The Ilfracombe Line .. [AH 40.020 Book] | |
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The Ilfracombe Line | £19.15
Suggested Retail Price:
£19.95
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With The Ilfracombe Line we now alight upon the shimmering Atlantic shore. It was to become both main line and ?branch?, and opened in 1874 as a single track from Barnstaple Junction. It soon carried enough traffic to justify the LSWR doubling most of its length and a new Barnstaple Town station opened in 1898 to connect with the narrow gauge to Lynton. The Ilfracombe terminus was enlarged several times by the South Western and Southern to cater for a burgeoning summer holiday traffic.
Through passenger services from Waterloo were a feature of the line, a coach or two during the winter months expanded to full-length corridor restaurant car trains on summer Saturdays, including the Atlantic Coast Express and Devon Belle. The Great Western also served the resort, not only with through services from Paddington, but from Manchester, Wolverhampton, Cardiff and Taunton.Working was full of interest, with a single line over the Taw and Yeo at Barnstaple, and a profusion of signal boxes, ground frames, crossing boxes and signalling, a legacy of the line?s cheap construction.
The hills rising up behind Ilfracombe meant sharp gradients of 1 in 40 and 1 in 36 up to the summit at Mortehoe and Woolacombe, demanding two or three locomotives on the heavy holiday trains.Beyer Peacock purpose-built the famous Ilfracombe Goods 0-6-0s for this difficult line. Later they were replaced by a variety of LSWR 0-4-4Ts and modern Southern and Great Western 2-6-0s appeared in the 1920s. Bulleid light Pacifics came later, and diesel-hydraulics before closure in 1970. Based on extensive delvings among the archive material over many years and information from a great number of people who both worked and used the line, this book provides the fullest account yet. It includes a wide variety of track plans, signalling diagrams and photographs, many never previously published.
John Nicholas
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| Reference: | [AH 40.020 Book] |
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