I seem to remember the guard with his ticket machine when I visited just before closure. Then again my memory is dubious at best!
The excellent Disused Stations website states that Skelmanthorpe was unstaffed from 1966 and Clayton West from May 1970, so yes it would have been "Pay train" operated.
so therefore also the Aldeburgh branch (Suffolk) presumably?
You are right that Paytrain as a method of revenue collection and Paytrain as an advertising strapline are two different things. On the latter "It pays to travel by Anglia Paytrain" is probably the first railway advertising to seep into my childhood brain. But I'm not sure that was introduced before the closures finished.
Saxmundham-Aldeburgh closed in September 1966, so presumably not. Similarly for these closures:
Yes, ive seen a picture of the entrance to Hockley station taken after it became unstaffed in 1969, and there is a PayTrain notice on the wall there. Im sure ive seen a picture of a similar notice at Soho & Winson Green.
I believe that these Snow Hill services were so "residual" that they were operated by single car "bubble cars", necessary for such a Paytrain operation as the ex-Western Region lines around Birmingham had brought with them a large WR fleet of Derby-built suburban dmus with no corridor connections.
I should imagine that they were sufficient in capacity terms as well!
The ticket I have was issued on an excess pad.
Yes Paytrain was a very effective brand.
This was the case from back in steam train days (this service closed before dieselisation). The GWR had built a number of wooden small halts about a mile or less apart, where the line runs through a narrow, semi-urbanised valley, handled by 0-4-2T tank locos and Auto Trailers. I think the guards' ticket machines were the same as the local buses used. Major stations like Stroud continued with ticket offices and ticket inspection in/out.
The bubble cars came while the stations were still staffed. The service was reduced from an hourly all day service with peak extras to just 6 each way per day on 4th March 1968. But class 116s were still used. Then from the 5th August 1968 the 116s were replaced by 122s. Then from the 5th May 1969 all the stations including Snow Hill and Low Level became unstaffed. Thats when the PayTrain service started.
It was noteworthy that the GWR design of Auto Trailer had just the one door each side. That was a design feature also of the Hawksworth design coaches that partly replaced then in the 1950s as well as the original GWR railcar design. It wasn't a feature of the Bubble car 121/122 design.
I think the stations from Alvechurch to Selly Oak all went unstaffed in 1967 definitely earlier than the Low Level - Snow Hill stations. Yes they were on the closure list. I think it was Barbara Castle that reprieved those. Five Ways had already been closed in 1944. I think Redditch retained staff during that time however.
I'm not sure whether or not the section from Rawtenstall to Bacup was ever a Paytrain, even though that was one of the first local lines to be fully converted to DMU operation in the mid-1950s. But the truncated Rossendale service (after 1966) between Bury Bolton St and Rawtenstall certainly was a Paytrain by 1970.
I have a distant memory that the Stockport - Stalybridge line, when it still had regular services each way, was a bit of a pilot trial for Paytrains in the area (i.e. the first Paytrain in the urban northwest). I'm happy to be corrected if wrong on this.
As a bit of trivia, IIRC BR retained a staffed booking office at the original Longbridge station (on the line from Halesowen Junction to Old Hill where it passed through the car factory) for decades after passenger services ceased on that line. It catered mostly for the large market of people who worked at the factory. I assume it closed when the new Cross City line station opened on the mainline.
That's my understanding too - wasn't one of the early routes the East Suffolk line, which was Gerry Fiennes local line at the time?
