North Staffordshire Railway Passenger Services 1910-1999

Each successive railway timetable is extensively consulted for just a few months and is then thrown away. Yet, over a period of time, such documents can provide a valuable insight into the way in which the railway passenger services have developed to meet competition from other modes of transport, to accommodate changes in travelling patterns, and to satisfy public expectations.

Railway timetables have held a particular fascination for me over many years, and I have derived very great pleasure in their study. This paper is the result of an idea that it could be fruitful to examine, and compare in some detail, the changes (as recorded in published timetables) that have occurred over the years to the public passenger service in North Staffordshire. Stoke-on-Trent was the headquarters and principal station of the North Staffordshire Railway Company throughout that company’s 75 years of independent existence and the station has continued to serve that city and its surrounding area through successive eras to the present day. It is the public passenger service from Stoke-on-Trent, particularly during the years of nationalisation, which is the subject of this paper.

In the course of this study it became clear that, although many branch lines and lightly used stations had been closed, the remaining passenger lines of the former North Staffordshire Railway Company, as a consequence of the (much maligned) management of British Railways between 1948 and 1996, had enjoyed a substantially better service in 1996 than at any previous time. This was very noticeable when the services were considered in the wider context of the InterCity and Regional Railways nationwide passenger networks as well as in the purely local context of North Staffordshire.

As the study progressed it became obvious that the railway service had continued to change and develop following privatisation, and that this paper would be incomplete without mention of the first years of newly privatised operations in order to show continuity with the old operations as well as indicating the ways in which the post-nationalisation services appear to be developing.

I am most grateful for the considerable help received from friends during the preparation of this study and my special thanks are due to Mr. Rodney Hampson, Dr. Brian Turton, and Dr Dudley Fowkes for their most valuable help and advice.

Noel Walley

May 2003.

Introduction

History will show the second half of the twentieth century to have been for the railways of Great Britain a time of great innovation and change and that the first half century was by comparison, for the most part, a period of stagnation if not decline.

Many, especially those who share the writer’s lifelong enthusiasm for railways and for the steam engine, will no doubt demur and offer spirited arguments stressing the great power and speed achieved by the steam locomotive in the 1920s, and 30s, the many improvements in all areas of railway equipment and operation, great advances in suburban railway electrification and some very important experiments with diesel traction.

All this is true, but, concerning the railway system as a whole and with few exceptions, its passenger traffic flows; its passenger services in terms of speed, frequency, convenience, and co‑ordination; the relationships between railways and other transport operators; and railway working practices generally were all those that had developed in the nineteenth century.

The reason for this relative stagnation and even decline is not difficult to see. Firstly, two world wars when the railways were under Government control, over worked, carrying enormous loads and yet allowed only minimal maintenance. Secondly, between the two wars, a major world wide economic slump, and a forced amalgamation of many independent railway companies both large and small to form four big companies with the aim of keeping all lines open through economies of scale and cross subsidisation.

By contrast, the half-century since the Second World War has been a period of peace, political stability, and great economic development both at home and abroad. It has also been a period of rapid development of road and air transport. The competition faced by railways from road transport, passenger and freight, public and private, has been unremitting throughout.

Railway freight traffic has been particularly badly hit. But, throughout this period, unlike at any previous time, the railways have received very generous operating subsidies for the extensive passenger service network, together with reasonably adequate publicly financed capital investment.

Railway nationalisation became effective on January 1st, 1948 following legislation in 1947 and it is under nationalisation that great changes have taken place in the sphere of railway passenger and freight services throughout Great Britain.

This paper is concerned only with railway passenger service developments and primarily with the service provided to North Staffordshire, a region in the heart of England centred on the city of Stoke-on-Trent. North Staffordshire is an economic rather than a political entity and is noted for heavy industry, coal mining, quarrying and especially for the manufacture of pottery (earthenware and fine china). So dominant is that industry locally that the area is popularly called ‘The Potteries’.

