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STATION ROAD
The Station: Part 3
Freight, "St Ives Loop line" & burning trestle bridges
by Stephen J. Bull

In recent issues of The Meridian we have seen how East Anglia was once covered with a network of railways with many branch lines feeding into more important lines and eventually connecting up with the main track network.

The Cambridge to St Ives branch built across the parish of Swavesey, was opened on 17th August, 1847. The section linking St Ives Junction with the Great Northern at Huntingdon operated by the Great Northern & Great Eastern Joint Railway (GtN&GtEJt), was opened on the same day.

More importantly the opening of the branch line from St Ives Junction to March linking the G.E.R. Cambridge, Ely to March mainline had to wait until the following year (1st February, 1848). Built by the Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway this railroad also became GtN&GtEJt Railway property in due course. “Situated in a mainly agriculture and fruit growing area, the greater bulk of the local produce was transported by rail until the Second World War when road transport started to take this traffic from the railways.” (CEN: Cyril Gotobed - one time Signalman at Somersham - date unknown)

Much later in the day the St Ives-Ely “Pork and Lard” line, built in two stages meeting at Sutton, was finally completed in 1878. The line followed a “sinuous course” between the Fen ‘islands’ of Sutton and Haddenham and eventually joined up with the Cambridge-Ely mainline. St Ives thereby became a “grand four-way junction with the lines going off in every direction” with lines veering off to Huntingdon, March and Ely.

Freight: the "bread and butter" of the railways
In the early days Swavesey witnessed the liveries of the passenger locomotives of four companies which shared the ‘metals’ running through the station: the Great Eastern, the Midland, and the occasional Gt Northern and London & N.W. railways. However, the multi-liveried passenger services failed to generate sufficient revenue for the rail companies. Passenger transport throughout East Anglia was light, except for a few lines during early morning and evening ‘rush hours’, and the height of summer excursions.

Unglamorous goods traffic, conducted mainly away from public view at off-peak times, however, became the "bread and butter" of the railways. The movement of manufactured goods, raw materials, livestock and coal made railway expansion possible and kept passenger fares low (Focus on Freight: Eastern Region Freight since 1960: Pearce page 7).

In the second half of the nineteenth century East Anglia was soon to realise the possibilities of supplying industrial areas with its main marketable products including farm produce, fish and specialised products. The Fens lent themselves to growing fruit, vegetables, sugar beet and malting barley. The fast expanding rail system provided a cheap and efficient form of transportation from their point of production to markets of Industrial England (Forgotten Railways: Vol. 7: East Anglia by R.S. Joby pages 9-10).

Goods would be brought to a railhead and were loaded on to a wagon. Following the necessary paperwork the wagon load of goods would be collected by a daily ‘pick-up’ goods train (Pearce page 9).

Wagons would be ‘marshalled’ into a mixed goods train which would then set off in the general direction of the wagons’ eventual destination. The “meandering”, “cross-country” Cambridge, St Ives to March branch served as a major freight route and March, with its “Whitemoor” marshalling yard, together with Ely, were the nerve centres of the Fens.

The great Whitemoor marshalling yard that “once rang to the impact of buffers day and night, sheds once hazy with the smoke of dozens of massive goods engines .......” is no more “....... its railway community gone.” (Joby page 68) BR sold part of the redundant yard space to the government, in order to serve the nation in a different capacity - for the building of Whitemoor Prison!!! (Pearce page 128)*¹

Sidings scented with strawberries (Local freight)
From mid-June heavy fruit traffic was dispatched throughout the summer from the Swavesey-Over-Willingham-Cottenham-Histon corridor, long noted for its “orchards, heavy with fruit”, market gardens and horticultural produce grown on a grand scale from the 1890s. Punnets of strawberries, trays of cherries, wicker ‘half sieves’, ‘large bushels’ and ‘hampers’ laden with plums, greengages and apples, not forgetting boxes of cut flowers, were collected from thousands of growers by carriers’ horse and trolley, later by station trucks and lorries, and piled high into covered wagons in station goods yards.

