Fishguard and Goodwick Railway Station - Reopening

Reopening

Reopening Fishguard and Goodwick as a rail/bus interchange had been considered by Pembrokeshire County Council for some years. For this reason it purchased the (disused) station site. This was sometime before an increased service frequency on the Fishguard line was secured, and no visible progress was made towards reopening until the announcement of extra trains.

In March 2011, it was announced that Welsh Assembly Government subsidy would be provided to allow an increase in train frequency on the Fishguard line from two trains per day to seven from 12 September 2011 for three years. This prompted a search for funding to re-open Fishguard & Goodwick railway station; funding was successfully found and it was announced that the station was to re-open in March 2012.

The re-opening work cost £325,000, including realignment of the track by Network Rail by the end of 2011 and laying of tarmac over part of the station yard to provide a car park (with further tarmac over the rest of the station yard, to enlarge the car park, a future possiblity). Another aspect of the work was demolition of the station building, which took place in August 2011 between the announcement of extra services and their launch (on 12 September. Since the station is within the Goodwick Conservation Area, this demolition violated policy 80 of the Joint Unitary Development Plan for Pembrokeshire, but went ahead anyway as the building was in a dangerous condition with very little in a state that could possibly have been salvaged.

The work to reopen the station was a joint operation between Pembrokeshire County Council and Network Rail. In March 2012, Network Rail announced that the station would reopen on 14 May 2012 and would be served by the seven trains each way per day which currently run through the station. The station duly re-opened on 14 May 2012. It was adopted under Arriva's adopt-a-station scheme by the local community group POINT.