Prior to the forced amalgamations of 1923, the area was served by the North Staffordshire Railway Company with its headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent. It is the public passenger service from Stoke-on-Trent on lines formerly served by that company which is the subject of this study in which extensive reference has been made to five published timetables.

These are the N.S.R. timetable for April 1910 as published in Bradshaw’s Guide;[1] the last L.M.S.[2] and also G.W.R.[3] timetables prior to nationalisation, published in October 1947; Bradshaw’s B.R. timetable for May 1961;[4] The Great Britain timetable of 1976[5] and The Great Britain Passenger Railway Timetable of 29th September 1996 as published by Railtrack plc in the year of transition to privatisation.

Reference has also been made to several other published works and notably that excellent work The North Staffordshire Railway by Rex Christiansen & R. Miller to whom the writer is grateful for much background history.

The North Staffordshire Railway

The North Staffordshire Railway Company was incorporated by Act of Parliament in April, 1845 with a share capital of £2,350,000 in £20 shares to build and operate a railway from the Manchester & Birmingham Railway at Macclesfield via North Rode, Congleton and Harecastle into the Potteries ‘giving the most ample accommodation to the towns of Tunstall, Burslem, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton, Longton and Stone’,[6] to join the Grand Junction Railway at Colwich. The primary intention being to provide the area with railway services to Manchester and London.

The company established its main office and boardroom at its principal station in Stoke-on-Trent. It is ideally situated on this main line (part of the shortest route between Manchester and London) and near the junction with its line to Derby.

These station buildings were completed in 1848 to the design of H.A. Hunt of London in a style referred to as ‘robust Jacobean manor-house’.[7] Together with the North Stafford Hotel and the officers’ houses, they occupy Winton Square, in what Sir Nikolaus Pevsner has described as ‘the finest piece of Victorian axial planning in the county’.[8] They were a masterpiece in their time and quite remarkably they have survived (among the earliest principal station buildings so to do), very well maintained, little changed, and still largely fulfilling their original purposes. They provide a facility of which the city can be justly proud.

Click to see photographs of Stoke-on-Trent Station and Winton Square.

Click to see North Staffordshire Railway Company Photographs

The company was also authorised to build lines from Stone to Norton Bridge on the London & North Western Railway near Stafford; from Stoke-on-Trent via Cresswell, Uttoxeter and Tutbury to Burton-on-Trent; from Tutbury to Willington Junction on the Midland Railway near Derby; from Harecastle to Crewe; from Stoke-on-Trent to Newcastle; from Harecastle to Sandbach and from North Rode via Leek and the Churnet Valley to Rocester and Uttoxeter.

Later branches included lines from Stoke-on-Trent to Congleton via Biddulph; Stoke-on-Trent to Leek; Newcastle to Silverdale, Keele and Market Drayton (junction with the Great Western Railway); Alsager to Audley, Lycett and Keele, and Rocester to Ashbourne. The famous Loop Line from Etruria via Hanley, Cobridge, Burslem, Tunstall, Pitts Hill, Newchapel & Goldenhill to Kidsgrove Liverpool Rd. and a junction with the Manchester line was the last of the N.S.R.’s major undertakings.

A small local company with N.S.R. backing built at great cost over a period of twelve years a short branch from Cresswell to Cheadle. This line, only four miles long, included a very difficult tunnel. The line was completed in 1900, but the tunnel gave so much trouble that, in 1933, the L.M.S. constructed a deviation without a tunnel.

A Joint Committee was formed with the Great Central Railway to construct the Macclesfield, Bollington & Marple Railway which gave the N.S.R. access to an alternative routes to East Coast ports for its freight traffic and for passenger trains to Manchester (circuitous route) and to the fashionable spa resort of Buxton.

