Fat chance of ever seeing that happen

It was thought about but local road improvement schemes would have meant expensive infrastructure including retaining walls and bridges would have been required and these were beyond the means of any preservation society.

Think about the cost of maintaining the line and of providing the service.

Have you got a bit of Marmelade stuck on your Space Bar oldboy? 😂

having been taken on holiday to keswick as a youngster I have 40 years of happy memories from this beautiful place and remember walking the old derelict line at some places where it headed out to Low Briery ,for those who know Keswick.

Used to catch a train to Penrith. Change for Carlisle. College days

Barbara castle shut a lot of lines

Not to mention the recent Flusco business park just west of Penrith that has meant any reopening would have to divert and take on a seriously steep grade. That one was actively fought over between the district council and promotors of reopening the railway. Kind of sad when you consider the expensive new bridge BR put over the M6 in 1969-70 carried a dedicated track for the line in addition with the WCML, just two years before the bean counters knocked it off.

@@freelunch99 except Mrs Castle wasn't the Minister of Transport after 6th April 1968, and this line closed in 1972. You can't blame her for every closure. Peter Walker, Conservative, closed this line.

They did more damage to Britain than the Luftwaffe coukd have ever dreamt of when Beechins Axe fell

It didn't make enough money to cover its costs, even after Mrs Cadtke introduced grants to support such lines.

Not that expensive to re open when compared to the cost of just a few miles of motorway.

Listen to the revving engine as it pulls away from the station. Makes me disappointed in short sighted politicians at the time.

That's easy to explain. Barbara Castle (Labour, Minister of Transport) introduced a series of Grant's to support branch lines that were uneconomic but were socially necessary. The Penrith-Keswick line was one line safed by these grants. These grants were for 2 year periods and in 1969 Richard Marsh or Fred Mulley (Labour, Minister of Transport), sorry but my source doesn't say which man made the decision, decided that the line's next grant would be its last unless the line went through the full TUCC closure process. In 1972 Peter Walker (Conservative, Minister of the Environment until November 1972 (the Ministry of Transport was part if the Ministry of the Environment at this time)) reject the claims of hardship if the line closed and made the decision to close the line. Freight from the quarries at Flusco and Blencow ceased on 19th June 1972. As for the Woodhead line, the non-standard electrification was a key factor for the line's closure. It was coming up for replacement as life expired and with falling levels of freight due to the recession of the early 1980s the decision was made to close the line.

They were obsessed with cars and motorways in those days. I personaly beleive that the people running things then,had been involved in the second world war. There is no doubt that America's entry into that war flooded Europe with highly efficient road transport wheras the German war effort was negated by the allies wholesale bombing of the European rail network. It is my belief that this left an impression in many politicians minds that railways were a thing of the past. There was also the question of corrupt backhanders, such as a certain pro road transport minister being investigated for tax evasion.

That easy to explain. Little freight being sent out, just the stobe from 2 quarries and domestic coal coming in and thise trains, from what I can see online, did not run every day and stations not close to the village they are named for, for example Threlkeld was a good half a mile from the centre of the village, whilst the bus stop was in the village. By the time of closure there were only 5 trains day and none on Sundays for most of the year, summer brought a couple more trains, but these only ran for about a month.

@@neiloflongbeck5705 From the 1930's, bus services undermined the railways as they were much more convenient and direct,....almost door-to-door which saved a considerable amount of time.

@@malthusXIII-fo3ep Threkeld was a prime example of this problem and it really started with the end of WW1 with the government selling off war surplus trucks that they had trained many men to drive. It only got worse as the years went on. Some place had more buses in a day than their railway station had trains in the week.

With only 5 trains a day and heavily subsidised it was probably losing this much per year.

​@@neiloflongbeck5705 yeah, you could say the same about most rural roads. Does it make sense to tear those up too?

@@ryanparker4996 only if you want to compare apples with oranges? BR had all the expense of maintaining and operating the railways. Name me 1 road, where a public body not only maintains that road but also provides all the transport kn that road.

@@neiloflongbeck5705 literally every fucking road in Britain you actual muppet

@@neiloflongbeck5705 you realise the Government owns your car, right? 😂😂😂 youre just borrowing it

I bought mine on ebay and converted the VHS to dvd.

Patronising git. What lovely people those interviewees were, especially the lady. We shall not see their like again, sadly.

I found it difficult to understand some of the dialogue too. I would have loved to of known what they were saying. Perhaps one day Gorden could translate for all of us who are in the same boat. Go on Gorden be a sport.

@@JH-fv4ge y

They're easy to understand and I'm not from Cumbria.

And just what kind of track do you think Mallard established its 126 mph record on?

Only bullhead I noticed in that video TBH was in the very last few seconds with the footage of them cutting up a small stretch of track. Looks like they'd replaced most of the rest of it, there was barely a chair fastener in sight.

You can find bullhead track still in use at Birmingham New Street station in 2020.

Nothing unsafe about properly maintained bullhead