Kingswear railway station is the terminus of the Dartmouth Steam Railway, a heritage railway in Devon, England. It is situated in the centre of

Kingswear Kingswear is a village and civil parish in the South Hams area of the English county of Devon. The village is located on the east bank of the tidal River Dart, close to the river's mouth and opposite the small town of Dartmouth. It lies within ...

, on the shores of the

River Dart The River Dart is a river in Devon, England, that rises high on Dartmoor and flows for to the sea at Dartmouth. Name Most hydronyms in England derive from the Brythonic language (from which the river's subsequent names ultimately derive fr ...

opposite Dartmouth. The station has level access to the street and is adjacent to Yacht Club Hotel, the pontoon for the

Dartmouth Passenger Ferry The Dartmouth Passenger Ferry, also known as the Dartmouth Steam Railway and Riverboat company, is a passenger ferry that crosses the River Dart in the English county of Devon. It is one of three ferries that cross the tidal river from Dartmout ...

, and the slipway of the

Dartmouth Lower Ferry The Dartmouth Lower Ferry is a vehicular and passenger ferry which crosses the River Dart in the English county of Devon. It is one of three ferries that cross the tidal river from Dartmouth to Kingswear, the others being the Higher Ferry an ...

History

The railway to

was built by the Dartmouth and Torbay Railway, opening on 16 August 1864. The original aim had been to reach Dartmouth but the railway station in that town, which sold train tickets and processed parcels but lacked platforms and trains, was only ever reached by

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water ta ...

. The railway company opened the Yacht Club Hotel at the southern end of the station in 1866, intended mainly for passengers on the ocean-going ships that called at Dartmouth at that time. Goods trains were run to Kingswear from 2 April 1866 and these proved to be of great importance, not just in shipping goods out by sea, but also in carrying coal landed at Kingswear to the

gas works A gasworks or gas house is an industrial plant for the production of flammable gas. Many of these have been made redundant in the developed world by the use of natural gas, though they are still used for storage space. Early gasworks Coal ...

at Hollacombe between and

Torquay railway station Torquay railway station is on the Riviera Line and serves the seaside resort of Torquay, Devon, England. It is measured from . The station is operated by Great Western Railway. It is just a few yards from the sea at Torre Abbey Sands. History ...

s. The Dartmouth and Torbay Railway was always operated by the South Devon Railway Company and was amalgamated with it on 1 January 1872. This was only short lived as the South Devon Railway was in turn amalgamated into the Great Western Railway on 1 February 1876. The line had been built using the

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union (CIS ...

, but on 21 May 1892 was closed for the weekend to be converted to standard gauge; the 28 men responsible for the work in the area were accommodated in the station's

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 ...

, which was situated on the river side of the main station train shed. New sidings were laid in 1894 and a signal box opened to control the trains; the following year more sidings were laid on land reclaimed from the river north of the station and a long footbridge constructed over the station to carry a footpath to the shore of the river. The railway originally approached the station across three creeks on low timber viaducts. Those at Longwood and Noss being demolished after the line was moved inland around the creeks on 20 May 1923, and Hoodown Viaduct, just outside the station, was replaced by a double-track steel structure in 1928. This and the provision of a larger

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

enabled larger locomotives to work through to Kingswear. The platform was extended in 1929 to which allowed longer trains too. The Great Western Railway was

nationalised 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 ...

into

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 ra ...

in 1948. The signal box was given a new lever frame in 1960 but the run down of services soon commenced. The wharf was closed to freight traffic on 4 May 1964 and ordinary goods traffic was withdrawn on 14 June 1965. Except for peak season trains, most services from 18 April 1966 operated as a shuttle service from

Paignton Paignton ( ) is a seaside town on the coast of Tor Bay in Devon, England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the borough of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paig ...

; Sunday trains were withdrawn from 24 September 1967, although some were run during the summer of the following year. On 20 October 1968 the signal box was closed and the following month it was formally proposed that the line from Paignton should be closed entirely but instead, on 30 December 1972, the line was sold to the Dart Valley Light Railway plc, which operated a nearby heritage railway at . The Royal Dart Hotel was sold by the Dart Valley Railway into private hands in 1979, the revenue from this and other property sales going a long way to repay the £275,000 paid to British Rail for the line. The second platform track was reinstated in 1976, points around the station being controlled by local ground frames. Since 1990 electric multiple aspect signals have been controlled from the signalling panel at Britannia Crossing.

Description

The southern end of the

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

and tracks is covered by a rare wooden train shed, with a more conventional canopy extending further along the platform. The entrance to the station opens onto the main platform within the train shed; trains stop further along the platform to the right to allow the locomotive to run around the train using the crossover at this end of the platform track. The bay platform does not have a locomotive release road and so is only used for occasional departures that have been shunted onto this line to free up the main platform for a second train. The old goods yard between the station and the waterfront is now a car park and boat storage; the long footbridge at the north end of the station is not connected to the platforms but instead carry a footpath from the main road across to the waterfront. Another car park at the north end of the station is on the site of the turntable and carriage sidings. A few sidings have been retained opposite the platform and alongside the line towards Britannia Crossing, the level crossing that leads down to the

Dartmouth Higher Ferry The Dartmouth Higher Ferry, also known as the Dartmouth–Kingswear Floating Bridge, is a vehicular and passenger cable ferry, which crosses the River Dart in the English county of Devon. It is one of three ferries that cross the tidal river fro ...

and is the site of the railway's signalling centre. Kingswear 23rd July 2008

Services

A seasonal service of steam hauled trains operates to and from .

History

Description

Services

References

Further reading