Steam Rail Motors and Chalford
I first visited Chalford on the train in the summer of 1960. The locomotive was a 1400 class tank engine; 1463 from memory. I thought that a quaint engine at the time but not as quaint as the Art Deco diesel railcars awaiting the scrap yard at the sidings at Rodbourne Cheyney in Swindon. I knew nothing then of the steam rail motors at Chalford. But I did know of stations at Purton, Minety & Ashton Keynes, Oaksey, Chalford and Brimscombe.
In 1903, the GWR reported thus on our local line: ‘the Stroud Valley between Chalford and Stonehouse, a distance of seven miles’ with a ‘succession of villages nearly all connected, adjacent to the railway … prosperous looking places … cloth making, silk weaving, the manufacture of buttons, pins, walking and umbrella sticks, and wood turning …The streams furnish qualities peculiar to the requirements of these industries.’ And the springs too, of course: the water at Chalford station came from a spring in nearby Cowcombe Woods.
In consequence, later that year, a new service was introduced – the steam rail motor service, twenty-three minutes in time for the seven miles distance between Chalford and Stonehouse. There was capacity for fifty-two passengers and, similar to the underground, there were straps for standing passengers to clench if felt necessary on the journey. Sixteen of the potential fifty-two could sit in cross-seats positioned in the centre of the carriage, with thirty-six seats positioned longitudinally towards each end of the carriage.
One of the joys of this service was the fact that the steam rail motor did not just stop at stations and halts along the way, but also at level crossings in a bid to lure travellers away from the attractions of the expanding competition from bus services in the 1920s. Who needs a bus stop when you can hop off at a level crossing?
But it was a sign of the times: the best of times, the worst of times. The 1920s saw both the hey day and the demise of the service. On the one hand, the service was extended to Gloucester in 1921, but seven years later, the railmotor service met its final buffer.
And the GWR itself had started experimenting with bus services in that decade of change: Painswick or Cheltenham or Cainscross or Chalford or Rodborough or Kingscourt return please.
Oh, to have been able to have hopped off at St Mary’s Crossing & Halt, Brimscombe Bridge Halt, Ham Mill Crossing & Halt, Bowbridge Crossing & Halt, Downfield Crossing & Halt, Cashes Green Halt, Ebley Crossing & Halt.