the line in operation.
We travelled this route often in the 1950’s going to visit relatives in Threlkeld, it was a great journey. We travelled from Whitehaven to Threlkeld, always on time. The people in the surrounding areas were so dependent on the railway, it was a truly wonderful experience.
Considering the gridlock in Keswick and the roads full of traffic all year round in the Lake District....it makes sense to reopen this line ...it would reduce air pollution be the Green way to travel ..and would easily pay for itself..
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing. We walked the K2T trail today over this line and there is just so much history over one of the most beautiful sections of any line in the UK. Finding this just bought it all to life. Thank you for sharing.
It was thought about but local road improvement schemes would have meant expensive infrastructure including retaining walls and bridges would have been required and these were beyond the means of any preservation society.
This is a quite wonderful piece of film. My first visit to Keswick was in 1974 and I wasn't aware of the railway station until about 10 years later. Closing the line was no less than criminal,think about the revenue it'd get nowadays. When my wife and I go to Keswick (every year) we have to walk to Threlkeld and back,it's very enjoyable,but now much more difficult since the 2015 floods which washed away 2 or 3 of the bridges.
I can just about remember Dad taking me on a train from Keswick to Cockermouth and back during the last year that section was open. He had some of the trip on cine film but sadly I don't know where that is now.
I was there as a little lad on the last day, they put on a lovely Derby Lightweight if memory serves me right and there was some weirdness that my dad went down to chat to the signalman in the box a few hundred yards along the lifted section where the platform was one not in use. Inside the booking hall someone had set up a lovely OO layout of the area and my brother who was only a toddler derailed a train much to the consternation of the railway bloke and blamed it on me so I got taken outside and given a whacking when I had stood there with hands behind me back... little brothers are such a pain :S We stopped by on our way back down from Scotland at end of our holiday and the place was deserted, like WW3 had happened and I remember the first episode of Survivors and said that place (Barfield) was just like Keswick lol Now if me dad had been quicker on the mark he with screwdriver could have snagged plenty of souvenirs that day lol
Brian Edwards 1958 200 national service men from the border regiment boarded one of the last trains out of Cockermouth for Berlin/ it is a shame most all of our tradition is fading away but the fells remain thanks for bringing back all the beauty of the lake district
Makes you want to weep. Politicians with zero vision apart from the balance sheet. You couldn't even begin to guess the huge number of passengers this line would carry today.
having been taken on holiday to keswick as a youngster I have 40 years of happy memories from this beautiful place and remember walking the old derelict line at some places where it headed out to Low Briery ,for those who know Keswick.
The line was closed to allow the A66 road to be built to serve the Leyland Bus Factory in Workington, seen as the cure for unemployment on the coast in the 1960s. Trains were modernised but the timetable remained basically the same as in the 1860s. Revenue and costs were calculated in ways that painted a poor picture. To find out how the line can get the future it deserved, please visit www.keswickrailway.com
WOW, Brilliant .Brilliant Film.I recently took the Bus (28th December 2022) from Penrith to Cockermouth. I would have given anything to have travelled on this Train 50 Years ago.Fantastic History and wonderful stories. Serious,tragic mistake to close this Line🤐Can You imagine running this a Heritage line these Day's? It would Definately be the most visited in the Country with the Tourism in the Lakes.Come on Cumbria" DO IT" And now I will show You what We have lost!!!!!!!! (Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol) What fasinating people.Wish I could have met them!!!!!!!!!
Just visited Keswick and stayed only a short distance from what was Keswick station,i took a look around what is left only the ticket office the platform which is attached to the hotel which still functions.This video gives a very good insight into this once fond railway line.
Yes, closing this was an absolute disgrace. The eagerness of the short sighted imbeciles making the decision to demolish, WAS criminal. Imagine the revenues this line would be bringing into the area if it had rightly been preserved, especially with the magnificent roster of live steamers available today.
Not to mention the recent Flusco business park just west of Penrith that has meant any reopening would have to divert and take on a seriously steep grade. That one was actively fought over between the district council and promotors of reopening the railway. Kind of sad when you consider the expensive new bridge BR put over the M6 in 1969-70 carried a dedicated track for the line in addition with the WCML, just two years before the bean counters knocked it off.
