LAST weekend saw the 50th anniversary of the end of the ‘glorious’ era of steam - an occasion marked as it was back in August, 1968, with a special excursion train taking in the Settle-Carlisle Line, and including the iconic Ribblehead Viaduct.

The 1T57 Fifteen Guinea Special was a special rail tour excursion train organised for the occasion on August 11, 1968, and went from Liverpool via Manchester to Carlisle and back. The last scheduled steam hauled passenger service ran a week earlier from Preston, and the day after the Fifteen Guinea Special, the nationwide steam ban was brought it.

Some 450 people were on the special for its 12 hour journey, some ‘white hot with excitement’, while every vantage point along the way was crammed with wellwishers, armed with cameras and recording equipment, reported the Craven Herald at the time.

The original Fifteen Guinea special was pulled by four different steam locomotives in turn during the four legs of the journey, which included going from Settle to Carlisle.

The Herald reported that the occasion drew many thousands of people who lined the railway line and blocked the narrow roads with their cars. The journey ‘brought to an end the era of steam on British Railways which was inaugurated 143 years ago by the opening of the Darlington to Stockton Railway,” reported the paper at the time, which then mused on the passing of steam, and what lay ahead - suggesting that locomotives going at more than 100 mph might well become the norm.

The four locomotives pulled the train of 11 coaches on its 314 mile journey, which lasted 12 hours and crossed four counties. As the Stanier ‘Black Fire’ pulled the train into Lime Street Station, Liverpool, the journey’s end, it was greeted by detonators and a salute from an outward diesel. Some 450 people had each paid 15gns for the trip, which included a champagne lunch high on the Yorkshire moors.

All along the route to Carlisle, thousands jammed windows, bridges and embankments and any vantage points to wave goodbye. “On the Yorkshire moors, cars caused traffic jams on minor roads, and at Settle and Hellifield, thousands were out to wave farewell.” The Herald reported that the locomotives, three class fives and a Britannia Class, named Oliver Cromwell, were the stars of the day. “Cameras were out everywhere, line side tape enthusiasts recorded the roar of their exhausts and future historians should not be short of material to recall the great day,” reported the Herald.

The paper’s leader writer said the steam age on British Railways had ended with the running of the enthusiasts special. “It passed through Craven to the accompaniment of cheers, camera clicking and the whirring of tape recorders. On the train itself, the devotees of railways were white hot with excitement.”

It was not the end of railways, said the Herald, even though the paper claimed more than 80 per cent of freight was being moved by road. “Some people might declare that for the railways the most exciting days lie ahead with diesel propulsion providing a link between steam and the inevitable large scale electrification, by which time we may be accustomed to seeing locomotives travelling at over 100 miles per hour.”

The paper suggested that Britons may well be suffering from a bout of nostalgia over the loss of steam locomotives. “There have been heavy hearts as British Railways have parted company with steam locomotives. It was steam which gave the railways birth, which sustained them through the years when they took over from the canals the job of moving goods in bulk. Indeed, steam was the driving force of the Industrial Revolution.”

But why did steam hold such a fascination for people, asked the paper. “It is not so much the technical process of turning water and coal into power, but the fact that steam evokes an age that has now gone. That age, which suffered a death blow from the confusion of the first world war, is generally thought of as a gracious time of sedate living of music halls and hansom cabs, but in fact it was as turbulent as today, for Britain was seething with new ideas and new technology and social reorganisation.”

People liked to think of the ‘old time bustle’ of Skipton Station and of the ‘fever of excitement’ at holiday time when half the town gathered on the ‘up’ platform heading to Morecambe.

People also brought to mind, the ‘busy loco shops at Hellifield’, ‘the wild scream of a night express thundering towards Blea Moor Tunnel, over a thousand feet above sea level, and the fellowship of the railway families living in remote places like Ribblehead and Garsdale. And then there were also memories of farmers putting milk on carts to transport them to the nearest railway station.

“Railways will endure, “ continued the paper, “But not in their present form,. Craven is threatened with widespread retraction of more limbs are lopped from the trunk railway system. The Settle- Carlisle railway may well have its central sections snipped and the ends demoted to mere freight lines.Meanwhile, the people living beside the line have the indelible memory of the last train - of the distant toot of the whistle, throbbing of the line, first appearance of a locomotive belching smoke and effortlessly hauling its string of carriages, the tattoo of wheels against the track, clatter and rush of air and the gradual disappearance of the train along the line.”

Nigel Dobbing, managing director of the company that organised last weekend’s special excursion, said it was a chance to experience the golden age of steam.

“Fortunately, a number of fine steam locomotives were saved from the scrapyard and it’s wonderful to see these magnificent feats of British engineering still at work on our railways hauling steam specials.

This rail excursion commemorated the end of regular BR passenger steam services, but also celebrated the fact that we continue to be able to experience the ‘Golden Age’ of mainline steam travel today.”

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of the Ellwood family, Mrs V. Rowley, and North Yorkshire County Council, Skipton Library. Visit rowleycollection.co.uk to view more historic photographs of Skipton.