West Bay railway station was the terminus of the Bridport Railway in western Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. In 1879, the Great Western Railway

Great Western Railway

The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...

, who held the operating license for the original Bridport Railway (which ran as far as Bridport town), decided to extend the railway to Bridport Harbour. Construction started in 1883, and the line opened on 31 March 1884. The station was called West Bay by the GWR in order to encourage holiday traffic. The line between West Bay and Bridport closed to passengers in 1930, and operated for goods services only until its final closure in 1962.

The Site Today

After many years as the office of a boat yard the station is now restored with a short length of track at the platform. A cafe occupied the building, until closed in the summer of 2008, but reopened again as a cafe in 2010.