@@freelunch99 except Mrs Castle wasn't the Minister of Transport after 6th April 1968, and this line closed in 1972. You can't blame her for every closure. Peter Walker, Conservative, closed this line.
My Dad took me brother and myself on one of the last services Penrith to Kkeswick and back .seem to remember bits of it even though I was 5 years old .lovely sentimental program, brilliant west Moreland characters, on a serious note utter joke it was closed ,and a total farce that its not going to be reopened .in a world where we keep being told about global warming and are rellance on the motor car / h g v , there appears to be no will and even less money . Shame when we see the very affects being played out with the flooding over the last decade.
Loosing 50k nah! It’s would make 3 or 4 times that now, blinkered back then. I could go from my house 5 mins to a nearby station and be in Keswick in a few hours...... so much has been lost to no foresight it’s heart breaking really!
Thank you for sharing this for us to enjoy. Why did this line go? It serves a very strategic function. Given the success of the Borders Railway, there is hope for the rightful, albeit expensive, restoration of a good public transport link to this lovely area..
This is really great. One unified livery. I have a question: Most Beeching cuts were made by 1967. How did certain lines survive the first batch but close later? These include the most serious criminal misconducts in my eyes - Penrith-Keswick/Borders Railway/Direct line Peterborough to Grimsby/Woodhead Line among others.
That's easy to explain. Barbara Castle (Labour, Minister of Transport) introduced a series of Grant's to support branch lines that were uneconomic but were socially necessary. The Penrith-Keswick line was one line safed by these grants. These grants were for 2 year periods and in 1969 Richard Marsh or Fred Mulley (Labour, Minister of Transport), sorry but my source doesn't say which man made the decision, decided that the line's next grant would be its last unless the line went through the full TUCC closure process. In 1972 Peter Walker (Conservative, Minister of the Environment until November 1972 (the Ministry of Transport was part if the Ministry of the Environment at this time)) reject the claims of hardship if the line closed and made the decision to close the line. Freight from the quarries at Flusco and Blencow ceased on 19th June 1972. As for the Woodhead line, the non-standard electrification was a key factor for the line's closure. It was coming up for replacement as life expired and with falling levels of freight due to the recession of the early 1980s the decision was made to close the line.
They were obsessed with cars and motorways in those days. I personaly beleive that the people running things then,had been involved in the second world war. There is no doubt that America's entry into that war flooded Europe with highly efficient road transport wheras the German war effort was negated by the allies wholesale bombing of the European rail network. It is my belief that this left an impression in many politicians minds that railways were a thing of the past. There was also the question of corrupt backhanders, such as a certain pro road transport minister being investigated for tax evasion.
Personally, I doubt that the line was actually losing £50k pa, but the accountants wanted closures, so they took steps to ensure that it looked that way. Have a look at Adrian Vaughan's book "Signalman's Twilight" to see examples of the dirty tricks that were implemented.
@@ryanparker4996 only if you want to compare apples with oranges? BR had all the expense of maintaining and operating the railways. Name me 1 road, where a public body not only maintains that road but also provides all the transport kn that road.
Amazing footage! I walked along the newly REOPENED path! Just days ago. This is amazing! 😍 Would it be possible to use some of this footage. Full credit will be given?
Stayed at the Keswick hotel 30 yrs ago.... there was a passage connection directly to the railway station... the hotel, connection and station building all remain to this day... a very unfortunate closure.
That easy to explain. Little freight being sent out, just the stobe from 2 quarries and domestic coal coming in and thise trains, from what I can see online, did not run every day and stations not close to the village they are named for, for example Threlkeld was a good half a mile from the centre of the village, whilst the bus stop was in the village. By the time of closure there were only 5 trains day and none on Sundays for most of the year, summer brought a couple more trains, but these only ran for about a month.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 From the 1930's, bus services undermined the railways as they were much more convenient and direct,....almost door-to-door which saved a considerable amount of time.
@@malthusXIII-fo3ep Threkeld was a prime example of this problem and it really started with the end of WW1 with the government selling off war surplus trucks that they had trained many men to drive. It only got worse as the years went on. Some place had more buses in a day than their railway station had trains in the week.
I found it difficult to understand some of the dialogue too. I would have loved to of known what they were saying. Perhaps one day Gorden could translate for all of us who are in the same boat. Go on Gorden be a sport.
