{"id":5284,"date":"2011-10-19T14:15:02","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T13:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=5284"},"modified":"2011-10-25T01:15:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T00:15:51","slug":"mist-and-smoke-the-mid-hants-railway-winter-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/mist-and-smoke-the-mid-hants-railway-winter-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"Mist and smoke &#8211; the Mid Hants railway, winter 1986"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/mid-hants-railway-mist-01.jpg\" alt=\"Mist and smoke - the Mid Hants railway, winter 1986\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Railway scenes don&#8217;t get much more atmospheric than this\u00a0wintry\u00a0view of a deserted Ropley station, on the preserved <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mid_Hants_Watercress_Railway\" target=\"_blank\">Mid Hants Watercress railway line<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/mid-hants-railway-mist-02.jpg\" alt=\"Mist and smoke - the Mid Hants railway, winter 1987\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Smoke, steam and mist &#8211; with a bit of snow still on the ground. Lovely!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/mid-hants-railway-mist-03.jpg\" alt=\"Mist and smoke - the Mid Hants railway, winter 1987\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Originally built by the Alton, Alresford and Winchester Railway Company, and opening on 2 October 1865 as the &#8216;Mid-Hants Railway,&#8217; the line became part of the Southern Railway in 1923, before being\u00a0absorbed\u00a0by the\u00a0nationalised\u00a0Southern Region of British Railways in 1948.<\/p>\n<p>Although the line survived the notorious Beeching Axe of 1963 (*shakes fist at sky), the line was eventually closed in 1973.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rebirth<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Happily, a preservation group purchased the line from Alresford to Alton in November 1975, and set about restoring services, with\u00a0the final section to Alton opening on 25 May 1985.<\/p>\n<p>The line now runs some ten\u00a0miles\u00a0and is a lovely day out &#8211; even when the weather isn&#8217;t so good!<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/railway\/\" target=\"_blank\">More railway features here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.watercressline.co.uk\/Home\" target=\"_blank\">Mid Hants official website]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Railway scenes don&#8217;t get much more atmospheric than this\u00a0wintry\u00a0view of a deserted Ropley station, on the preserved Mid Hants Watercress railway line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[193,90],"tags":[422,1200,125],"class_list":["post-5284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-places","category-railways","tag-hampshire","tag-railways","tag-steam-train"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/mid-hants-railway-mist-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-1ne","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5284"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5303,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5284\/revisions\/5303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}