Holsworthy railway station

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Holsworthy railway station

This article is about the English railway station; for the Australian station, see Holsworthy railway station, Sydney
Holsworthy railway station, Sydney

Holsworthy railway station is on the Airport and East Hills railway line, Sydney, Sydney. The station serves the suburbs of Holsworthy, New South Wales , Hammondville, New South Wales and Wattle Grove, New South Wales....

Holsworthy was a railway station on the now closed railway line from Okehampton to Bude

Okehampton to Bude Line

|}The Okehampton to Bude Line was a railway line built to serve Bude, on the Cornish coast near the Devon border in the United Kingdom. It branched from a main route at Meldon Junction, a little to the west of Okehampton, on the northern margin of Dartmoor....
. It opened in 1879 to serve the village of Holsworthy

Holsworthy, Devon

Holsworthy is a market town in the west of Devon, England. It is situated near the county border with Cornwall, and is 9 miles from the coastal resort of Bude....
in Devon

Devon

Devon is a large Counties of England in South West England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, but that is an entirely unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county but often indicating a shire....
and closed in 1966, a victim of the Beeching Axe

Beeching Axe

The Beeching Axe is an informal name for the HM Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom....
.

History
Parliamentary authority to construct a line from Okehampton

Okehampton railway station

Okehampton railway station is a railway station serving the town of Okehampton in Devon. It is only served by main line trains on summer Sundays....
to Bude

Bude railway station

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Encyclopedia

Holsworthy was a railway station on the now closed railway line from Okehampton to Bude

Okehampton to Bude Line

Holsworthy, Devon

Holsworthy is a market town in the west of Devon, England. It is situated near the county border with Cornwall, and is 9 miles from the coastal resort of Bude....
in Devon

Devon

Beeching Axe

The Beeching Axe is an informal name for the HM Government's attempt in the 1960s to reduce the cost of running British Railways, the nationalised railway system in the United Kingdom....
.

History

Parliamentary authority to construct a line from Okehampton

Okehampton railway station

Okehampton railway station is a railway station serving the town of Okehampton in Devon. It is only served by main line trains on summer Sundays....
to Bude

Bude railway station

Bude railway station was the western terminus of the Okehampton to Bude Line. It was opened in 1898 by the London and South Western Railway to serve the coastal town of Bude and closed in 1966 after having been proposed for closure in the Beeching Report....
had first been obtained as far back as 1865 with the passing of the Bude Canal and Launceston Junction Railway Act (c.cclxiii). However, this scheme was never put into action and the construction powers lapsed. In 1873 new powers were obtained by the Devon and Cornwall Railway in the shape of the Devon and Cornwall Railway (Western Extensions) Act (c.cxii) which authorised a line from Meldon Junction to Holsworthy where a terminus was to be constructed; Bude was not, at the time, considered an important enough to warrant its own station. In 1874 the Devon and Cornwall Railway was purchased by the London and South Western Railway

London and South Western Railway

The London and South Western Railway was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Its network extended from London to Plymouth via Salisbury and Exeter, with branches to Ilfracombe and Padstow and via Southampton to Bournemouth and Weymouth, Dorset....
(LSWR), commencing construction on the line the following year. The station was opened along with the single track line on 20 January 1879 and the LSWR began operating a smart horse-bus service to Bude

Bude

Bude is a small seaside resort town in North Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, at the mouth of the River Neet. Bude is twinned with Ergué-Gabéric, France....
in connection with the trains. The station was approached across Holsworthy Viaduct, a structure consisting of nine 50ft spans and the first of its kind to be built entirely out of concrete.

By 1898 Bude had developed sufficiently enough for the LSWR, under pressure from local residents, to extend the line westwards to the coastal port. The new section opened on 11 August 1898 and necessitated the rebuilding of Holsworthy station; little is known about the first station as no plans or photographs appear to exist of it. The new station was rather unusual in that it was situated between two viaducts - Holsworthy Viaduct to the east and Derriton Viaduct to the west. A new 20-lever signalbox was installed and the turntable

Turntable (railroad)

In rail terminology, a turntable is a device used to turn railroad rolling stock. When steam locomotives were still in wide use, many railroads needed a way to turn the locomotives around for return trips as their controls were often not configured for extended periods of running in reverse and in many locomotives the top speed was lo...
and engine shed from the earlier station were kept. The turntable lasted until 1 January 1911 when it was abolished, and the goods shed until the 1920s. The goods yard was unusually large and complicated for a local station such as Holsworthy and incorporated a run-around line to enable short trains to bypass the station without fouling the main line.

