Wilton South railway station is a disused railway station which formerly served Wilton in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England. It was situated on the

West of England Main Line The West of England line (also known as the West of England Main Line) is a British railway line from , Hampshire, to in Devon, England. Passenger services run between London Waterloo station and Exeter; the line intersects with the Wessex M ...

from

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

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

and close to 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 ...

’s Wilton station on its Salisbury branch from . It was opened in 1859 as just Wilton railway station, was renamed as Wilton South in 1949, and closed in 1966.

History

Wilton station was opened with the first section of the

Salisbury and Yeovil Railway The Salisbury and Yeovil Railway linked Salisbury (Wiltshire), Gillingham (Dorset) and Yeovil (Somerset) in England. Opened in stages in 1859 and 1860, it formed a bridge route between the main London and South Western Railway (LSWR) network a ...

on 2 May 1859. At first just used for passenger traffic, goods were also handled from 1 September the next year. The Salisbury and Yeovil Railway was amalgamated into the

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 ...

(LSWR) in 1878. In 1923 the LSWR became part of the Southern Railway (SR) in 1923 in turn 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 ...

in 1948 to become the

Southern Region of British Railways The Southern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948 until 1992 when railways were re-privatised. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s. The region covered south London, southern England and the sout ...

. This was the second station in Wilton, the

(GWR) having opened one on their adjacent route in 1856. To avoid confusion between the two stations the former SR station became 'Wilton South' in September 1949, and at the same time the former GWR station became "Wilton North". The North station closed to passengers in 1955 but goods continued to be handled there until 1965. In the meantime, at the South station goods traffic ceased on 6 July 1964 and then passenger services were also withdrawn on 7 March 1966. Fast expresses such as the ''

Devon Belle The ''Devon Belle'' was a luxury express passenger train in England which ran between London Waterloo station and Ilfracombe and Plymouth in Devon in the years from 1947 to 1954. The train The Southern Railway was anxious to encourage the resum ...

'' that were not scheduled to stop at nearby sometimes changed locomotives here so as to avoid congestion at Salisbury. The stop was not advertised in the timetables and passengers could not join or alight from trains at Wilton.

Signalling

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 provided at the east end of the eastbound platform. It was kept in use after the station closed as the line westwards was single. Alterations saw control of the area transferred to signal box and later to Basingstoke ASC. Now redundant, the box was taken down and rebuilt at on the Mid Hants Railway.

Description

The main station buildings, including a house for the station master and the signal box, were on the northern platform which was served by trains towards Salisbury and London. These are still standing in 2012. A footbridge linked this with the now demolished westbound platform where there was a smaller shelter for passengers. A goods yard was on the north side of the line at the Salisbury end of the station.

Services

The station was served by 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 ...

line.

References

{{Closed stations Wiltshire Disused railway stations in Wiltshire Former London and South Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1859 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1966 Beeching closures in England Wilton, Wiltshire

History

Signalling

Description

Services

See also

References