Let's Imagine

[prophetic final words, made in 1963 just before Beeching closed this and many other lines]

John Betjeman:
Burnham-on-Sea. The Somerset and Dorset Railway brought you prosperity a century ago. Burnham-on-Sea. In ten years' time, when the roads are so full of traffic we'll all be going by train again, you'll be grateful you still have a railway to your town. Don't let Dr Beeching take it away from you.

[talking about a dilapidated and vandalised railway carriage that he finds in a siding at Highbridge]

John Betjeman:
Where did it go from, I wonder? Between Dawlish Warren, Starcross and Exeter, between Bourne End and Marlow, or Castle Bar Park Halt and Ealing Broadway, or was it on the Staines branch or the Uxbridge branch? And I wonder what city gents planned their holidays as they strap-hung and looked at these sepia photographs and wondered where to go. I can't tell you, because this car's now been smashed to bits since I was there. People hate anything well made, you know: it gives them a guilty conscience.

John Betjeman:
I'm not just being nostalgic and sentimental and unpractical about railways. Railways are bound to be used again. They are not a thing of the past, and it's heartbreaking to see them left to rot, and to see the fine men who served them all their lives made uncertain about their own futures and about their jobs. What's more, it's wrong in every way when we all of us know that road traffic is becoming increasingly hellish on this overcrowded island and that in ten years from now, there'll be three times as much traffic on English roads as there is today. What will the West Country be like than? How will we get anywhere in summer except by a railway? How will we see any country, except from a train? I think it's more than likely that we'll deeply regret the branch lines we've torn up and the lines that we've let go to rot.