toller interlude

(All copyright Steve Sainsbury/Rail Thing 25.2.1975)

FACEBOOK - REVERSING BEECHING - THE BRIDPORT BRANCH

Toller was a charming intermediate station on the Bridport branch, and was to close just a few months after these pictures. The Bridport branch was very rural throughout, but did serve the largish town of Bridport. It was perhaps surprising that a rural village like Toller could maintain a station in 1975, I can imagine how the loss of the railway has damaged house prices and will cause real problems in the future if the line is not reopened. But I'm now sure this will happen as being so rural it will be easy to rebuild and demand even now would be much higher than in 1975 which was just about the nadir of the railway system in the UK. Lines like this will be rebuilt in their hundreds as the oil starts to run out, using either flywheel electric transmission or new build ultra-modern steam. The golden age of railway braach lines is ahead, not behind, us!

The station building is now at Totnes (Littlehempston) station on the South Devon Railway, so is still in use.

More info (via Wikipedia)

Toller was a railway station on the Bridport Railway in the west of the English county of Dorset. The station served the village ofToller Porcorum. Opened on 31 March 1862, five years after the branch, it consisted of a single platform and modest wooden building.

History

Opened by the Bridport Railway, but operated from the outset by the Great Western Railway, it was placed in the Western Region when the railways were nationalised in 1948.

The branch was threatened with closure in the Beeching report, but narrow roads in the area, unsuitable for buses, kept it open until 5 May 1975. In its final years, trains were normally formed of a single carriage Class 121 diesel railcar.

The site today

The platform can still be seen from the overbridge although the building was moved to Littlehempston on the South Devon Railway, a heritage line.