Beeching and the Barton Branch

Wednesday 27th March 2013 the 50th anniversary of the release of Richard Beeching’s report The Reshaping of British Railways which set out plans to close a third of the railway network.

While Beeching’s personal agenda was to analyse the railway’s strengths and weaknesses and to attempt to define what Britain required of its railways, that of the Secretary of State, Ernest Marples was more draconian. Marples, who had strong interests in the road-building industry, and his minister John Hay wanted to prune the network by as much as 75% to a profitable core while diverting investment from rail to road. In practice some 30% of the route mileage was closed, mostly those lines which served rural areas.

The line from Ulceby to Barton was one of those listed for closure. Only the ferry service linking New Holland and Hull was to be retained on the assumption that passengers would be arriving by bus or car. There followed three material attempts at closure - at two public enquiries during the 1960s and on the opening of the Humber bridge in 1981. The first two were overturned on the back of the Government’s Humberside Maritime Industrial Area plan - which included the prospect of new industrial developments at New Holland and Barton - and the third was prevented by the introduction of the Humberlink bus connection between Barton and Hull stations. So the gods smiled on the railway to Barton; but the line from Goxhill to Immingham - indispensable in the early days for commuting workers from Hull - was sacrificed at the economists’ altar as were, later, the extensive facilities at New Holland.

However, with five manned signal boxes on the route, the Barton line remains an expensive one to run, requiring disproportionate subsidy from the tax payer. In order to mitigate the costs the approach to date has been to salami-slice the passenger service from hourly to two-hourly on weekdays and to just four trains on Sundays during four summer months. This was followed by the station buildings and footbridge at Habrough being demolished in

1998 and 2003 respectively. More recently there have been attempts to halve the calls to the least used stations in order to speed up the service - an issue which the Friends of the Barton Line have strongly opposed. Despite these insidious cuts Barton is fortunate in having a railway service at all - and from seven o’clock in the morning until ten at night - when many a town of far greater size have lost theirs altogether.

Further ‘rationalisation’ is now on the cards for the next few years. We can expect the remaining manually operated crossings to be replaced by automatic barriers with the associated loss of their mechanical signals and signal boxes. While we will be sorry to lose the line’s historic features this is unavoidable if the infrastructure is to be modernised and the service run more efficiently. There is also talk of singling the track all the way from Oxmarsh to Ulceby with the token control being handled at the latter signal box. FBL consider - for several important considerations - that this would be a mistake.

To balance the record I should mention that there have been several improvements to the facilities if not to the service. Payphones, help points, new shelters, line maps and local information panels have been provided - though some have since been lost to vandalism - and some platforms have been raised to match the height of modern trains. (The renewal of Barton platform, however, was an unnecessary and retrograde step and is now too short for the first train of each day.) From December the service has become known as the Humber Linc (not to be confused with the erstwhile bus link to Hull), and a new station for New Holland has been promised - for some time. Also around two miles of track has been relaid with continuously welded rail between the drive to the water pursuits centre and Pasture Road crossing. So, in common with the Barton Town bus service, the trains will now be ‘running smoother’. But fear not, the train still goes “Barton or bust” on the final stretch into the station.

Anthony Berridge - Hon. Sec. Friends of the Barton Line
www.bartonrail.org.uk