Afternoon ‘fruit trains’ plying the East Anglian ‘farmers’ lines’ collected local freshly picked produce and delivered to Chivers’ jam factory in Histon*² and the markets of the Industrial North, notably Manchester. Very often resident shunting engines greatly expedited the departure of the mid-afternoon pick-up trains to ensure that “the Fenland fruit would reach market the day following picking”.

Rail traffic wasn’t all one-way. Deliveries were made to the string of stations along the line beginning with the national morning newspapers and post, and general parcel poSt An afternoon ‘parcel train’ from Cambridge to March kept station staff busy daily. Railway sidings were replenished with coal at regular intervals and occasionally cattle from Cambridge cattle market would have been offloaded into the cattle pen. Local carriers and rail company transport delivered goods and took delivery of goods for the surrounding villages. An interesting early photograph exists of carters at Swan Pond (possibly en route for Boxworth) having stopped for refreshment at the Swan With Two Necks. (Victorian and Edwardian Cambridgeshire from old photographs: F.A.Reeve: 1976)

The “St Ives Loop line” (National freight)
In the Fifties, considerable numbers of heavy goods trains passed both ways through Swavesey daily on the Cambridge-March line commonly referred to by railwaymen as the “St Ives Loop line”. Most of the traffic using it was goods and served as a “vital bypass” to the busy Ely main line. The ‘loop’ line was also called into service when the Cambridge-Ely mainline was closed for maintenance work at weekends.

As a means of avoiding Ely, which at that period was greatly congested with traffic from six directions, the March, St Ives to Cambridge route had “much to recommend it”. With the opening of the March, Spalding, Sleaford to Doncaster cross-country line a cavalcade of lengthy, slow-moving coal trains moved from the East Midlands towards east London.

During passenger off-peak times freight trains, including heavy coal, brick, mineral, meat, fish and general goods from the Midlands and as far north as Scotland, and returning empties, trundled through the Swavesey railhead. One of the writer’s earliest memories is of being taken for walks on sunny afternoons to the station “to watch the trains”. During the summer a shunter engine wheezed away in the station sidings marshalling wagons for making up a fruit train for despatch by an afternoon ‘pick-up’ train. But even more interesting was the sight of one or two (on a good afternoon) long trains, usually of empty wagons with wheels screeching and buffers clattering, making their return journey to the March marshalling yard or the coal fields of the East Midlands.

With ever more powerful steam locomotives freight trains grew longer and many young children learnt to count up to 70 or 80 quite easily by counting out aloud as the wagons passed by! Also on a ‘good afternoon’ a friendly engine driver would give a cheery wave making it a day to really remember. (No wonder most children wanted to be engine drivers!)

River crossings on trestle bridges
In contrast the single track St Ives-Huntingdon GtN&GtE Jt line, which gave access to the East Coast Main line at Huntingdon and Midland line at Kettering, carried very little traffic in comparison with the St Ives Loop line. “Passengers, parcels, fruit and general goods” were carried over the meandering River Ouse, “although the goods trains were short and not many people, one suspects, lolled in the compartments.” (CEN: Graham Odd: 2 December 81)

In the early years a considerable amount of goods traffic was worked from St Ives to Huntingdon for forwarding on to destinations via the East Coast Mainline and through St Ives destined for East Anglia. Goods traffic tailed off dramatically and losses began to spiral during the Fifties with just two services, weekdays only, with 25 or more wagons.

The goods service could not have been very profitable during its last years. Only one ‘pick-up’ goods train ran daily, this often returning to Kettering with just one or two wagons, although picking up more on the return journey at stations en route. The notable exception was summer fruit workings, when a heavily loaded train was worked over the branch destined for Northern markets. However weight restrictions over the numerous weak wooden trestle bridges prevented ‘double heading’ on the St Ives-Huntingdon (East) section, resulting in diminutive, but powerful GER Class J15, locomotives handling 60 or 70 wagons unaided!

