Tiverton railway station served the town of

Tiverton, Devon Tiverton ( ) is a town and civil parish in Devon, England, and the commercial and administrative centre of the Mid Devon district. The population in 2019 was 20,587. History Early history The town's name is conjectured to derive from "Twy-fo ...

, England. It opened in 1848 as the terminus station of a broad gauge branch line from the Bristol and Exeter Railway main line: the main line junction station four miles away had originally been called Tiverton Road but was renamed as when the branch opened. In 1884 and 1885, with the Bristol and Exeter Railway having been taken over by the Great Western Railway, Tiverton was reached by two other railways which then linked up to form a through route. From the north, the Tiverton and North Devon Railway was a branch line from the

Devon and Somerset Railway The Devon and Somerset Railway (D&SR) was a cross-country line that connected Barnstaple in Devon, England, to the network of the Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&ER) near Taunton. It was opened in stages between 1871 and 1873 and closed in 1966. ...

at and brought through services from ; to the south of Tiverton, the Exe Valley Railway, which opened in 1885, provided services through to Exeter, with a junction with the Bristol and Exeter main line at . The arrival of this new route meant that the original station was not adequate and a large new station was built on the through line, with a junction for the original line to Tiverton Junction. The station was busy right up to the time of its closure, but traffic on the rest of the Exe Valley line suffered from competition with the roads. The Exe Valley line closed in 1963 and passenger services were withdrawn from the original line from Tiverton Junction just a year later, with goods facilities closing in 1967. The station was later demolished and much of the rail route around the town has disappeared under the A396 relief road system. A section of the rail route, between Manley Bridge over the

Grand Western Canal The Grand Western Canal ran between Taunton in Somerset and Tiverton in Devon in the United Kingdom. The canal had its origins in various plans, going back to 1796, to link the Bristol Channel and the English Channel by a canal, bypassing Lands ...

and Old Road, adjacent to the junction of Blundells Road and the A369 Great Western Way in Tiverton, has been converted for use as a foot- and cycle-path. It is approximately 2.25 km in length.

The ''Tivvy Bumper''

The branch shuttle service was known locally as the ''Tivvy Bumper''. It used an Autocoach. One of the locomotives used to run the service (no 1442) is now on display at the

Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life The Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life is a local history museum in Tiverton, Devon, England, to the southwest of Gotham House. It features various exhibits relating to the social and economic history of the Mid Devon region, one of the most po ...

, having been purchased by Lord Amory in 1965, and moved to the museum in 1978 to protect it from the weather.)

References

* Devon Railway Stations, by Mike Oakley, Dovecote Press, Wimborne, 2007,

External links

Tiverton station on navigable 1947 O. S. map
Disused railway stations in Devon Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1848 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1964 Former Great Western Railway stations Beeching closures in England Tiverton, Devon {{SouthWestEngland-railstation-stub