Lacock Halt railway station

Lacock Halt was a minor railway station on the Chippenham–Trowbridge section of the former Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (WSWR), which opened opened as far as Westbury on 2 September 1848. It connected to the Great Western Main Line at Thingley Junction (west of Chippenham) and after the WSWR ran into financial difficulties the company was incorporated into the Great Western Railway in March 1850.

On 1 October 1905 the running of local services between Chippenham and Trowbridge was taken over by steam rail-motors in order to reduce operational costs. The halts at Lacock and Staverton were opened two weeks later with the aim of increasing passenger traffic – a strategy which proved so successful that two additional halts were opened at Beanacre and Broughton Gifford within the space of a year.

As with the other halts, the platforms at Lacock were constructed of ballast held back by old railway sleepers at the platform edge, being about 100 feet (30 m) in length with small rudimentary shelters for waiting passengers. Since the rail-motors were equipped with retractable steps, the platforms were initially less than the usual height but by the outbreak of the First World War had been raised to accommodate standard rolling stock, and the rail-motors were replaced with coaches hauled by steam locomotives in the mid-1920s.[lower-alpha 1]

A victim of the Beeching cuts, the halt closed on 16 April 1966 along with the 3 other stations between Chippenham and Trowbridge then still extant,[lower-alpha 2] the halts at Beanacre and Broughton Gifford having been consigned to history in 1955. Scheduled passenger services continued to use the line intermittently until 1978 and the line remains open both to freight traffic and as a diversionary route.[1]

Notes
  1. This brought to an end the practice of drivers stopping to allow passengers to board or alight from trains between stations, which was a common occurrence.
  2. In addition to Staverton Halt these comprised the stations at Holt Junction and Melksham.

References
  1. Quayle, H. I. (March 1981). "Open or Shut?". The Railway Magazine. Vol. 127 no. 959. Sutton: IPC Transport Press. pp. 109–13. ISSN 0033-8923.

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