FOLLOWING our rather damp visit to Eastleigh on March 9, 1963, the following Saturday was spent showing a friend the delights of the Exe Valley, Tiverton Junction and Hemyock lines.

The snow had all gone by then, but the countryside had yet to recover from the battering it had received from the weather of January and February.

My notebook necessarily records mainly weekend events, so there is in it no mention of Thursday, March 28, 1963, even though this day was possibly the most momentous day of the whole nationalised period of British railway history.

It was the day Dr Richard Beeching (pictured) published his report on the Reshaping of British Railways.

Although remembered now mainly for his proposals for the closing of unremunerative stations and branch lines — and some main lines too — he actually went much further.

Suggesting the acceptance of small goods consignments was no longer economic and the railway should in future concentrate on 'block' trains of one commodity such as steel, coal, cement, stone etc — thus doing away with the traditional goods train, pottering along and obstructing the passage of faster services.

I have managed to retain my copy of that day's newspaper which featured the effects of the report on the West Country and its tourist industry where, of the 260 existing stations, 210 were to close, including 12 holiday resorts which were to lose their services.

In a front page article, David St John Thomas (then the paper's transport correspondent) analysed the effects this revolutionary report would have on the holiday industry, pointing out that from all the holiday resorts along the North Cornwall and North Devon coasts, only Newquay would retain its railway service while none of the East Devon resorts would stay on the railway map.

As it turned out, several lines were saved. And it is difficult to see how the busy Exmouth branch got itself on to the closure list in the first place.

Others were saved by the difficulty in providing the replacement bus service — Gunnislake and Looe for instance, which was rather ironic because in those cases where a bus did replace the branch line service, it became evident later the bus service was only guaranteed for 12 months.

If, at the end of this period, the bus service was not profitable, then the passengers had lost both the train and the bus service.

And as most were not profitable, most ex-passengers joined the then rapidly expanding ranks of the great car-owning public, though probably not by buying the model featured at the foot of this front page, the 3-litre Wolseley 6/110, a product of the ill-fated British Motor Corporation, with real leather seating, available for £1,112 four shillings and sevenpence, including VAT.

I guess petrol would have been around five shillings a gallon in those days.

The ex-Southern Railway lines came off worst in the report, mainly because the Western Region had been steadily chipping away at its branch line services through the late 1950s.

As a result, just in South Devon, we had already lost the Teign Valley, Moretonhampstead, Ashburton, Launceston and Princetown branches.

By contrast, the Southern Region had closed none of its lines, and these were therefore ripe for the slaughter which was to follow.