Eggesford railway station is a rural station in

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

, England, serving

Eggesford Eggesford () is a parish in mid-Devon, without its own substantial village. It is served by Eggesford railway station on the Exeter to Barnstaple railway line, also known as the Tarka Line. Descent of the Manor de Reigny The manor of Eggesfor ...

, the town of

Chulmleigh Chulmleigh ( ) is a small Saxon hilltop market town and civil parish located in North Devon in the heart of the English county of Devon. It is located north west of Exeter, just north of the Mid Devon boundary, linked by the A377 and B3096 ...

and surrounding villages. Despite its name, the station is in the neighbouring

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Chawleigh Chawleigh is a village and civil parish in Mid Devon in the English county of Devon, situated just off the A377 between Crediton and Barnstaple Barnstaple ( or ) is a river-port town in North Devon, England, at the River Taw's lowest ...

. It is on the

Tarka Line The Tarka Line, also known as the North Devon Line, is a local railway line in Devon, England, linking the city of Exeter with the town of Barnstaple via a number of local villages, operated by Great Western Railway (GWR). The line opened in ...

to , from at milepost 193.75 from .

History

The station was opened by the

North Devon Railway The North Devon Railway was a railway company which operated a line from Cowley Bridge Junction, near Exeter, to Bideford in Devon, England, later becoming part of the London and South Western Railway's system. Originally planned as a broad gaug ...

on 1 August 1854, taking its name from Eggesford House, seat of the

Earl of Portsmouth Earl of Portsmouth is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1743 for John Wallop, 1st Viscount Lymington, who had previously represented Hampshire in the House of Commons. He had already been created Baron Wallop, of Far ...

who was a supporter of the railway. Although there was a passing loop it only had a single platform on the north side of the line but a second platform was eventually added. A

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'' ...

was provided in 1873 on the second platform. The platform was damaged and the signal box subsided when the

River Taw The River Taw () rises at Taw Head, a spring on the central northern flanks of Dartmoor, crosses North Devon and at the town of Barnstaple, formerly a significant port, empties into Bideford Bay in the Bristol Channel, having formed a large ...

flooded on 21 November 1967. The loop was taken out of use until the platform could be repaired and a new signal box opened on 28 September 1969. A goods yard was provided at the Barnstaple end of the original platform. This was equipped with a crane and there was a small oil storage depot. Cattle markets were held in the yard from time to time. The line between and has always been single so loops such as Eggesford were necessary for trains to pass. In

British Railways 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 ...

days the summer Saturday

Atlantic Coast Express The ''Atlantic Coast Express'' (''ACE'') is an express passenger train in England that has operated at various times between London and seaside resorts in the South West England. It is currently operated as a summer only service by Great Weste ...

11.00 Waterloo to Ilfracombe made its only stop between Exeter and Barnstaple at Eggesford. The goods yard closed on 4 January 1965 and the signal box was closed on 1 December 1987. Both platforms were extended by and new lighting installed in April 2021.

Description

2018 at Eggesford station - old entrance door

The original building was designed in

Gothic style Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

William Tite Sir William Tite (7 February 179820 April 1873) was an English architect who twice served as President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was particularly associated with various London buildings, with railway stations and cemetery ...

and built from

mudstone Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology. ...

rubble with

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

detailing. On the Barnstaple side of the ticket office was a waiting room and parcel store. The other side was the station master's house which had an additional room added in about 1890. The main part has two storeys but the wing with the parcels store is just one storey. A passageway through the building between the ticket office and house has a

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

on the road side with a

heraldic Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branc ...

carving in the gable. The station is situated in a narrow space between the main road and the river. It is on a bend with the line going eastwards to Exeter and northwards to Barnstaple. The original building is behind the Exeter-bound platform but no longer used by passengers. There are waiting shelters on both platforms. Access to the Barnstaple platform is by a short path leading from the

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

at the east end of the station.

Signalling

The first signal box was opened on 1 October 1873. It was sited on the northbound platform but the rear was supported by two cast iron columns above a

leat A leat (; also lete or leet, or millstream) is the name, common in the south and west of England and in Wales, for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct dug into the ground, especially one supplying water to a watermill or its mill pond. Other ...

. When the platform subsided because of a flood in 1967 the signalman had to climb through the window. The second signal box was opened on 28 September 1969 on the same side of the line but close to the

. The level crossing itself was converted to lifting barriers on 30 November 1969. It is the only place where trains can pass between and . Since late 1987 the level crossing operated and tokens exchanged by the train crew. A hut at the departure end of each platform contains a No Signalman Key Token (NSKT) instrument.

Services

Eggesford - GWR 158956 and 158951 passing

All services at Eggesford are operated by

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 ...

. There is generally one train per hour in each direction between and but a very small number of services continue to or from other routes in East Devon on weekdays.

Community railway

The railway between Exeter and Barnstaple is designated as a

community railway Community rail in Britain is the support of railway lines and stations by local organisations, usually through community rail partnerships (CRPs) comprising railway operators, local councils, and other community organisations, and rail user group ...

and is supported by marketing provided by the

Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership The Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership is the largest Community Rail Partnership in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1991 to promote the use of, and improvements to, rural railways in Devon and Cornwall, and also to promote the places serv ...

. The line is promoted as the

References

External links

Video footage of Eggesford station
{{Devon railway stations Railway stations in Devon Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1854 Former London and South Western Railway stations Railway stations served by Great Western Railway Industrial archaeological sites in Devon DfT Category F2 stations