Corsham railway station

Corsham railway station served the town of Corsham in Wiltshire, England. The station was on the Great Western Railway main line from London to Bristol and was opened when the Chippenham to Bath section opened in June 1841.

Corsham
Site of former station in 2007
Location
Place	Corsham
Area	County of Wiltshire
Coordinates	51.42535°N 2.18924°W / 51.42535; -2.18924
Operations
Original company	Great Western Railway
Platforms	2
History
June 1841	Opened
4 January 1965	Closed
Disused railway stations in the United Kingdom
Closed railway stations in Britain A B C D–F G H–J K–L M–O P–R S T–V W–Z

The station was situated in a cutting to the south of the town, with the main station building at the top of the cutting on the town side. There were small shelters with canopies on each of the two platforms. Passengers accessed the up platform using a path, and the down platform from the footbridge. The Station Hotel was situated alongside the main station building.

Corsham had extensive and much-used sidings on both sides of the track to the west of the station, with a goods shed and a loading dock. The main goods traffic was stone from the quarries under Box Hill, which was brought to the lineside by a tramway system of 2 ft 5 ¹⁄₂ in (750 mm) gauge. The sidings led right up to the mouth of Box Tunnel, whose eastern portal is less than 1 mile (1.6 km) from the station. A main line siding also extended to an underground wharf in Corsham Down Quarry near the tunnel.[1]

Passenger services were withdrawn from Corsham with the end of stopping services between Swindon and Bath in January 1965. Goods traffic had ended in June 1963, though the siding with the loading dock remained in place until 1978. Of the station structures, only the goods shed now remains; the footbridge is still in place as part of a footpath across the main line.[2]

The recent growth of the town of Corsham has led to demand for a new station. In 2009, as part of a consultation exercise to investigate the reopening of the station, the District Council conducted a survey which received over 3,000 replies.[3]

References

1. Brooks, A.T.; Pearce, A.E.McR.; Perkins, J.W. (1979). Bath Stone, a quarry history. ISBN 0 906230 26 8.
2. Oakley, Mike (2004). Wiltshire Railway Stations. Wimborne: The Dovecote Press. pp. 44–46. ISBN 1904349331.
3. "Support for railway station plan". BBC News. 5 March 2009. Retrieved 6 April 2016.

Preceding station	Historical railways			Following station
Chippenham Line open, station open		Great Western Railway Great Western Main Line		Box (Mill Lane) Halt Line open, station closed

External links