These are scenes taken in Swanage last Wednesday - an ordinary mid-week day out of season. Watch the way the crowds spill off the train and into the streets (and shops!)
The Swanage Railway is a 'real' railway, many of the visitors use the train to avoid the narrow streets and high parking charges in Swanage. The trains run nearly every day of the year. But there again, why shouldn't they? Swanage is a fairly large seaside town and it was mad to take it off the network in the first place. I actually travelled on the last day it was in socialist ownership, 2 January 1972. I'd also travelled a few weeks before that and it was a sad sight. The line was just one long siding, Swanage station was decrepit and the trains were all but empty. That was nationalisation in action. There was no local management, no scope for local enterprise and no vision. BR was just desperate to get rid of this branch line. That was the 60s and 70s for you.
Today many medium to large seaside resorts still have no railway. Bude, Ilfracombe, Lyme Regis, Hunstanton, Mablethorpe, Hayling Island, Padstow (incredibly!) and many more. As the oil runs out they will be stranded just as visitor levels would naturally increase - all these towns need to be reconnected now, not in 10 or 20 years time. With the end of civilian air travel we'll still need our holidays, and we'll need the trains to get where we're going. This craven government needs to own up and start rebuilding the network or, better still, make sure local initiatives do the job for them.
