Railways and Recollections: 1965

This was the year in which Winston Spencer Churchill resigned as Prime Minister to be replaced by Anthony Eden, the year in which James Dean was killed in a road traffic accident, and tragedy struck at the Le Mans 24-hour race where a collision between two cars led to the death of over 80 people and a least a further 100 injured. This was also the year that Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial Lolita was published in Paris and Juan Peron lost power following a military coup in Argentina. Meanwhile, on the railways of Britain, the 1955 Modernisation Plan was published. It is interesting therefore to see images within these pages of the railways during 1955 as a backdrop to these far reaching proposals. We start our journey in Northern Ireland where a degree of modernisation is already under way with diesel railcars already beginning to replace steam-hauled services, although ironically steam in Northern Ireland was to outlast the rest of the UK. A hop across the water finds us in the Isle of Man before we reach the Cambrian Coast route, where ‘Dukedogs’ could still be seen. A visit to Birmingham and the Midlands follows before we head north to Scotland, the Lake District and the North East.