Only bullhead I noticed in that video TBH was in the very last few seconds with the footage of them cutting up a small stretch of track. Looks like they'd replaced most of the rest of it, there was barely a chair fastener in sight.
We travelled this route often in the 1950’s going to visit relatives in Threlkeld, it was a great journey. We travelled from Whitehaven to Threlkeld, always on time. The people in the surrounding areas were so dependent on the railway, it was a truly wonderful experience.
Brings back some memories......should never have closed.
Considering the gridlock in Keswick and the roads full of traffic all year round in the Lake District....it makes sense to reopen this line ...it would reduce air pollution be the Green way to travel ..and would easily pay for itself..
What a fantastic railway. So many stories. Time to bring back some these branch lines all over Britain.
Fat chance of ever seeing that happen
What a grand film. My dad Donald Clarke was station master at Blencow and Penruddock before going to Heysham Harbour
Some wonderful characters, stories and voices in this film! It was a big mistake shutting down all those old branch lines.
Great film. Lovely Cumberland accents of the retired locals too.
What a beautiful film. (I was there on that very last day of operation in 1972).
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing. We walked the K2T trail today over this line and there is just so much history over one of the most beautiful sections of any line in the UK. Finding this just bought it all to life. Thank you for sharing.
Brilliant film ,what a busy heritage line that would be today! Love the local accents and pronunciations of those contributing - charming .
It was thought about but local road improvement schemes would have meant expensive infrastructure including retaining walls and bridges would have been required and these were beyond the means of any preservation society.
Troutbeck station master reminiscing of his time there, what wonderful nostalgia.
This is a quite wonderful piece of film. My first visit to Keswick was in 1974 and I wasn't aware of the railway station until about 10 years later. Closing the line was no less than criminal,think about the revenue it'd get nowadays. When my wife and I go to Keswick (every year) we have to walk to Threlkeld and back,it's very enjoyable,but now much more difficult since the 2015 floods which washed away 2 or 3 of the bridges.
Think about the cost of maintaining the line and of providing the service.
I can just about remember Dad taking me on a train from Keswick to Cockermouth and back during the last year that section was open. He had some of the trip on cine film but sadly I don't know where that is now.
Spot on!!! Brought back many memory's. Lived on a farm close to the line in the 1950's
What a fantastic piece of film. Thank you for going to the trouble of uploading it!
just did the keswick to threlkeld railway walk,2021,loved it
I was there as a little lad on the last day, they put on a lovely Derby Lightweight if memory serves me right and there was some weirdness that my dad went down to chat to the signalman in the box a few hundred yards along the lifted section where the platform was one not in use. Inside the booking hall someone had set up a lovely OO layout of the area and my brother who was only a toddler derailed a train much to the consternation of the railway bloke and blamed it on me so I got taken outside and given a whacking when I had stood there with hands behind me back... little brothers are such a pain :S We stopped by on our way back down from Scotland at end of our holiday and the place was deserted, like WW3 had happened and I remember the first episode of Survivors and said that place (Barfield) was just like Keswick lol Now if me dad had been quicker on the mark he with screwdriver could have snagged plenty of souvenirs that day lol
Brian Edwards 1958 200 national service men from the border regiment boarded one of the last trains out of Cockermouth for Berlin/ it is a shame most all of our tradition is fading away but the fells remain thanks for bringing back all the beauty of the lake district
Have you got a bit of Marmelade stuck on your Space Bar oldboy? 😂
What an interesting video. I love Keswick always wanted to know a little more about the lost line
Makes you want to weep. Politicians with zero vision apart from the balance sheet. You couldn't even begin to guess the huge number of passengers this line would carry today.
This is clearer on my iPhone than on my old VHS cassette on a HD tv... I won't comment much further as it winds me up the stupid loss of this line
having been taken on holiday to keswick as a youngster I have 40 years of happy memories from this beautiful place and remember walking the old derelict line at some places where it headed out to Low Briery ,for those who know Keswick.
Used to catch a train to Penrith. Change for Carlisle. College days
The line was closed to allow the A66 road to be built to serve the Leyland Bus Factory in Workington, seen as the cure for unemployment on the coast in the 1960s. Trains were modernised but the timetable remained basically the same as in the 1860s.
