Norden railway station is a railway station located one mile to the north of the village of

Corfe Castle Corfe Castle is a fortification standing above the village of the same name on the Isle of Purbeck peninsula in the English county of Dorset. Built by William the Conqueror, the castle dates to the 11th century and commands a gap in the P ...

, on the

Isle of Purbeck The Isle of Purbeck is a peninsula in Dorset, England. It is bordered by water on three sides: the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the n ...

in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

county of

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

. It is situated on the

Swanage Railway The Swanage Railway is a railway branch line from near Wareham, Dorset to Swanage, Dorset, England, opened in 1885 and now operated as a heritage railway. The independent company which built it was amalgamated with the larger London and South ...

, 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 ...

that operates over the former

London and South Western Railway The London and South Western Railway (LSWR, sometimes written L&SWR) was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Originating as the London and Southampton Railway, its network extended to Dorchester and Weymouth, to Salisbury, Exeter ...

line from Wareham to

Swanage Swanage () is a coastal town and civil parish in the south east of Dorset, England. It is at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck and one of its two towns, approximately south of Poole and east of Dorchester. In the 2011 census the civil ...

. Norden is the northern terminus of the railway's steam service from

, and an intermediate stop on the railway's diesel hauled service that connects Swanage with the

national rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the p ...

network at Wareham station. The site is the home of the

Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum The Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum exists to preserve and interpret the historic extractive industries in ball clay mining in the Isle of Purbeck. The museum is located adjacent to Norden station on the Swanage Railway and is open from the e ...

, a museum about the history of

ball clay Ball clays are kaolinitic sedimentary clays that commonly consist of 20–80% kaolinite, 10–25% mica, 6–65% quartz. Localized seams in the same deposit have variations in composition, including the quantity of the major minerals, accessory ...

mining in the Isle of Purbeck. The museum includes the relocated header building of one of the areas last underground mines, together with a reconstruction of an underground gallery. There is also a section of the

narrow gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structur ...

that served the clay industry, and a collection of narrow gauge rolling stock. A large car park, provided by

Purbeck District Council Purbeck may refer to: * Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula in the English county of Dorset ** Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum * Purbeck District, a local government district in the English county of Dorset * Purbeck Hills, a range of hills in the Engli ...

, allows the station to function as a

park & ride A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, rail system (rap ...

facility for the tourist centres of Corfe Castle and Swanage.

History

The Swanage Railway follows the route of the former London and South Western Railway line from Wareham to Swanage, a line that opened in 1885 and was finally closed by

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 ...

in 1972. From the time of closure, a campaign to reopen the railway as a

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

operated

developed, and the Swanage Railway began operating a steam service at the Swanage end of the line in 1982. As the line was progressively extended northwards towards Corfe Castle, concerns arose that terminating the line there would cause parking problems in the village. It was therefore decided to extend the line a further half-mile to Norden, and build a 'Park and Ride' site there. Although there was not a passenger station at Norden prior to the opening of the current station in 1995, the station is built on the site of the former Norden Ball clay works. These works were served by a siding off the Wareham to Swanage railway, and also by two narrow gauge railways that connected the Ball clay pits to the works, and the works to small ports on the south side of

Poole Harbour Poole Harbour is a large natural harbour in Dorset, southern England, with the town of Poole on its shores. The harbour is a drowned valley (ria) formed at the end of the last ice age and is the estuary of several rivers, the largest being th ...

. The earliest of these was the

Middlebere Plateway The Middlebere Plateway, or Middlebere Tramway, was a horse-drawn plateway on the Isle of Purbeck in the England, English county of Dorset. One of the first railways in southern England and the first in Dorset, the plateway was built by Benjami ...

, a horse-drawn

plateway A plateway is an early kind of railway, tramway or wagonway, where the rails are made from cast iron. They were mainly used for about 50 years up to 1830, though some continued later. Plateways consisted of "L"-shaped rails, where the flange o ...

that opened in 1806 and was Dorset's first railway. At the beginning of the 20th century this was superseded by Norden & Goathorn Railway, a conventional

hauled railway. After the Second World War this railway was replaced with a local system that ran across the Skew Bridge at the eastern end of the station to the mines on the southern side of the A351. Because of this heritage, the Swanage Railway has developed the Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum which is now open on the site at Norden. Between 1995 and 2002, Norden remained the physical northern terminus of the line. In 2002 a temporary connection was made with the freight line that had continued to use the northern section of the line between Furzebrook and Worgret Junction, which connects the Swanage branch to NR's main line near Wareham and Furzebrook, and in 2007 this was made permanent. However all regular timetabled trains continued to terminate at Norden, with only occasional excursion trains running between the national rail network and the Swanage Railway. In July 2010, DCC and Purbeck District councils voted to allocate up to £3 million over three years, to part-fund re-signalling work needed at Worgret Junction to provide a more regular service. The first timetabled trains operated between Norden and Wareham stations on 13 June 2017, to mark the start of a two-year trial public service linking Wareham and Swanage.

Services

Services run between Swanage and Norden every day from the beginning of April to late October, with services on a limited number of days for the rest of the year. The level of service varies from 4 to 16 trains a day in each direction, depending the season and the day of the week. In 2017, on 60 days in summer, four of these trains continue beyond Norden to join the national rail network and terminate in Wareham station, where they connect with trains on the

London Waterloo Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of ...

to service. The trains that continue to Wareham are always diesel hauled, whilst most other services are operated by steam locomotives.

References

External links

Purbeck Mineral & Mining Museum web site
{{Dorset railway stations Heritage railway stations in Dorset Railway stations built for UK heritage railways Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1995 1995 establishments in England Corfe Castle