Bodmin General railway station, located in

Bodmin Bodmin () is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor. The extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character. It is bordere ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, United Kingdom, was the terminus of the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

's Bodmin branch line, and is now the principal railway station of the heritage

Bodmin & Wenford Railway The Bodmin and Wenford Railway (BWR) is a heritage railway, based at Bodmin in Cornwall, England. It has an interchange with the national rail network at Bodmin Parkway railway station, the southern terminus of the line. History The Great West ...

History

The Great Western Railway opened a

terminus Terminus may refer to: * Bus terminus, a bus station serving as an end destination * Terminal train station or terminus, a railway station serving as an end destination Geography *Terminus, the unofficial original name of Atlanta, Georgia, United ...

in Bodmin on 27 May 1887, the line diverging from the

Cornish Main Line The Cornish Main Line ( kw, Penn-hyns-horn Kernow) is a railway line in Cornwall and Devon in the United Kingdom. It runs from Penzance to Plymouth, crossing from Cornwall into Devon over the famous Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash. It directly ...

Bodmin Road Bodmin Parkway railway station ( kw, Fordh Bosvena) is on the Cornish Main Line that serves the nearby town of Bodmin and other parts of mid-Cornwall, England. It is situated south-east of the town of Bodmin in the civil parish of St Winnow, ...

. On 3 September 1888 a new line was opened to join with the Bodmin and Wadebridge line at Boscarne Junction. Bodmin General remained a terminus, so trains running through had to reverse here and retrace their journey for a few yards before bearing right just beyond the station. The single-sided platform had two adjacent lines, the nearer being used as a run-round and the further being furnished with a

goods shed A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before or after carriage in a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, although sometimes they were built ...

beyond which another curving siding served a cattle dock. At the end of the platform was the

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

and beyond this were two sidings, one housing an

engine shed The motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is the place where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained when not being used. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine shed ...

; the junction being on the running line immediately beyond this. A short

refuge siding A refuge siding is a single-ended, or dead-end, siding off a running line, which may be used to temporarily accommodate a train so that another one can pass it. For example, a refuge siding might be used by a slow goods train to allow a fast passen ...

was added to the Bodmin Road line in June 1928, and further on a connection into Fulford Trumps siding was added in April 1973. The station was originally named ''Bodmin'' and, after

nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

, became ''Bodmin General'' on 26 September 1949, in order to distinguish it from other stations in the area ( and

). The engine shed closed in April 1962, and passenger services ceased on 30 January 1967. Freight services were withdrawn from Bodmin General on 1 May 1967 and the signal box closed later that year. The line officially closed on 3 October 1983 following the demise of freight traffic from Wenford.

Stationmasters

*William Henry Smale 1887 - 1898 (afterwards station master at Torre) *Thomas Henry Hunt 1899 - 1908 (formerly station master at Chipping Norton) *W.A. Glasson 1908 - 1910 *Percy Joseph Molyneaux 1911 - 1918 (formerly station master at Penryn) *W.C. Wenmoth 1918 - 1935 *Edward Leslie Morris ca. 1939 *Cecil Aubrey Stephens 1947 - 1965 (formerly station master at Horrabridge)

Bodmin & Wenford Railway

The

, a

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...

, uses Bodmin General as its principal station. Services run to both and to ; the junction between these two lines is just outside the station which is a terminus. In February 2020, a second platform was opened.Second Platform Project
Bodmin & Wenford Railway An

and workshops is situated adjacent to the station. The workshops are open for inspection when trains are running.

Services

References

{{Cornwall, state=collapsed Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1887 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1967 Heritage railway stations in Cornwall Bodmin and Wenford Railway Beeching closures in England Bodmin