Geograph - photograph every grid square

The first of the two specials that ran over the Somerset & Dorset on the Saturday of the line's final weekend was organised by the Bristol Group of the Great Western Society. Headed by LMSR 8F 48706 the 8-coach train is seen here passing through the grounds of Midford Castle at about 10.45am on its way to Bournemouth. It will shortly pass the site of Midford goods yard and in about half a mile will pass through Midford Station (downgraded to an unstaffed Halt a few years before closure). Being primarily a goods engine 48706 was not fitted with steam heating capability so the travellers would have had an entire day without heating, luckily it was memorably sunny all day long.

There is a certain irony in the Great Western Society organising a special over the S&DJR. The S&DJR had never been part of the GWR, indeed it was jointly owned by the SR and LMSR, competitors of the GWR, and running from Bath to Bournemouth, with a lengthy branch across Somerset to Burnham-on-Sea, off which sprang other branches to Wells and Bridgwater, it was very much an interloper on GWR territory. The loco used for the special had no GWR connections either; to an LMSR design it was built at Brighton Works of the SR in 1944 as part of an order placed by the LNER required for wartime traffic. At least the front coach had a GWR connection, it was a GWR Hawksworth-design brake third, but as the vast majority of Hawksworth coaches were built after nationalisation it is likely that it was never actually GWR-owned!

The closure of the S&DJR was significant in that it marked the end of steam traction on the Western Region of BR.