August 1960: Peak Scarborough
Andrew Martin has published a new social history of train travel to the seaside of England, Scotland and Wales.
I checked the entry for Scarborough, a North Yorkshire resort I’m familiar with, partly by living in the wider area in the 1970s, on holidays and numerous trade union conferences.
Like many such locations it has seen changing times. I’m not sure that many union or political conferences are held there nowadays.
Martin reveals that 1960 was peak Scarborough at least in terms of train travel. 800,000 passengers alighted at what was then named the central station or an overflow tourist station Londesborough Rd (since close). Of that number 200,000 visited in August 1960. The population of Scarborough at the 1961 Census was 47,309.
A world we have lost but also a world within living memory
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