Ross-on-Wye’s Lost Railway: Part 2

By the mid-1860s, the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway’s shortcomings had become enough of a nuisance to push its directors to do something about them. The most glaring of them was the fact that it had been built as a broad-gauge line due to the Great Western Railway’s vested interest in the project. As their head engineer, Brunel, was the inventor of the broad gauge, all their railways were constructed as such.

Back in the early 1840s, after the Great Western Railway’s initial line between London and Bristol had been completed, rival companies inevitably began to pop up. They, however, decided to build their railways with standard- or narrow-gauge rails. The difference was that broad gauge had a width of seven feet and a quarter of an inch, whereas the standard gauge had one of four feet and eight a half inches.

An example of a broad-gauge railway at Five Ways, Ross-on-Wye…

This presented a problem, as it meant that not all the lines could not connect with each other, and this was exactly what plagued the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway when it reached Barrs Court Station. Trains travelling from the southeast were not able to run straight through the station. Instead, all the passengers and freight would have to be unloaded and placed aboard a separate train waiting on the appropriate narrow-gauge line.

A decade into the railway’s operation, this clumsy arrangement proved too much of a headache to carry on with, and so, in 1866, the line was converted to mixed gauge. Within the broad-gauge rails, a set of narrow-gauge ones were placed, allowing both types of train to use the line.

… and an example of a narrow-gauge railway

Clearly this arrangement proved inadequate though, as on 15 August 1869, the line was closed for a fortnight to allow the entire length of it to be replaced purely by narrow-gauge rails. In the meantime, those wishing to travel between Hereford, Ross and Gloucester would have to make do with a set of omnibuses brought up from London.

The men working on the line managed to complete four miles a day, and a narrow-gauge train slowly followed them as it tested the newly laid rails to make sure they were safe. Meanwhile, a broad-gauge train travelled ahead of them, serving as their living quarters. They rose at four in the morning every day, and thanks to their hard work, they managed to finish the job in just a week.

At last, the railway’s gauge troubles were over, but there was one other quirk of the line that had caused its directors further hassle. Whilst most other railways were built with the usual bullhead rails, which were shaped similar to a double-ended ‘T’, the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway had been laid using Barlow rails.

A bullhead rail

These were shaped like a curved upside-down ‘V’, and were designed so that they did not need to be attached to wooden sleepers, but could instead be placed directly atop a ballast of crushed stone and gravel, thus saving on cost. In practice, they would prove somewhat unreliable.

Due to there being no sleepers to tie the two sets of rails together, a heavy train passing over would push them apart, which risked it slipping off entirely. As time went on, some sections of the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway was fitted with more conventional rails to alleviate this issue.

A Barlow rail

On a more positive note, one high point in the railway’s history was the building of the Ross and Monmouth Railway, which branched off the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester line just east of the station at Ross-on-Wye. Its construction began in 1865, but was put on hold after trial borings at Symonds Yat proved that the rock was going to be extremely hard to break through.

The directors bided their time as they raised enough capital to undertake the work. Once the necessary funds had been acquired construction was resumed, and by 4 August 1873, the line had reached its temporary terminus of Monmouth Mayhill Station. The next year, on the first day of May, the permanent station of Monmouth Troy was reached, although the one at Mayhill would also become permanent itself, affording the Welsh town with two stations.

The views to be had on this route were renowned to be some of the best throughout Britain’s entire railway network, and this was an opinion shared by the headmaster of Hereford’s Lord Scudamore School, Charles Caldicott. In his 1896 book The Way About Herefordshire he writes that between Kerne Bridge and Symonds Yat ‘the rail and river run parallel among some of the finest scenery in the kingdom’.

The Ross and Monmouth Railway at Symonds Yat

Despite the picturesque merits of the Ross and Monmouth Railway, it was never a heavily travelled line. The most traffic it saw was from day-trippers, although during the Second World War it experienced frequent passenger and freight services.

The same was also true of the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway, as it too never reached great importance, although it was sometimes used by north-to-west express trains on Sundays when the Severn Tunnel was closed for engineering work.

It is not a surprise then that both railways fell victim to the infamous Beeching Report of 1963, which detailed services that were profitable and those that were not. Even before this, however, the railway had been declining for some time, as the Monmouth branch line ran its last passenger service as early as 5 January 1959.

Ross-on-Wye’s Town Band assembled on the platform for the occasion, performing a heartfelt rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as the train pulled in. The crew were presented with champagne, although it probably did little to soothe the bitterness about the line’s demise. It was closed for good in 1964.

The Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway held on for a little longer, with passenger services not being cut until 2 November 1964. The freight services followed a year later, drawing to a close the line’s 110 years of operation.

Sources

• Hereford and Worcester County Council., Rural Development Commission., South Herefordshire District Council. (1995). Fiveways Enhancement. [Information Boards]. Five Ways, Ross-on-Wye, HR9 7AS.

• Oppitz, L. (2004). Lost Railways of Herefordshire & Worcestershire. Countryside Books.

• Caldicott, C. (1896). The Way About Herefordshire. Iliffe & Son.

Images

• Image 1: Quinsey, T. (2024). Broad Gauge [Photograph].

• Image 2: Quinsey, T. (2024). Narrow Gauge [Photograph].

• Image 3: Quinsey, T. (2024). Bullhead Rail [Photograph].

• Image 4: Quinsey, T. (2024). Barlow Rail [Photograph].

• Image 5: Herefordshire Libraries. (Unknown). Symonds Yat, river and railway [Photograph]. Herefordshire History. https://herefordshirehistory.org.uk/archive/herefordshire-images/river-wye-images/184669-symonds-yat-river-and-railway?q=symonds%20yat%20railway