Upwey railway station serves the urban areas of

Broadwey Broadwey was a former village in the northern suburbs of Weymouth, Dorset, England. It lies on the B3159 road. In 2001, Broadwey and Upwey ward had a population of 4,349. St Nicholas' Church serves the suburb, as did Broadwey Methodist Chur ...

, Upwey and

Littlemoor :''This article refers to Littlemoor in Weymouth, Dorset. For Littlemoor near Chesterfield see Littlemoor, Derbyshire''. Littlemoor is a suburb of Weymouth in Dorset, England. Littlemoor is about to the north of the town centre. The nearest r ...

which are northern suburbs of

Weymouth, Dorset Weymouth is a seaside town in Dorset, on the English Channel coast of England. Situated on a sheltered bay at the mouth of the River Wey, south of the county town of Dorchester, Weymouth had a population of 53,427 in 2021. It is the third l ...

, England. The station is situated on the

South West Main Line The South West Main Line (SWML) is a 143-mile (230 km) major railway line between Waterloo station in central London and Weymouth on the south coast of England. A predominantly passenger line, it serves many commuter areas including south we ...

, from and on the

Heart of Wessex Line The Heart of Wessex Line, also known as the Bristol to Weymouth Line, is a railway line that runs from to and Weymouth in England. It shares the Wessex Main Line as far as Westbury and then follows the course of the Reading to Taunton Line a ...

, from .

History

The first station near this location, simply named ''Upwey'', was opened in 1871 by 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). On 19 April 1886 that station was replaced by the current station, then named ''Upwey Junction'', a railway junction that opened south of the original station to provide access to the single track

Abbotsbury Abbotsbury is a village and civil parish in the English county of Dorset. The settlement is in the unitary authority of Dorset about inland from the English Channel coast. The village, including Chesil Beach, the swannery and subtropical g ...

branch. The branch was absorbed into the GWR and survived for 66 years before closure under

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 ...

in 1952. On the closure of the branch Upwey Junction was renamed ''Upwey and Broadwey'' on 1 December 1952, and took its current name, ''Upwey'', on 12 May 1980. During the

Network SouthEast Network SouthEast (NSE) was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982. NSE mainly operated commuter rail trains within Greater London and inter-urban services in densely populated South East England, although the netwo ...

era, the station was refurbished with the trademark red lighting poles, station benches and monitor screens for train arrivals. Rubble from the rebuilt Weymouth station was used to fill in the former Abbotsbury platform for use as a car park. This was done in time for the extension of electrification from Bournemouth to Weymouth in 1988. Two further stations had Upwey in their name. To the north of Upwey Junction existed a halt called Upwey Wishing Well Halt, while around the bend on the Abbotsbury branch was a station which had originally been called Broadwey. However its name was changed to Upwey as it kept being confused with

Broadway, Worcestershire Broadway is a large village and civil parish in the Cotswolds, England, with a population of 2,540 at the 2011 census. It is in the far southeast of Worcestershire, close to the Gloucestershire border, midway between Evesham and Moreton-in-Marsh ...

, also on the

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...

wrote a poem ''At the Railway Station, Upway'', about waiting for a train at a country station. In the days of steam, a favourite excursion was from Weymouth to Upwey, and then on to tea at the Upwey Wishing Well by

charabanc A charabanc or "char-à-banc" (often pronounced "sharra-bang" in colloquial British English) is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early motor coach, usually open-topped, common in Britain during the early part of the 20th century. It has "ben ...

Accidents and incidents

On 24 January 2013, a passenger train caught fire at Upwey.

Services

Services at Weymouth are operated by South Western Railway and

. South Western Railway operates one train per hour between and . Northbound, this service calls at most stops to , then , and London Waterloo. On weekdays and Saturdays, Great Western Railway operates eight trains per day between Weymouth and , with a number of these continuing to . On Sundays, this is reduced to between three and five trains per day depending on the time of year.

References

Bibliography

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External links

{{Dorset railway stations Railway stations in Dorset Rail junctions in England Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1886 Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations served by Great Western Railway Railway stations served by South Western Railway DfT Category F2 stations