section of the line and many of the stations are request stops. Brian seems constantly to be popping his head round the driverâs door to let him know. He tells me that one conductor at Carlisle got into trouble for announcing, âAll stations to Whitehaven and beyond â though why anybody would want to get off there, I have no idea.â Today I have a very good idea of where I want to alight. I am planning to stop for lunch at Foxfield on the edge of the sands of the Duddon estuary, where Iâm joining the lunchtime crowd at the Prince of Wales, a legendary local boozer opposite the station. Its fame in brewing its own real ales extends far beyond Cumbria. The City editor of a London newspaper, well versed in the fare of the finest private dining rooms of the Square Mile, told me he considers the Prince of Wales, Foxfield a âparadise on earthâ.
I tell this to Brian, who says, âSometimes we get trainfuls of thirsty blokes travelling up the line at lunchtime for the pub. We pick them up legless on the last train home. But doesnât do any harm, does it? Theyâre mostly nice people. And what else is there to do round here since the Millom steelworks closed?â Brian, who is sixty-two, tells me he comes from Ipswich and taught in local schools for sixteen years before he joined the railway three years ago.
You get mostly nicer people on the train than I generally encountered in teaching. But shame they took the passenger services off the Foxfield to Coniston branch back in 1958. They didnât even hang around till Beeching came along. Said it was losing £16,000 a year â does that sound like a lot to you? One day they came along and just closed it, just like that. It was the prettiest branch line in Britain. You could have changed at Foxfield and gone right up to the lake. Now the cars are just nose to tail on the local roads â they canât pack any more in. They had special little steam-powered carriages with big windows so you could see the scenery more easily. You know, the writer John Ruskin would have gone this way â he had a place up at Coniston.
I wonder how much the fastidious Ruskin would have enjoyed a pint or two of Good Old Boy ale among the amply gutted men in âConiston Beer Festivalâ T-shirts at the bar of the Prince of Wales, although aesthetics are not on the agenda as I attempt a House Special Giant Pasty with mushy peas and a pint of Foxfield Old Pale. He would at least have been close enough to the platform to jump aboard the next branch train to Coniston, where he would almost certainly have admired the Swiss-chalet-style station. Thereâs a grand view of the signalman in his box here, kitted out with an array of levers fit to control a country junction, complete with water tower to fill the boilers of steam engines but without much more to do than control a level crossing and a farm track. The signal box, perched on top of a little weatherboarded waiting room, looks as though it might fall down of its own accord. A crumpled -up Somerfield plastic bag is stuffed in the window frame where the wood has rotted away. But the view from here, across the serene waters of the Duddon estuary, must be one of the most beautiful from a railway station anywhere in Britain.
Like the FoxfieldâConiston route, almost all the branch lines into the heart of the Lake District are now fading memories. The Lakeside branch from Ulverston, a few stops back along the line before Barrow, was killed off by Beeching in 1965 just four years before its centenary, although the northern section from Haverthwaite was saved by a group of enthusiasts and now operates as a heritage line, with some authentic former London, Midland and Scottish Railway Fairburn tank engines, the last of their kind still running. Further north, the line that passed through Keswick on its way from Workington to Penrith, and the only one to traverse the Lakes from east to west, was
I tell this to Brian, who says, âSometimes we get trainfuls of thirsty blokes travelling up the line at lunchtime for the pub. We pick them up legless on the last train home. But doesnât do any harm, does it? Theyâre mostly nice people. And what else is there to do round here since the Millom steelworks closed?â Brian, who is sixty-two, tells me he comes from Ipswich and taught in local schools for sixteen years before he joined the railway three years ago.
You get mostly nicer people on the train than I generally encountered in teaching. But shame they took the passenger services off the Foxfield to Coniston branch back in 1958. They didnât even hang around till Beeching came along. Said it was losing £16,000 a year â does that sound like a lot to you? One day they came along and just closed it, just like that. It was the prettiest branch line in Britain. You could have changed at Foxfield and gone right up to the lake. Now the cars are just nose to tail on the local roads â they canât pack any more in. They had special little steam-powered carriages with big windows so you could see the scenery more easily. You know, the writer John Ruskin would have gone this way â he had a place up at Coniston.
I wonder how much the fastidious Ruskin would have enjoyed a pint or two of Good Old Boy ale among the amply gutted men in âConiston Beer Festivalâ T-shirts at the bar of the Prince of Wales, although aesthetics are not on the agenda as I attempt a House Special Giant Pasty with mushy peas and a pint of Foxfield Old Pale. He would at least have been close enough to the platform to jump aboard the next branch train to Coniston, where he would almost certainly have admired the Swiss-chalet-style station. Thereâs a grand view of the signalman in his box here, kitted out with an array of levers fit to control a country junction, complete with water tower to fill the boilers of steam engines but without much more to do than control a level crossing and a farm track. The signal box, perched on top of a little weatherboarded waiting room, looks as though it might fall down of its own accord. A crumpled -up Somerfield plastic bag is stuffed in the window frame where the wood has rotted away. But the view from here, across the serene waters of the Duddon estuary, must be one of the most beautiful from a railway station anywhere in Britain.
Like the FoxfieldâConiston route, almost all the branch lines into the heart of the Lake District are now fading memories. The Lakeside branch from Ulverston, a few stops back along the line before Barrow, was killed off by Beeching in 1965 just four years before its centenary, although the northern section from Haverthwaite was saved by a group of enthusiasts and now operates as a heritage line, with some authentic former London, Midland and Scottish Railway Fairburn tank engines, the last of their kind still running. Further north, the line that passed through Keswick on its way from Workington to Penrith, and the only one to traverse the Lakes from east to west, was
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