Not only did the line suffer from weight restrictions and from being single track from St Ives to Godmanchester, but the propensity of the bridges to catch fire in dry weather was a constant trial to the civil engineers and further limited the use of the line. Few lines with good cross country potential for both passengers and freight could have suffered so many handicaps to traffic. Yet for the railway enthusiast the sight of antique locomotives travelling at a leisurely 40mph, the line crossing and recrossing the sluggish Ouse, only added to the spice of life.

Although the importance of the cross-country services were classified as “useful” for passenger traffic, goods traffic tailed off dramatically during the 1950s. The 112 years’ history of the line was brought to an end in June 1959 and the track between St Ives and Godmanchester lifted in June 1961.

The ageing wooden trestle bridges which once carried the railway along one of the “prettiest routes in the district through orchards and across watermeadows” between St Ives and Huntingdon have long since disappeared. The double track bridge between Godmanchester and Huntingdon, singled by the 1960s, has long since been swallowed up by the busy A14, leaving no trace of the railway.

Today some light earthworks, bridge abutments and a linesman’s hut are still visible mainly from the river and the outline of Huntingdon East station yard with its sharply curved platform (now a car park) is a reminder of a once bustling branch line. The splendid crossing keeper’s house at Godmanchester where the railway crossed Ermine Street, almost nestling under the Huntingdon elevated bypass, can is still be seen.

Notes:
1. The Whitemoor marshalling yards at March, together with Ely yard, were the hubs of the freight network in the area handling local and outgoing traffic. Whitemoor was the first ‘mechanised hump yard’ in Great Britain and operated right through the day and night (Pearce pages 115 & 126). Built in the period from 1929 to 1933, it greatly expedited the marshalling of wagon loads of produce to their final destination.
As children, while passing the busy marshalling yards en route for the seaside at Hunstanton on the March-Wisbech line, we were fascinated by the sight of wagons being propelled at 1½mph over the ‘hump’ into unseen sorting sidings - to be formed into lengthy goods trains ready for far off destinations. The yards dominated by the large coaling tower were still in operation in 1981, only to be closed within a decade (Pearce page 128).
The marshalling yards, and the once busy double-track main line northwards to Spalding, lie abandoned.

2. Chivers’ Orchard Factory: Mention of ‘fruit growing’ and ‘market gardening’ leads inevitably to Histon and the Chivers family. The Chivers family began making jam from their own fruit in 1873 in a barn in Impington. Such was the success of their product that, by 1875, they had built their first factory beside Histon railway station with their own private siding and loading facilities. Soon other products like Chivers jellies were added to the factory’s output to give all year round work. By the mid-1920s the ornate enlarged factory employed some 2,000 people (The Villages of Old Cambridgeshire: Michael Rouse (1989) page 82). The still thriving business in 1975 numbered 1,300 workers, 1,000 of them full-time. The family business was taken over with the announcement of a £50,000 re-investment programme by Cadbury Schweppes, making it the biggest jam factory in Europe with production concentrating on “Chivers, Hartleys, Moorhouse and Rose’s jams and marmalades.” (C.E.N: ‘Looking back’ by Mike Petty: November 1975)

Acknowledgements:-

1. “Branch Lines Around Huntingdon: Kettering to Cambridge” by Vic Mitchell, etc (1991);
2. "Cambridge Evening News": Eric Sawford 21 September 1995, 28 September 1995, 23 November 1995, 7 August 1997 and 28 July 1998;
3. "Cambridge Evening News": Cyril Gotobed - date unknown;
4. "Cambridge Evening News": Graham Odd - date unknown;
5. "Cambridge Evening News": Rail Link - date unknown;
6. “Cambridge Kettering Line: Steam” by E.H. Sawford (1981);
7. “Focus on Freight: Eastern Region Freight since 1960” by Shaun Pearce (1995);
8. “Forgotten Railways: Vol. 7 East Anglia” by R.S. Joby (1985);
9. “Modern Branch Line Album” by J.A.M. Vaughan (1980);
10. “Steam in East Anglia” by Colin Shewring (1980);
11. The Swavesey Meridian: August/September 1997;
12. “The Railway Era” by Geoffrey Body (1982);
13. “The Victoria History of the County of Cambridge & the Isle of Ely Vols. II & IX”.