Dursley railway station served the town of

Dursley Dursley is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in southern Gloucestershire, England, almost equidistant from the cities of Bristol and Gloucester. It is under the northeast flank of Stinchcombe#Stinchcombe Hill, Stinchco ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, and was the terminus of the short

Dursley and Midland Junction Railway The Dursley and Midland Junction Railway was a company formed to build a railway branch line to connect the town of Dursley in Gloucestershire, England, to the nearby main line between Bristol and Gloucester, at Coaley. The line was opened in 18 ...

line which linked the town to the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It am ...

's Bristol to Gloucester line at Coaley Junction. The railway, just long, ran along the valley of the

river Cam The River Cam () is the main river flowing through Cambridge in eastern England. After leaving Cambridge, it flows north and east before joining the River Great Ouse to the south of Ely, at Pope's Corner. The total distance from Cambridge to ...

. Dursley station was situated at the bottom of the town, in a marshy area that was later developed by the engineering group

R A Lister and Company R A Lister & Company was founded in Dursley, Gloucestershire, England, in 1867 by Sir Robert Ashton Lister (1845–1929), to produce agricultural machinery. History 1867–1906: Foundation and growth The founder of R A Lister and Company w ...

. Though Listers and other factories provided considerable freight traffic for the railway, the distance from the town limited passenger numbers. The station opened with the line in 1856 and consisted of a single platform with a small brick building. The basic arrangements for passengers stayed much the same throughout the station's life, with some expansion of the station building. But Dursley developed considerably for goods traffic with increased sidings and a goods shed, and further facilities inside the Lister works which came to surround the station. Journeys between

Coaley Junction railway station Coaley is a village in the England, English county of Gloucestershire roughly 4 miles from the town of Dursley, and 5 miles from the town of Stroud, Gloucestershire, Stroud. The village drops from the edge of the Cotswold Hills, overlooked by Fr ...

and Dursley took only 10 minutes and around half a dozen trains were provided each day, with excursion traffic in the summer. The trains that ran on the line were affectionately known as the "Dursley Donkey". Passenger traffic was vulnerable to competition from buses which served the town centre, and they ceased on 10 September 1962. Goods services continued under

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

regularly to 1966 and irregularly to 1968, and even after that the line was retained as a private siding to Listers, closing only in 1970 after a road accident severed the line. The station was subsumed within the Lister factory and no trace now remains. Coaley Junction, where the Dursley line joined the main line, remained open for passenger traffic until 1965 when it was closed with the withdrawal of stopping train services between Bristol and Gloucester. However, local pressure for a station resulted in the opening of a new station close to Coaley in 1994, and this is known as Cam and Dursley.

Stationmasters

*H. Turner until 1859 *H. Jakeway 1859 - 1861 *E. Skeffington 1861 (formerly station master at Halton) *B. Robinson 1861 - 1862 *W. Webberley 1862 - 1864 *H. Somers 1864 - *J. Bedington until 1874 (afterwards station master at Berkeley Road) *W. Beck 1875 - 1876 (formerly station master at Rowsley) *W. Chorley 1877 - 1879 (afterwards station master at Berkeley Road) *J. Delphin 1879 - 1880 (formerly station master at Nottingham Road, Derby) *T.W. Cox 1880 - 1889 (afterwards station master at Wirksworth) *G.W. Potter 1889 *R. Herbert 1889 - 1894 (formerly station master at Borrowash, afterwards station master at Oakham) *J. Belcher 1894 - 1901 (formerly station master at Woodchester, afterwards station master at Warmley) *Walter Sidney Warren 1901 - 1923 (formerly station master at Salford Priors) *Albert Hemming 1924 - 1937 *F.A. Cook 1937 - 1947 (formerly station master at Charfield, afterwards station master at Keighley)

Services

References

Dursley Disused railway stations in Gloucestershire Former Midland Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1856 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1962 {{Gloucestershire-struct-stub