Twentieth century construction included a branch from Leek to Caldon Low via Waterhouses from where the nominally independent narrow gauge Leek and Manifold Light Railway was constructed through the Hamps and Manifold river valleys to Hulme End near Hartington. Finally in 1910, a very short line was built from Stoke-on-Trent to Trentham Park. The latter was authorised as part of an alternative line to Newcastle but construction work beyond Trentham was quickly abandoned owing to rising costs.

In 1867, an independent local company built the Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway, later incorporated into the Great Northern Railway which had built a line from Nottingham and Derby via Mickleover to Egginton Junction with running powers over the N.S.R. to both Uttoxeter and Burton.

From the start a significant proportion of North Staffordshire Railway route mileage lay in the neighbouring counties of Cheshire and Derbyshire and, with through running rights, passenger trains ran to Manchester, Stafford, Birmingham, Crewe and Derby and later to Buxton, Nottingham and Llandudno.

The L.N.W.R. also exercised running rights over the North Staffordshire Railway, particularly for its express services between London and Manchester. These Manchester to London Euston restaurant car expresses were unique in being hauled by N.S.R. tank engines from Manchester to Stoke-on-Trent where the L.N.W.R. express engines took over for the run via Stone, Sandon, Colwich, and the main line to London Euston. The N.S.R. received a payment for every through passenger on these trains and employed a small army of ticket inspectors to examine every ticket during the Stoke-on-Trent stop.

Other through running rights included L.N.W.R. rights between Ashbourne and Burton which were used by through coaches from Buxton to Euston and G.W.R. rights between Market Drayton and Stoke-on-Trent which were used solely by a single daily goods train in each direction.

The L.M.S. Passenger Service

The North Staffordshire Railway Company (affectionately known as ‘The Knotty’ from the ‘Staffordshire Knot’, the county of Stafford’s heraldic device, which it proudly displayed as its own) was always a local company with local directors and management in close touch with the North Staffordshire community.

The Company prospered throughout its seventy-five years of independent ownership and operation, paid its shareholders good dividends (latterly a notable 5%), and successfully resisted repeated take-over bids by the London and North Western Railway Company. Amalgamation, when it came, did it no favours. The company was incorporated in 1923 by Act of Parliament along with two of its larger neighbours into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company.

As part of the L.M.S. Group, the fortunes of ‘The Knotty’ began to suffer and not only in its loss of identity and the closure of its well equipped locomotive and carriage works. Decline occurred in both passenger and freight services and was inevitable given the commercial and industrial slump and increased competition from road haulage companies and bus operators.

The new owners soon closed some of the more circuitous rural passenger services. The Biddulph line was the first to close to passengers in 1927, followed by the Sandbach line in 1930, by the Audley line in 1931 and by the Waterhouses line in 1935. Service on the Trentham Park branch was limited to excursions, and the narrow gauge Leek and Manifold Light Railway, which closed to all traffic during 1934, was quickly turned into a public footpath.

Together with the Great Central Railway, the Great Northern Railway became part of the London and North Eastern Railway Company in 1923 and the public passenger service on its Uttoxeter and Stafford line, which had never been well patronised, ceased in 1939. However, the Stafford end of the line from the L.M.S. station to Stafford Common continued to be used by the major R.A.F. equipment supply depot at Royal Air Force, Stafford.[9]

The war gave a boost to freight and passenger traffic but by the time of nationalisation in 1948, all passenger service had ceased on the Trentham Park branch together with the local service between Stone, Sandon and Colwich.

Several new passenger stations were however opened in L.M.S. times including Wedgwood Halt (opened at that company’s new factory in Barlaston in 1940 and which remains open to this day), Millway at the Radway Green ordnance factory and Cold Meece (opened in 1941) at the larger Swynnerton ordnance factory. These last two and also the Trentham Park branch (serving the Bank of England Clearing House relocated for the war at Trentham Hall) were, like the Stafford Common line, used only by ‘secret’ passenger trains which were not listed in the public timetables.

