Robin Atthill (1912–1994)

The Somerset and Dorset Railway as originally conceived was a prime example of the more-or-less useless lines built to fill perceived gaps in the railway map in the final years of the 1850s boom. The route from Burnham-on-Sea to Wimborne served no important centres of population, and the company's shipping services failed to generate the anticipated "Channel-to-Channel" through traffic from South Wales to France. The traffic position improved with the opening of the Bath extension in 1874: as well as opening up the Somerset coalfield, the new line offered the Midland Railway a direct link to the South coast, cutting out the rival Great Western. Unfortunately, the S&D company had spent so much on building the new line that it was unable to buy enough engines and stock to handle this Bath-to-Bournemouth traffic over the Mendip gradients, and it was obliged to lease the line to a consortium of the Midland and the LSWR from 1876. The line continued to be jointly worked by the two companies and their successors until 1948.

Because of the steep gradients and attractive scenery, and because it was the line on which many people from the North and Midlands travelled to their summer holiday destinations, the line was always popular with railway enthusiasts. However, once nationalisation eliminated the commercial reason for the line's existence (and delivered it into the hands of its former Great Western rivals, now the Western Region of BR), traffic was diverted to routes that could be worked more economically. As Atthill discusses, there was a lot of controversy about the way in which the line was systematically starved of traffic to justify closure, but it is hard to see how it could have been kept open, even without Western Region malice aforethought. Local traffic was practically nil, coal traffic was disappearing as the Somerset pits closed, and there were perfectly good alternative routes for through passenger traffic.

Atthill's book provides a useful, if rather concise, description of the line's origins and the history of the various companies involved, as well as a good description of the route and stations and some notes on operations. O.S. Nock contributed additional chapters on locomotives and performance. The first edition (1967) was written with the cooperation of BR in the run-up to the closure of the line, so Atthill was able to describe from first-hand experience things that have now been wiped off the railway map for good. Living locally, he was also able to draw on his own memories and those of railway staff and their families. The (1985) second edition was updated somewhat, but apparently not very systematically, for example there are several references to objects that "can still be seen in the Clapham Transport Museum" [closed and moved to York about 1973, if I remember rightly].… (meer)