THE prospect of Malvern losing one of its railway lines was preoccupying members of the local council 50 years ago.

They were reacting to the decision by British Railways to drastically cut services on the line from Great Malvern to Ashchurch, near Tewkesbury.

The council had been told that passenger services between Malvern and Upton-upon-Severn would be entirely withdrawn, that passenger services between Malvern and Tewkesbury would be reduced to morning and evening services for workpeople and that the Hanley Road station in Malvern Wells would be closed.

Mr E Scott, of the council, accused BR of not having tried to make the line pay and said: "If you dealt with the post office in this way, half the post offices in the country would close."

Mr J Watkins, himself a former railwayman, said he had always hoped for nationalisation of the railways, believing that the trains would then be run as a public service. "It seemed now that nationalised industries tended to keep only the paying propositions," he said.

Of course, the line was ultimately closed entirely, as part of the post-war downsizing of the rail network and switch to road transport.

For those too young to remember, the line started from a platform at Great Malvern Station, now buried beneath some bungalows. It ran across what is now the Three Counties Showground (where the Hanley Road station was), before veering off through Brotheridge Green to Upton. Crossing the river, it went through Ripple, past Tewkesbury (its embankment can still be seen just east of the A38 as it comes into town) and thus to Ashchurch.

The line of the track can still be traced on the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 sheet for this area and parts of it can be walked.