Upwey railway station serves the Broadwey, Upwey and Littlemoor suburbs of Weymouth in

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

, 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 wes ...

, 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 ...

, 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 History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

(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 village is located around west southwest of Dorchester and inland from the English Channel coast. In the 2021 census the civil parish had a population of 451. A ...

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 rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commis ...

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 networ ...

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 parishes in England, 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 ...

, also on the

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

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 coach (vehicle), motor coach, usually open-topped, common in UK, Britain during the early part of the 20th ...

Accidents and incidents

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

Services

Services are provided by two

train operating companies In the railway system of Great Britain, a train operating company (TOC) is a railway undertaking operating passenger trains under the collective National Rail brand. TOCs have existed since the privatisation of the network under the Railways ...

: *

South Western Railway South Western Railway Limited, trading as South Western Railway (SWR), is the British state-owned train operating company that took over the services of the South Western Railway (2017–2025), operator of the same name from FirstGroup and MTR ...

runs one train per hour in each direction between and . Northbound, this service calls at most stops to , then and . *

generally operates eight trains per day between Weymouth and , with a number of these continuing on 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