Wimborne Railway Station - Closure

Closure

In its final years the station suffered from an air of neglect, although photographic evidence suggests that the main buildings were kept in a decent state of repair into the early 1960s. Wimborne station closed to passengers as from 4 May 1964 along with all others on the bypassed original line, an early casualty of the Beeching Axe programme of economies. Regular goods services ceased from 28 February 1966 when sundries were concentrated on Bournemouth Central. This led to a rationalisation of the station's track and signalling for the purposes of dealing with the remaining goods traffic, and from 24 July 1966 "siding working" was introduced whereby the Down line was put out of use and services were concentrated on the former Up line. Signals were removed, but the signalbox remained in service as a ground frame until 8 January 1967 when all points were converted for manual operation.

Goods and parcels trains continued to serve the station from Poole, running through to West Moors and Ringwood until August 1967. Thereafter traffic to Wimborne consisted mostly of coal and similar wagon loads, with the continued use of the line for an RAOC fuel depot just beyond West Moors keeping trains running through until the early summer of 1974. The track north of Wimborne was lifted from October 1974, back to a point immediately south of Leigh Arch, the dangerously narrow and low bridge over what was then still the busy A31 road. This allowed the bridge to be demolished. For just over another 30 months, the occasional goods train disturbed the peace of Wimborne's decaying station, although by then the main reason for line's survival was the use of the goods yard by a company building exhibition trains.