Ode to a Troublesome Halt

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As the railways retracted in the '60s, many fine station structures vanished without trace. However, Trouble House Halt on the Tetbury branch, serving a remote hostelry that long ago had been a focal point for rioting farmworkers, was rather different. Unique reminders exist for this minimalist stopping place! When diesel railbuses arrived on the Tetbury and Cirencester branches in 1959, access to the new services was maximised by opening new Halts such as Trouble House. Usually, these were no more than sleepers set at rail level since the railbuses had retractable steps. Only a few months after the new service started, one early afternoon Saturday service to & from Cirencester was retimed as two services as up to 90 people were squeezing onto the 46 seat railbus. However, this may not have been the case every day. Patronage The ticket sales for Cirencester Town station in 1959 averaged about 100 per day, implying that less than 1% of the town's population used the service each day. Nontheless, patronage was up by more than half on the previous year's steam service. Cirencester also had another station, Watermoor, on the Midland & South Western Junction (Cheltenham - Andover) line, closed in 1961. Passenger services there were scarce - five or six trains per day reducing to three by 1961 - and so was the custom - even in the late '20s, only 40 tickets per day were sold there. Freight was the main traffic on that route. Tetbury and intermediate station Culkerton were never traffic magnets, neither for passengers nor freight, together selling around 70 passenger tickets per day in the early years of the last century. Like the M&SWJ line, the Tetbury branch suffered a slump in traffic in the 1920s and by the '30s, ticket sales were down to 25 per day. Culkerton eventually closed in 1956 owing to averaging only 41 passengers per month but reopened in 1959 with the arrival of the new railbus. Fares & Revenue Special cheap fares were introduced with the railbuses(*) and a good impression of movement expenses can be had as the same make & type of railbus operated on the Gleneagles - Crieff - Comrie line in Scotland. From the listing of this line in the Reshaping report's closure examples, movements were 2s 4d per mile, which compared favourably with the typical figure of 10s per mile for a steam loco and single carriage. Nominal movement expenses would be £4,300 for Tetbury and £4,900 for Cirencester. It looks as though both the Tetbury and Cirencester lines probably earned no more than £2,000 annually in direct revenue, though contributory revenue must have been substantial and there is no knowing how much of that was lost. The Reshaping report revenue map does concede that Cirencester's total takings were in excess of £5,000. What probably stifled the impact of the railbuses was their inability to reliably operate the track circuits for the signalling on the main line, meaning that plans for direct services to Swindon had to be abandoned. Travellers from Cirencester, only 14 miles from Swindon by road, had no opportunity to travel direct by rail on this route. Beeching Nontheless, perhaps Beeching underestimated the attachment of local communities to 'their' lines, the anger in evidence at Calne being a particularly good example. Similarly so in the Tetbury area, for it is reported that on the last day of service in 1964, a coffin filled with empty alcohol bottles - one source says whisky - was put on board the specially-requested steam train at the aptly-named Trouble House Halt, destined for Dr. Beeching in London. The train was then delayed by bales of burning straw on the line! Today there is, not surprisingly, no sign of Trouble House Halt in this picture or this one. However, the name of this short-lived deck of sleepers lives on as the name of a local folk-rock band..... and in the lyrics of 'Slow Train' by the musical duo Flanders and Swann! (*) The Cirencester - Tetbury return fare had been 2s 5d Third class. Third was abolished in 1956, but railcar.co.uk states that the same fare was being charged on the railbuses (ie, from 1959).

Timetable 9/9/63 - 14/6/64 Both services were withdrawn in April 1964.

Sources for this page include: Mitchell V. & Smith K.; Swindon to Gloucester; Middleton Press 2005. Mitchell V. & Smith K.; Cheltenham to Andover; Middleton Press 2000. AC Cars railbus operations on railcar.co.uk