Revenue and costs were calculated in ways that painted a poor picture.
To find out how the line can get the future it deserved, please visit www.keswickrailway.com
WOW, Brilliant .Brilliant Film.I recently took the Bus (28th December 2022) from Penrith to Cockermouth. I would have given anything to have travelled on this Train 50 Years ago.Fantastic History and wonderful stories. Serious,tragic mistake to close this Line🤐Can You imagine running this a Heritage line these Day's? It would Definately be the most visited in the Country with the Tourism in the Lakes.Come on Cumbria" DO IT" And now I will show You what We have lost!!!!!!!! (Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol) What fasinating people.Wish I could have met them!!!!!!!!!
Just visited Keswick and stayed only a short distance from what was Keswick station,i took a look around what is left only the ticket office the platform which is attached to the hotel which still functions.This video gives a very good insight into this once fond railway line.
Wow! Loved the interviews, well discussions.
Thanks for posting the video. Good to see what it looked like.
Yes, closing this was an absolute disgrace. The eagerness of the short sighted imbeciles making the decision to demolish, WAS criminal. Imagine the revenues this line would be bringing into the area if it had rightly been preserved, especially with the magnificent roster of live steamers available today.
Barbara castle shut a lot of lines
Not to mention the recent Flusco business park just west of Penrith that has meant any reopening would have to divert and take on a seriously steep grade. That one was actively fought over between the district council and promotors of reopening the railway. Kind of sad when you consider the expensive new bridge BR put over the M6 in 1969-70 carried a dedicated track for the line in addition with the WCML, just two years before the bean counters knocked it off.
@@freelunch99 except Mrs Castle wasn't the Minister of Transport after 6th April 1968, and this line closed in 1972. You can't blame her for every closure. Peter Walker, Conservative, closed this line.
They did more damage to Britain than the Luftwaffe coukd have ever dreamt of when Beechins Axe fell
You can buy an official copy from www.keswickrailway.com, and the money goes towards the Keswick Railway Reinstatement project.
Great video, thank you.
Pity it closed. Should have stayed open with some investment.
Had it survived it would have probably been popular for steam specials
What a lovely video on something that should of never been removed 🙁 Look at the road traffic now on the A66 drrrrrrrrrrr
Took the train between Penrith and Keswick in 1955,1956 and 1957 when going to Keswick for our holidays.
My Dad took me brother and myself on one of the last services Penrith to Kkeswick and back .seem to remember bits of it even though I was 5 years old .lovely sentimental program, brilliant west Moreland characters, on a serious note utter joke it was closed ,and a total farce that its not going to be reopened .in a world where we keep being told about global warming and are rellance on the motor car / h g v , there appears to be no will and even less money . Shame when we see the very affects being played out with the flooding over the last decade.
Loosing 50k nah! It’s would make 3 or 4 times that now, blinkered back then. I could go from my house 5 mins to a nearby station and be in Keswick in a few hours...... so much has been lost to no foresight it’s heart breaking really!
What a crime for this line to be shut!
Some of the most beautiful scenery in the world 🌎 wow fantastic!
Thank you for sharing this for us to enjoy. Why did this line go? It serves a very strategic function. Given the success of the Borders Railway, there is hope for the rightful, albeit expensive, restoration of a good public transport link to this lovely area..
It didn't make enough money to cover its costs, even after Mrs Cadtke introduced grants to support such lines.
Not that expensive to re open when compared to the cost of just a few miles of motorway.
A Country now lost.
This is really great. One unified livery. I have a question: Most Beeching cuts were made by 1967. How did certain lines survive the first batch but close later? These include the most serious criminal misconducts in my eyes - Penrith-Keswick/Borders Railway/Direct line Peterborough to Grimsby/Woodhead Line among others.
Listen to the revving engine as it pulls away from the station. Makes me disappointed in short sighted politicians at the time.
