On 7 March 1966 the Somerset and Joint Dorset Railway between Templecombe and Bath was closed by the infamous Dr Beeching. This resulted in 14 stations being lost along with their supporting goods facilities and local Coal Mines.
In my recreation of this popular route, the line has been kept alive by the coal business, a new seam was discovered at Writhlington Mine in 1965 bolstering the freight traffic and thus saving the line just in time. Despite the increase in coal traffic passenger numbers fell and as a result smaller stations such as Cole were closed. To add further jeopardy to the line, a landslide just outside of Wellow saw the line between Radstock and Bath single tracked for safety reasons. The line settled down and saw up to 8 passenger services each way a day with one train to London in the mornings, this service carried on until 1980 when a group of MPs from the local councils put forward plans to modernise the Railway to cope with the increasing demand for more passenger services due to the growing communities on the route, British rail answered and began to modernise the track plan, install new signals in place of the old semaphore ones and lengthening platforms to accommodate longer trains even rebuilding whole stations in places. Unfortunately with the advent of Sectorisation the money pot dried up and further track modernisation was cancelled leaving the line with a maximum speed of 70MPH in places, however, Bath now has a regular service between Exeter and Bath as well as hourly service’s to major cities such as Southampton, Brighton and London, Writhlington Coal mine still outputs a significant tonnage to support freight traffic on the line.
I’m hoping to release the beta version later today 9th April on the workshop and will have a final version finished asap. I have to give a very special mention to Nick (Brysonman) for helping me with the signals.
You will need the original S&DJR line as well as the GEML add on and the L2B DLCs to use the route, suggested traffic would be class 143/150/153/156/159 dmu’s as well as classes 37/47/56 for freight traffic.
First Great Western 150 at Bath Green Park
The final version will include more detailed stations as well as other details such as cameos and lineside detritus, due to the immenent arrival of my first child I cannot give a date but it will be asap :)
Regards LB