Wells on Sea railway station is located in
Wells-next-the-Sea
Wells-next-the-Sea is a port town on the north coast of Norfolk, England.
The civil parish has an area of and in 2001 had a population of 2,451,Office for National Statistics & Norfolk County Council (2001). Census population and household c ...
,
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
on the narrow gauge
Wells and Walsingham Light Railway
The Wells and Walsingham Light Railway is a gauge heritage railway in Norfolk, England running between the coastal town of Wells-next-the-Sea and the inland village of Walsingham. The railway occupies a section of the trackbed of the former ...
.
It was opened in 1982. It is located south of the former level crossing on the
A149 Coast Road, close to the former junction with the
West Norfolk Junction Railway
The West Norfolk Junction Railway was a standard gauge eighteen and a half-mile single-track railway running between Wells-next-the-Sea railway station and Heacham in the English county of Norfolk. It opened in 1866 and closed in 1953.
At Well ...
. The original station, which has been converted to non-rail use, is half a mile closer to the town.
Passenger facilities
Passenger facilities consist of a single rail-level platform, a large car park, toilets (near the car park), and the ground floor of a formerly redundant
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'' ...
moved from
Swainsthorpe
Swainsthorpe is a village in the English County of Norfolk in England. It lies on the A140 road, approximately 5 miles south of Norwich, and just north of Newton Flotman. It covers an area of and had a population of 374 in 159 households at t ...
to Wells, wherein a souvenir shop and
tearoom
A teahouse (mainly Asia) or tearoom (also tea room) is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other light refreshments. A tea room may be a room set aside in a hotel especially for serving afternoon tea, or may be an establishment whic ...
are now situated, together with waiting room facilities.
Operational facilities
A small yard, a
water tower
A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a water distribution system, distribution system for potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. Water towe ...
, storage sheds, and the main steam
locomotive shed
The motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is the place where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained when not being used. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine shed ...
and works are all located at the southern end of the passenger station. At the northern end of the station there is a smaller secondary engine shed, generally used for the housing of the diesel locomotives. As of 2014 the northern depot also includes a large purpose-built shed with engineering facilities, lifting equipment, and powerful internal lighting. This shed is used as the winter (closed season) carriage shed, but during the summer (operating season) it becomes the main engineering works and locomotive running shed. Outside the new shed, on the site of the former turntable, a large overhead gantry has been installed (during 2014) for heavy lifting.
Station plan
References
{{s-end
Heritage railway stations in Norfolk