Tetbury and Cirencester branches - from steam to railbus

Kemble station with a 'Castle' hauled London express and an 0-6-0PT on the Cirencester branch - this picture was on the front cover of the BR WR Magazine dated August 1957.

Two branches left the Swindon - Gloucester line at Kemble. On the down side was the branch to Tetbury, seven miles and 19 chains; on the up side was the one to Cirencester Town, just four miles 16 chains. There were no through branch passenger trains off the main line, it was necessary to change at Kemble. The Cirencester branch had no intermediate halts, while that to Tetbury had Rodmarton Platform and Culkerton Halt - and it still had mixed trains, two a day, which had almost died out elsewhere. Like many branches, they were struggling to justify their existence in the 1950s.

Cirencester Town and Tetbury both had a small loco shed, coming under 85B Gloucester Horton Road, however the locos working the branches were supplied by 82C Swindon.

The following articles appeared in two 1959 issues of the 'Gloucestershire Railway Society News' and chronicle the changeover from steam worked passenger to that run by four-wheel railbuses built by A C Cars in Surrey. These were very much an experiment by British Railways to ascertain if branch line services could be run economically and saved from complete closure. Similar style of railbuses were successfully used for many years on branch lines in Germany, albeit not too comfortable to ride in - being four wheelers, they tended to buck and jolt over every rail joint and squeal noisily round the sharper curves, but they fended off the alternative of surrendering passenger services to road transport.

New halts were opened on both branches to try and get more passengers.