The station was served for many years by the Atlantic Coast Express

Atlantic Coast Express

The Atlantic Coast Express was an express passenger train in England between Waterloo station, London and seaside resorts in the south west. It ran between 1926 and 1964: at its peak it included coaches for nine separate destinations....
from London Waterloo, but this was withdrawn following the transfer of the line to the Western Region of British Railways

Western Region of British Railways

The Western Region was a region of British Railways from 1948. The region ceased to be an operating unit in its own right in the 1980s and was wound-up at the end of 1992....
in January 1963. The withdrawal was a portent of worse to come as the station and line were proposed for closure by Richard Beeching

Richard Beeching

Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching , commonly known as Doctor Beeching, was chairman of British Railways and a physicist and engineer. He became infamous in Britain in the early-1960s for his report "The Reshaping of British Railways", popularly known as the Beeching Axe, which led to far-reaching changes in the railway network....
, Chairman of the British Transport Commission

British Transport Commission

The British Transport Commission was created by Clement Attlee's post-war Labour Party government as a part of its Nationalization programme, to oversee railways, canals and road freight transport in Great Britain ....
, in his report published in March of that year. For the last few years of its life, the service to Holsworthy was operated entirely by Diesel Multiple Units working as "locals" between Okehampton and Bude.

Services

The station today

Holsworthy has experienced steady growth since the closure of its station in the 1960s. The population increased by 15% from 1981 to 1999 and was estimated at 2,116. The town (no longer a village) has also seen significant economic growth with the development of the Dobles Lane Industrial Estate to its north and the conversion of 4.6 hectares of land to industrial use between 1989 and 2000. However, the town suffers from a lack of public transport; as Torridge District Council recently stated, "Holsworthy is not well served by public transport", notably with regard to connections to Bideford

Bideford

Bideford is a small port town on the estuary of the River Torridge in north Devon, South West England England. It is also the main town of the Torridge Districts of England....
, Barnstaple

Barnstaple

Barnstaple is a town in the in the Districts of England of North Devon in the county of Devon in the South West England. It lies west southwest of Bristol, north of of Plymouth and northwest of the county town of Exeter....
and Great Torrington

Great Torrington

Great Torrington is a small market town in the north of Devon, England. Parts of it are sited on high groundwith steep drops down to the River Torridge below....
; these towns are, at present, linked by buses which are "limited in respect of frequency of service". Connections to Exeter

Exeter

Exeter Exeter was the most south-westerly Roman fortified settlement in Roman Britain and has existed since time immemorial. Exeter Cathedral, founded in 1050 is Anglicanism....
and Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth is a City status in the United Kingdom and unitary authority on the coast of Devon, England, about south west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers River Plym to the east and River Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound....
are even more limited, "often only weekly if available at all".

One means of alleviating the lack of facilities has been to provide for a cycleroute, the "Ruby Way" - part of the National Cycle Network

National Cycle Network

The National Cycle Network is a network of bicycle routes in the United Kingdom.The National Cycle Network was created by the charity Sustrans , and aided by a ?42.5 million National Lottery grant....
, along the trackbed of the former railway which opened in 2005, linking Holsworthy with Bude and Halwill

Halwill

Halwill is a village in Devon, just off the A3079 Okehampton to Holsworthy Road. About a mile away on the main road is another settlement called Halwill Junction....
. The cycleway brought one of the viaducts (Derriton) back into public use. Both are now in the ownership of Sustrans

Sustrans

Sustrans is a United Kingdom Charitable organization which promotes sustainable transport. The charity is currently working on a number of practical projects to encourage people to walk, bicycle and use public transport, to give people the choice of "travelling in ways that benefit their health and the environment"....
. Torridge District Council has indicated that the viaducts, as well as the trackbed, are safeguarded against future development in accordance with planning policies. Access to Derriton Viaduct is provided by the "Cornish Corkscrew", an elaborate spiralling ramp. In the meantime, Devon County Council have continued to support the development and extension of the cycleway project by purchasing further sections of trackbed and seeking to connect the Bude to Holsworthy route to other cyclepaths such as the Cornish Way at Helebridge.

The station buildings were swept away following the line's closure and the site, lying between Underlane, Bodmin Street and Station Road, was until recently derelict. It then became brownfield land

Brownfield land

Brownfields are abandoned or underused industrial and commercial facilities available for re-use. Expansion or redevelopment of such a facility may be complicated by real or perceived environmental contaminations....
and is now the site of a Supermarket and part of a housing development. Nevertheless, the route of the cyclepath, which runs along the southern part of the site, will be protected and the Council has suggested that facilities be provided to serve the route's users, a possible suitable location being the site of the former turntable which is to the east of Chapel Street.