Background
The route was opened by the Bristol and Exeter Railway in stages between 1841 and 1844. This company was amalgamated with the Great Western Railway in 1876 which, in turn, was nationalised into British Railways in 1948. It is now owned by Network Rail.
Apart from the temporary station at Beam Bridge that was only used for a year, the earliest closures were in the Weston-super-Mare area as new facilities were provided for the traffic to this town that was much greater than predicted when the line was planned. The majority of the remaining closures occurred following Dr Beeching's Reshaping of British Railways report of 1963. The most recent closure was Tiverton Junction which was replaced by a new station at Tiverton Parkway on a site closer to Junction 27 of the M5 motorway, where the North Devon Relief Road joins it.
Read more about this topic: Disused Railway Stations (Bristol To Exeter Line)
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