The Unkindest Cuts of All : Beeching Closures of 13 June 1964

33 members and friends of the branch joined two  members of Rowland’s family for the Third Rowland Pittard Memorial Lecture delivered by branch committee member Nigel Wassell, which was based upon the closures of  lines in South Wales on 13 June 1964. The first point emphasised  by Nigel was the number of lines closed before Beeching so when it came to his infamous Report “there wasn’t much left to close in South Wales.” Nigel featured many of the lines closed including Johnson to Neyland (that once proud West Wales loco shed which at one time boasted an allocation of at least four Counties and which had been left stranded at the end of a branch line by a reorganisation the previous year), Porth to Maerdy and Caerphilly to Senghenydd. However he concentrated on two major routes : Pontypool Road to Neath, the so called Vale of Neath and Swansea Victoria to Pontardulais. He gave us a detailed photo story of all the trains on the last day of service on there latter, including the York Mail, there 1825 Swansea to York. This was one of the few trains from Swansea Victoria to retain Class 5 Motive Power - usually a Black Five off Shrewsbury Shed as the loco had come in on the balancing working. A very well researched and presented evening with handouts of the last days timetable and locos involved.