Marlborough Railway Stations - The Great Western Railway Branch

The Great Western Railway Branch

In 1862, the Berks and Hants Extension Railway built a broad gauge railway line from Hungerford, itself originally the terminus of a branch line from Reading, to Devizes. At Devizes the new line linked up with the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway branch line from Trowbridge which had opened in 1857.

The new B&HER line passed to the south of Savernake Forest and a station was opened called Savernake. In 1864, the Marlborough Railway opened a 5.5-mile long broad gauge branch line from Savernake to a terminus station in Marlborough. The branch line had no intermediate stations, and trains departed from a new platform at Savernake. The Marlborough Railway and the Berks and Hants Extension Railway were both absorbed by the Great Western Railway and were converted to standard gauge in 1874.

The GWR station in Marlborough was to the south-east of the town centre and had a substantial L-shaped red brick building with waiting rooms for both first-class and ordinary passengers. It had a single platform, and goods facilities were provided at the northern end of it. There was also a separate goods yard to the south of the station and an engine shed to the north east near the buffer stops.

Marlborough GWR station became the focus for road traffic in the area, with buses along the Bath road, now the A4 to Calne from the time the station opened. Many of the bus services were operated by the GWR.

Read more about this topic:  Marlborough Railway Stations

Famous quotes containing the words western, railway and/or branch:

    For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.
    Jacques Attali (b. 1943)

    Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    She saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister calxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!
    Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)