That's easy to explain. Barbara Castle (Labour, Minister of Transport) introduced a series of Grant's to support branch lines that were uneconomic but were socially necessary. The Penrith-Keswick line was one line safed by these grants. These grants were for 2 year periods and in 1969 Richard Marsh or Fred Mulley (Labour, Minister of Transport), sorry but my source doesn't say which man made the decision, decided that the line's next grant would be its last unless the line went through the full TUCC closure process. In 1972 Peter Walker (Conservative, Minister of the Environment until November 1972 (the Ministry of Transport was part if the Ministry of the Environment at this time)) reject the claims of hardship if the line closed and made the decision to close the line. Freight from the quarries at Flusco and Blencow ceased on 19th June 1972.
As for the Woodhead line, the non-standard electrification was a key factor for the line's closure. It was coming up for replacement as life expired and with falling levels of freight due to the recession of the early 1980s the decision was made to close the line.
They were obsessed with cars and motorways in those days. I personaly beleive that the people running things then,had been involved in the second world war. There is no doubt that America's entry into that war flooded Europe with highly efficient road transport wheras the German war effort was negated by the allies wholesale bombing of the European rail network. It is my belief that this left an impression in many politicians minds that railways were a thing of the past. There was also the question of corrupt backhanders, such as a certain pro road transport minister being investigated for tax evasion.
Personally, I doubt that the line was actually losing £50k pa, but the accountants wanted closures, so they took steps to ensure that it looked that way. Have a look at Adrian Vaughan's book "Signalman's Twilight" to see examples of the dirty tricks that were implemented.
With only 5 trains a day and heavily subsidised it was probably losing this much per year.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 yeah, you could say the same about most rural roads. Does it make sense to tear those up too?
@@ryanparker4996 only if you want to compare apples with oranges? BR had all the expense of maintaining and operating the railways. Name me 1 road, where a public body not only maintains that road but also provides all the transport kn that road.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 literally every fucking road in Britain you actual muppet
@@neiloflongbeck5705 you realise the Government owns your car, right? 😂😂😂 youre just borrowing it
Amazing footage! I walked along the newly REOPENED path! Just days ago. This is amazing! 😍
Would it be possible to use some of this footage. Full credit will be given?
Gee, she's walking along the trackbed on a live line. I wonder what they would say about that today.
Stayed at the Keswick hotel 30 yrs ago.... there was a passage connection directly to the railway station... the hotel, connection and station building all remain to this day... a very unfortunate closure.
I find it difficult to believe line was losing 50 grand a year
That easy to explain. Little freight being sent out, just the stobe from 2 quarries and domestic coal coming in and thise trains, from what I can see online, did not run every day and stations not close to the village they are named for, for example Threlkeld was a good half a mile from the centre of the village, whilst the bus stop was in the village. By the time of closure there were only 5 trains day and none on Sundays for most of the year, summer brought a couple more trains, but these only ran for about a month.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 From the 1930's, bus services undermined the railways as they
were much more convenient and direct,....almost door-to-door which saved a considerable amount of time.
@@malthusXIII-fo3ep Threkeld was a prime example of this problem and it really started with the end of WW1 with the government selling off war surplus trucks that they had trained many men to drive. It only got worse as the years went on. Some place had more buses in a day than their railway station had trains in the week.
I've known this video since years and i'm surprised there isn't any silent hill related comment yet
I wish they never removed the line, it won’t be coming back now, they’re selling land on the old railway
Whyever was this closed? Re opening now and save the environment from car pollution!
Money IS the root of all evil.
Only word that comes to me? Criminal.
How might I get a copy of this Rob?
I bought mine on ebay and converted the VHS to dvd.
Fascinating, however,any chance of putting sub-titles in when the narrators not talking? Hardly made out what any of the interviewees were saying!
Patronising git. What lovely people those interviewees were, especially the lady. We shall not see their like again, sadly.
I found it difficult to understand some of the dialogue too. I would have loved to of known what they were saying. Perhaps one day Gorden could translate for all of us who are in the same boat. Go on Gorden be a sport.
@@JH-fv4ge y
They're easy to understand and I'm not from Cumbria.
This old
Those lines were bull head, obsolete and unsafe
And just what kind of track do you think Mallard established its 126 mph record on?
Only bullhead I noticed in that video TBH was in the very last few seconds with the footage of them cutting up a small stretch of track. Looks like they'd replaced most of the rest of it, there was barely a chair fastener in sight.
You can find bullhead track still in use at Birmingham New Street station in 2020.
Nothing unsafe about properly maintained bullhead