Extending for a few short miles westward of the bustling village and port of Herring Harbour, the Shaston Farthing Branch Line cuts its way through a gentle pastoral landscape carrying its passengers and cargo to the popular resort of Overcamp. The line was the life-long vision of the notable Wenchoster engineer Theotrope McQuarrie. As a flamboyant High Churchman and a regular pilgrim to the Shrine of Our Lady of the Dunes in Overcamp he rued the lack of regular transportation beyond Herring Harbor. In a later biography ("Rivets, Hot Rivets!" Percy Winkle. SPCK 1963.) he is quoted as exclaiming, "To arrive hot and perspiring with ones bones being shaken to eternity is no way to contemplate the Blessed Sacrament on a feast day, or any day for that matter!" We assume he was referring to the daily charabanc that would run from Fishy Mews in Herring Harbour throughout the year.
With the financial backing of local gentry and a generous donation from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (a fellow railway buff) the first rails were laid and blessed by the Lord Bishop of Wenchoster, The Right Reverend Malcolm Twist, in 1879.
Local countryfolk were only too eager to donate their land to the construction of the Branch Line to Overcamp, and the Crown Estates gave permission for the southern branch to be constructed over their property in 1885. By the following year the line was ready and opened officially by Queen Victoria on June 1st.
The Shaston Farthing Branch Line has remained a private railway throughout its existence thanks to strong local sentiments and the insistence of the Church. It thus escaped rail nationalization in 1948, and the stringent Beeching cuts of the 1960s. Usage has decreased since the closure of the Shrine in 1989 but trains continue to ply their way between Herring Harbour and Overcamp every day of the year
Over the years the Shaston Farthing Branch Line and the Wenchoster main line have attracted many notable visitors and given rise to memorable events.
What most film buffs do not know is that Herring Harbour station (Wenchoster Main Line) was a stand-by location for the movie "Brief Encounters" in the event of the north of England (in particular, Carnforth) being snow-bound that June. Here Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson take part in a casting rehearsal in the not-so-cleverly disguised station platform. They left for Lancashire the next day. (Teas and extremely large Bakewell tarts were provided by Mrs. Constance Godber of Heave-Ho Lane.)
Father Hillary de Rouen, on an exchange from an Order Peculiar in Normandy, hands out free return rail passes (valid for an octave) to all the communicants present at the High Mass to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Branch Line on the Feast of St. Leonard the Carefully Observed, 1936. Father Hillary was recalled to his order suddenly the following year. It appears this was on account of a baptismal irregularity. He never married.
In the spring of 1952, following an outbreak of tract-placing on Branch Line railway carriages by members of the Church Union and the (now obsolete) Presbyterian Church of England and Wales, Sisters Daisy and Ophelia, both newly graduated black belts in karate, are formally commissioned as "Guardian Angels" by the Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Herring Harbour.
The only existing image of Reverend Mother Eunice McAlpine (in bath chair) being helped onto the final 1745 train from the Shrine on October 22nd, 1989. She went on to coach the clergy of All Saints Margaret Street, London, in genuflection and exposition techniques, and retired to the Dordogne in 1990. She died in 1991 from a fungi-related illness.
Sister Phoebe Gerontia (ex-OHHSV) on the outgoing 8.30 from "The Harbour" (as locals refer to the village) wondering why the Feast of St. Prudence the Slack was nowhere to be seen in her breviary. She served as part-time Sacristan to the Shrine in the year leading to its closure in 1989. The jeweled gold chalice was never found, but the aforementioned individual was arrested for impropriety at a singles club in Walton-upon-Thames the following year and bound over, under the name of Frank Chisel, to keep the peace for twelve months. We can only assume that she did just that.
Extending for a few short miles westward of the bustling village and port of Herring Harbour, the Shaston Farthing Branch Line cuts its way through a gentle pastoral landscape carrying its passengers and cargo to the popular resort of Overcamp. The line was the life-long vision of the notable Wenchoster engineer Theotrope McQuarrie. As a flamboyant High Churchman and a regular pilgrim to the Shrine of Our Lady of the Dunes in Overcamp he rued the lack of regular transportation beyond Herring Harbor. In a later biography ("Rivets, Hot Rivets!" Percy Winkle. SPCK 1963.) he is quoted as exclaiming, "To arrive hot and perspiring with ones bones being shaken to eternity is no way to contemplate the Blessed Sacrament on a feast day, or any day for that matter!" We assume he was referring to the daily charabanc that would run from Fishy Mews in Herring Harbour throughout the year.
What most film buffs do not know is that Herring Harbour station (Wenchoster Main Line) was a stand-by location for the movie "Brief Encounters" in the event of the north of England (in particular, Carnforth) being snow-bound that June. Here Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson take part in a casting rehearsal in the not-so-cleverly disguised station platform. They left for Lancashire the next day. (Teas and extremely large Bakewell tarts were provided by Mrs. Constance Godber of Heave-Ho Lane.)
Father Hillary de Rouen, on an exchange from an Order Peculiar in Normandy, hands out free return rail passes (valid for an octave) to all the communicants present at the High Mass to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Branch Line on the Feast of St. Leonard the Carefully Observed, 1936. Father Hillary was recalled to his order suddenly the following year. It appears this was on account of a baptismal irregularity. He never married.
In the spring of 1952, following an outbreak of tract-placing on Branch Line railway carriages by members of the Church Union and the (now obsolete) Presbyterian Church of England and Wales, Sisters Daisy and Ophelia, both newly graduated black belts in karate, are formally commissioned as "Guardian Angels" by the Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Herring Harbour.
The only existing image of Reverend Mother Eunice McAlpine (in bath chair) being helped onto the final 1745 train from the Shrine on October 22nd, 1989. She went on to coach the clergy of All Saints Margaret Street, London, in genuflection and exposition techniques, and retired to the Dordogne in 1990. She died in 1991 from a fungi-related illness.
Sister Phoebe Gerontia (ex-OHHSV) on the outgoing 8.30 from "The Harbour" (as locals refer to the village) wondering why the Feast of St. Prudence the Slack was nowhere to be seen in her breviary. She served as part-time Sacristan to the Shrine in the year leading to its closure in 1989. The jeweled gold chalice was never found, but the aforementioned individual was arrested for impropriety at a singles club in Walton-upon-Thames the following year and bound over, under the name of Frank Chisel, to keep the peace for twelve months. We can only assume that she did just that.