Cold Meece had its own branch line and a four platform station which was said to have handled at its peak in 1943 three million passengers per year, including thousands of the American Air Force personnel at USAF Cold Meece. Regular passenger services to Cold Meece continued to run until June 27th, 1958 but were never shown in the public timetables and few details have ever been published.[10]

Another ‘private’ station with an unpublished daily service from Stoke-on-Trent was situated at the Crewe Locomotive Works.

Those who remember it will recall that travel by public service in the immediate post war years was something to be avoided whenever possible. Trains were always crowded and were often composed of non-corridor stock without toilet accommodation even when going considerable distances. Trains were invariably late and for more years than we care to remember every failure or deficiency was blamed on the war and the need to make good the defects of five years of neglect.

The war had been over two years when nationalisation came about but that neglect far from being repaired was still continuing and took a very long time to eliminate: still longer fully to make good the deferred maintenance.

British Railways Nationalised

Nationalisation became effective on January 1st 1948 but changes under nationalisation were slow to take effect. Morale was low, not least amongst the managerial staff at almost all levels. Attempts were quickly made to establish a corporate awareness with logos and liveries. However, the political decision to split four efficient companies (to which dedicated staff had been loyal through many difficult years) into six regions (largely to give Scotland its own) was an expensive mistake. Especially so, as the four companies had already developed management techniques, operating standards, modern locomotive fleets and all types of rolling stock to designs which best suited their individual requirements. Splitting the whole into six operating entities was a costly enterprise that diverted scarce resources from the real task of repairing the ravages of war.

Several very important functions – most notably research, design, and development – were, however, quite properly centralised and in time produced the breakthroughs needed to take the railways through to the next century. Much effort went into improved steam locomotive design and the production of some twelve new designs of steam locomotives large and small. The designers were all experienced locomotive engineers and draughtsmen trained by the four railway companies. Under the able leadership of Mr RA Riddles, a Crewe locomotive engineer whose railway service started with the L.N.W.R in 1909, they produced some of the most efficient steam locomotives ever built.

The new designs, not all of which were justified by commercial considerations, gave a significant boost to railway morale even though in many cases the new locomotives, which were desperately needed and were built in quite considerable numbers, worked less than a dozen years before they were replaced by diesel and electric locomotives.

Unfortunately, though seen even in the late 1940s to be the major way forward, much careful development work was needed before diesel and electric locomotives and diesel multiple unit trains (all designed to fit the restricted British loading gauge) became sufficiently reliable for widespread introduction.

Much excellent development work was also done on carriage and wagon design, permanent way construction and maintenance, train braking and signalling, and on most other aspects of railway engineering. But there was an enormous backlog of deferred maintenance and continuing material shortages so that overall recovery was slow.

However, progress was made, notably under the 1955 Modernisation Plan introduced during the chairmanship of General Sir Brian Robertson.

The 1955 plan was essentially technical. It was concerned mainly with improved signalling and equipment, the electrification of the West Coast main line and the widespread replacement of the steam locomotive fleet with diesel and electric locomotives plus multiple unit electric and diesel trains, together with the general modernisation of the system.

There was also a genuine attempt to generate extra traffic by the provision of more frequent local passenger services, which to a large extent was made possible by the widespread introduction of diesel multiple unit trains. The management also responded to the needs of the business community with better provision of early morning and evening business services to and from London, despite the operational difficulties associated with railway electrification. The May 1961 timetable provides a valuable guide to the passenger service as it had developed during this very significant time.

By 1960 it was widely recognised that much more was needed to tackle the root problems of the industry and its declining traffic, which caused Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to say:

First the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects.

