| Guildford to Reading in 1965 Posted by Mark A at 13:34, 29th December 2025 |     |
Looking back. A poster on Bluesky: 1965, a new DMU service, promotional fares and accelerated timings of 49 minutes end-to-end. (Now down to 38 minutes.)
Mark
https://bsky.app/profile/mikeyashworth.bsky.social/post/3mb4oe63znc2t
| Re: Guildford to Reading in 1965 Posted by grahame at 13:59, 29th December 2025 | |
I remember in my youth taking a tadpole from Reading to Tonbridge and it felt like an incredibly long journey. The Hastings unit power cars were not really best suited for the all-stations, stop-start and in those days the North Downs line was one service an hour (every 2 hours on Sunday) calling everywhere. Rather like (and I will was my mouth out) the HSTs with slam doors were not suited to trains making lots of stops with return commuters on the evening run out to Westbury.
| Re: Guildford to Reading in 1965 Posted by Mark A at 14:21, 29th December 2025 | |
Same but the train broke down somewhere in cold grey weather, in the wilds before it reached Guildford. Train manager had shoes most inappropriate for walking on ballast but needed to retrace the train's path for many hundreds of yards to lay detonators. It took ages to organise rescue. Arrival at Tonbridge just missed the I think hourly onward connection two trains after the connection I'd hoped to make, and no one was remotely interested in arranging a call for one of the other through trains to Ashford that passed rather gingerly across Tonbridges complicated trackwork, threading the remarkably tight single arches of the road bridge there.
Mark
