March to Spalding Sunday services in 1981/82

[Springs Branch]

I'm hoping someone with access to an old BR (ER) timetable for 1981 or 1982 can help with a question . . .

• Did the March - Spalding line have a Sunday service in its final days?

The backstory is that I made several weekend train trips from Cambridge to Lincoln Central & back to visit a friend there - out on Saturday & back on Sunday.

It was one of those 'Good News - Bad News' stories. The good news was there were direct trains between the two cities via the March - Spalding line.
The bad news was a long jaunt in a Cravens Class 105 DMU, rattling and bouncing along jointed track most of the way.

I have clear memories of the trips to Lincoln, but no recollections at all of coming back on the Sundays. I'm not sure if I needed to travel via either Newark or Spalding & Peterborough (although I don't recall touching the ECML), or whether there were Sunday trains direct to March. This sounds a bit unlikely, given the March - Spalding 'Joint' line was notorious for its high staffing costs, mainly due to the number of manual level crossings, and was on its last legs just before closure in late 1982.

Things I do remember about the Saturday northbound journeys are:-

- Departure from Cambridge at a gentlemanly time of something-after-10am on Saturday. Arrival at Lincoln was in nice time to go straight from the station to a pub lunch.
- Compensation for riding in a Cravens 105 was the one time I bagged the front seat behind a kind driver who kept his blinds up.
- Pretty much the whole trip beyond Ely was a festival of antique railway infrastructure. Hardly any of those newfangled colour-light signals to be seen (semaphore distants were the norm), some signals posts made of concrete rather than steel or wood, and was there a somersault semaphore or two along the way?
- Isolated signal boxes in the middle of the Fens controlling a minor road level crossing with manual gates.
- Boxes with banging names like French Drove and Blot Oft.
- Going slowly around the loop at Sleaford. I wasn't aware of the layout there before my first ride through, nor that we would get to trundle past Sleaford North, South, East and West signalboxes (but not in that sequence).
- The drop-dead gorgeous Lincolnshire girl who boarded the train at Metheringham (but that's a different story).

The funny part is, although I remember the outbound trips vividly, I can't remember the return journeys on Sunday. Certainly, we had enjoyed a hearty Sunday lunch and a pint or two in Lincoln, but I don't think I was so catatonic that I was loaded on the train in the afternoon and slept all the way home.

Can anyone enlighten me on what the train times & route might have been?

 

[Magdalia]

I'm hoping someone with access to an old BR (ER) timetable for 1981 or 1982 can help with a question . . .

• Did the March - Spalding line have a Sunday service in its final days?

No. March-Spalding lost its Sunday service in 1963.

Departure from Cambridge at a gentlemanly time of something-after-10am on Saturday. Arrival at Lincoln was in nice time to go straight from the station to a pub lunch.

In the 1982 timetable 1057 Cambridge-Doncaster arrive Lincoln Central 1319.

The bad news was a long jaunt in a Cravens Class 105 DMU

That's good news, not bad news!

I can't remember the return journeys on Sunday. Certainly, we had enjoyed a hearty Sunday lunch and a pint or two in Lincoln, but I don't think I was so catatonic that I was loaded on the train in the afternoon and slept all the way home.

In 1982 the Sunday 1300 Cleethorpes-Kings Cross was still running, departing Lincoln St Marks at 1411. Possibly a good train for a doze?

was there a somersault semaphore or two along the way?

The Skegness line still had somersault signals but I don't remember any on the Joint Line.

Boxes with banging names like French Drove and Blot Oft.

The name of the latter was one word but the signal box nameboard did have a curious gap between the fourth and fifth letters!

 

[Taunton]

Gerry Fiennes wrote that there were searchlight distants on Spalding to March by WW2 - the LNER had installed some pre-war. One was approach lit and, given the straight line, only lit up well after it came into view. Loco crews used to lay bets on what aspect it might then show!

 

[Bevan Price]

No. March-Spalding lost its Sunday service in 1963.


In the 1982 timetable 1057 Cambridge-Doncaster arrive Lincoln Central 1319.

The bad news was a long jaunt in a Cravens Class 105 DMU

That's good news, not bad news!

Not if it was one of the many Cravens units where the windows rattled incessantly for the whole journey.

 

[Springs Branch]

Thanks for the replies.

In the 1982 timetable 1057 Cambridge-Doncaster arrive Lincoln Central 1319.

The arrival time into Lincoln would explain that occasion we got to the pub to find a group of local skinheads already well oiled, boisterous and eager to 'kick off'.

That's good news, not bad news!

Not if it was one of the many Cravens units where the windows rattled incessantly for the whole journey.

I can appreciate the Class 105s had a certain retro charm. But that was very much lost on me back in the day - especially after the best part of 2½ hours riding in one!

In 1982 the Sunday 1300 Cleethorpes-Kings Cross was still running, departing Lincoln St Marks at 1411. Possibly a good train for a doze.

I remember St Marks station was still in operation with its extra set of gates across the High Street (Class 120 DMUs in vogue IIRC). But I'm sure I never travelled from there, nor returned on any sort of Inter-City train. I do vaguely recall entering Lincoln Central from the High Street, waiting on platform 5 and then passing over the flat crossing at Pelham St Junction.

Were there any Sunday trains on the Lincoln - Sleaford - Spalding - Peterborough route in 1981 / 82?
I'm starting to wonder whether I stayed two nights in Lincoln and sneaked back to Cambridge on Monday morning.

Gerry Fiennes wrote that there were searchlight distants on Spalding to March by WW2 - the LNER had installed some pre-war.

That jogged my memory that I did spot one or two vintage searchlight signals out in the wilds of the Fens. Lots of semaphore distants still along the rest of the route though, at a time when BR was steadily replacing them with 2-aspect colour lights on other lines.

 

[Magdalia]

Were there any Sunday trains on the Lincoln - Sleaford - Spalding - Peterborough route in 1981 / 82?
I'm starting to wonder whether I stayed two nights in Lincoln and sneaked back to Cambridge on Monday morning.

No the only Sunday trains from Lincoln Central were to Retford and Sheffield.

The Monday morning train was 1031 Doncaster-Cambridge arriving at 1353.

 

[nw1]

I came across this route earlier this year when looking at the 1982 GBPTT and it struck me as the kind of route which had miraculously survived Beeching.

Also reminded me a bit of some rural French routes from the service pattern - and a route with a lot of charm, I'm sure.

Obviously it was almost closed by then but even still, 1982 was the first year I used the railways and it's interesting this route was just about still open then.

 

[Magdalia]

I came across this route earlier this year when looking at the 1982 GBPTT and it struck me as the kind of route which had miraculously survived Beeching.

At the time of Beeching the Joint Line was a hugely important route for freight, especially coal.

The passenger service was downgraded in 1973 following the rebuilding at Peterborough.

The final nail in its coffin was the end of wagonload vacuum braked freight trains running between marshalling yards, making it feasible to run all the remaining freight via Peterborough too.

 

[30907]

The passenger service was downgraded in 1973 following the rebuilding at Peterborough.

The Ely-Sheffield and vv were replacements for the (North Country) Continental.

I was in Cambridge in summer 82 and used it to take my new fiancee to see old friends in Worksop. (We came back ECML and the relationship has survived.) The unit had taken us from Cambridge half-an-hour earlier; loading I recall as being insignificant.