Stogumber railway station is a

station Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...

in Kingswood,

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, England which serves the nearby village of

Stogumber Stogumber () is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, on the eastern flank of the Brendon Hills. Besides Stogumber village itself, the parish includes the hamlets of Ashbeer, Capton, Escott, Higher Vexford, Kingswood, Lower Vellow, Low ...

. It was opened by the

West Somerset Railway The West Somerset Railway (WSR) is a heritage railway line in Somerset, England. The freehold of the line and stations is owned by Somerset County Council; the railway is leased to and operated by West Somerset Railway plc (WSR plc); which is ...

in 1862 and 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 ...

early in 1971. It was subsequently reopened in 1978 by the

, a

heritage line 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 ...

. It has a different layout to most stations, in that the main building lies on the opposite side of the tracks to the platform.

History

The station was first opened on 31 March 1862 when the

was brought into use between

Norton Junction Worcestershire Parkway is a split-level railway station where the Cotswold and Cross Country lines cross near Norton, Worcester, England. It opened on 23 February 2020. Purpose The Cross Country Route from Birmingham to Cardiff, Bristol an ...

and . The small station building was put on the east side of the track and the platform on the west; access between the two was across a pedestrian level crossing. A loop line served a goods shed opposite the platform to the north of the station building. The railway was operated from the start by the

Bristol and Exeter Railway The Bristol & Exeter Railway (B&ER) was an English railway company formed to connect Bristol and Exeter. It was built on the broad gauge and its engineer was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It opened in stages between 1841 and 1844. It was allied with ...

, which became a part 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 ...

(GWR) in 1876; but the West Somerset Railway remained an independent company until 1922, when it too was absorbed by the GWR. The platform was extended northwards in 1900 and again in 1933; a small

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 in use here for a few years but was closed on 6 April 1926. The GWR undertook many projects to increase the capacity of the line in the 1930s. Because of the position of the goods shed opposite the platform it was not possible to add a second track and platform at Stogumber, so a passing loop was instead constructed at Leigh Bridge just south of the station. It was opened on 16 July 1933 but the signal box was generally only used during the daytime each summer. A GWR camping coach was placed in the goods yard from 1934 to 1939. A camping coach was also positioned here by the Western Region of British Railways from 1952 to 1964,; the lack of facilities at this remote location meant that this was accompanied by a water tanker and stores van.

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 ...

in 1948 saw the line become a part of British Railways. The goods facilities were withdrawn on 17 August 1963, and the goods shed was demolished before the end of the year. Leigh Bridge loop was taken out of use from 5 May 1964 as it was due for renewal. The station, along with the whole line, was closed on 4 January 1971, but on 7 May 1978 trains returned. The new West Somerset Railway operated trains from to Stogumber, and these were extended to from 9 June 1979.

Description

The original stone-built station building is still in use on the east side of the line and is situated in gardens. The platform with its waiting shelters is on the west side of the line. The approach road is on the east side of the line and drops down to the road that passes beneath the line at the south end of the platform. A footpath from the south end of the platform leads down to join this road which leads to Stogumber itself, but a side road to the north by the old railway hotel passes through the smaller settlement of Kingswood, which is nestled below the railway line.

Services

Trains run between and at weekends and on some other days from March to October, daily during the late spring and summer, and on certain days during the winter.

References

External links

Stogumber Station on www.wsr.org.uk
{{Somerset railway stations West Somerset Railway Heritage railway stations in Somerset Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1862 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1971 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1978 Former Great Western Railway stations 1862 establishments in England