The only passenger in the village: 'Special nurse's' lonely wait for train amid 'Beeching Axe'

She stands there alone on a deserted 'ghost station' platform, waiting for the train to stop for her and only her.

Great Longstone station in Derbyshire had been one of more than 2,000 stations to close as a result of the Beeching Report.

But Great Longstone was different because it had one very important passenger: Alice Boardman.
Mrs Boardman was a local nursing sister who worked at a hospital in nearby Buxton.

The station had been closed to passengers on September 10, 1962, but one of the conditions attached to the closure was that the station had to be available for the use of Mrs Boardman. "This is a special concession to a valuable nurse," a railway spokesman said at the time.

But Mrs Boardman was an exception to the rule. It was on March 27 1963 - 50 years ago today - that the British Railways Board, chaired by Richard Beeching, produced a report that was to lead to a savage axing of train routes and stations.

The Conservative government welcomed the report, but thousands of passengers were horrified they would lose their local branch lines.

Opposition from the pressure groups failed and during the 1960s a total of 2,128 stations and more than 67,000 British Rail jobs fell by the wayside.

Today, with the railways more popular than ever and more trains now running than in the year before the Beeching Report, opinion remains divided as to just what long-term effect his recommendations had.

While some point to the modern successes in terms of passengers carried and smarter trains and stations, others including the rail unions see Beeching as the archetypal evil axeman.

Its legacy is still clear now as rail campaigners mark the 50th anniversary of the Beeching Report by holding protests at stations against current cost-cutting.

The Beeching axe left rail networks in England's largest regional conurbations "down but by no means out", said the pteg organisation which represents the six Passenger Transport Executives (PTE) - Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Merseyside, West Midlands and Tyne and Wear.

It said around 80 stations earmarked for the Beeching axe were reprieved and some see annual passenger numbers in excess of one million.

Also, some stations that closed in the PTE areas have re-opened.

"Despite the devastating impact of Beeching's cuts, city region rail networks have fought back, growing and flourishing to levels Beeching never imagined," pteg said.

As for Mrs Boardman the special service couldn't last forever. The facility ceased when local stopping services between Matlock and Buxton/Manchester were withdrawn from March 6, 1967, with the last train running on March 4 of that year.

Here's some classic Pathé footage of Beeching, the then new chairman of the British Transport Commission, handing over a retired Castle Class steam engine to the Science Museum in London in 1961.