In particular, the railway system must be remodelled to meet current needs, and the modernisation plan adapted to this new shape.[11]

Thus it was that Dr. Richard Beeching was appointed Chairman of British Railways in 1961 with very clear terms of reference, and within two years the Board published his report The Reshaping of British Railways, which was remarkable in many ways and not least for its shortness. The report was just 60 pages long but with 88 pages of appendices (tables of unidentified traffic studies etc. and long lists of lines, stations, passenger and freight services recommended for closure or for some unspecified ‘modification of services’) together with a supplementary volume of very inadequate maps on which very few stations were named. In his book Out of Steam Robert Adley MP commented thus:

For a task of such importance, not just for the Railways but for the nation, one can be excused perhaps for being surprised at the document’s brevity. In a mere 60 pages is analysed the existing state and future prospects of the passenger, freight and parcels services of the railways, and from that analysis were drawn conclusions, the implementation of which has had and still does have a fundamental effect on public transport in Britain.[12]

Mr Adley expresses succinctly what many who have read it feel, the report, together with its appendices and maps, contains nothing positive and specific to justify the wholesale and individual closures which followed.

In some ways the Beeching report and Dr. Beeching’s very short chairmanship (less than four years ending in May 1965) were valuable in that they encouraged the railways to improve efficiency and to concentrate their resources where they could most effectively generate income. Also, and this may seem surprising given all that has been said about him, it is recognised that during his period in office there was a significant improvement in morale (attributable to Beeching’s personality and management techniques) amongst railwaymen at all levels and especially in the upper managerial levels and that despite some resentment at the influx of experts from outside the industry.

Much damage was done, however, because changes of a fundamental and irreversible nature were made to the railway network and the railway infrastructure for relatively small short-term financial considerations. Many of the closures made under Beeching, especially of lines which at that time appeared to be lightly used duplications of other routes, are now regretted not least because valuable linear rights of way have been lost through the subsequent piecemeal disposal of railway land.

Dr. Beeching’s effect on ‘The Knotty’ passenger service was felt in the final closure in 1964/65 of the loop line, the withdrawal of the few remaining Stoke-on-Trent to Newcastle and Silverdale passenger services, the withdrawal of the Churnet Valley workmen’s services and the closure in 1970 of the Macclesfield, Bollington & Marple joint line.

These were, however, merely the last few of the post-nationalisation closures in North Staffordshire. Most of the passenger service closures in North Staffordshire had already taken place between 1947 and 1963, long before Dr Beeching’s appointment. Local stations between Burton-on-Trent and Tutbury closed in 1949 and the service closed completely in 1960. Services from Ashbourne to Rocester ceased in 1954, Silverdale to Market Drayton in 1956, Stoke-on-Trent to Leek in 1956 and Cresswell to Cheadle in 1963. Passenger services on the Churnet Valley line from North Rode to Uttoxeter ceased in 1960 (except for limited workmen’s services south of Leek).

After Beeching, the railways were allowed to get on with their business of being a transport provider and the subsidy, a necessary feature of public passenger transport world-wide in the twentieth century, was better managed following the publication in 1967 of yet another report ‘British Railways Network for Development’.

British Railways prospered under a succession of able managers not least Sir Peter Parker the chairman from 1976 to 1983 who recognised the social importance of the railway network and the obligations arising therefrom. He did much to ensure continued public financing of those railway services that were deemed to be socially necessary.

Railway Modernisation

On the positive side, the 1955 modernisation plan had ensured that very important technical and engineering developments took place, notably the introduction of reliable diesel locomotives and multiple unit diesel railcars and the rapid elimination by the mid-sixties of steam locomotives.

Main line electrification, improved trackwork and extensive modernisation of signalling systems also contributed greatly to railway performance and efficiency. Later, the gradual introduction of modern air-conditioned passenger coaches, with improved suspension and equipped with compressed air brakes in place of the traditional but less effective vacuum brakes, permitted operation at speeds up to and in excess of one hundred miles an hour.

Finally, there came the design and introduction of the HST 125, an extremely reliable unit train with two power units (one at each end). These trains, with predictable, controllable and very powerful disc braking could in consequence be operated at speeds faster than the signalling system was designed to permit. They were the great breakthrough of the B.R. era, and they have become the mainstay of the non-electrified part of the InterCity network and are routinely operated at speeds up to 125 m.p.h. on suitable track in all parts of the country.