Decline
Following nationalisation in 1948, Padstow station became part of the Southern Region of British Railways. Rationalisation meant that the competing lines of the Western Region and Southern Region in Devon and Cornwall could not survive indefinitely. Declining fish traffic in the 1950s saw the severing of the siding serving the fish station in 1959 and the removal of the canopy on the rail side of the goods shed. The cutbacks accelerated once the station was transferred to the Western Region of British Railways in January 1963.
The Beeching Report proposed the closure of Padstow station and the lines serving it. Goods traffic ended in 1964, followed by most of the through passenger trains to London Waterloo (including the Atlantic Coast Express). All through services ceased in September 1966 with the closure of the North Cornwall Line; this meant that Padstow could only be reached by changing at Bodmin Road on the Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway. It was hoped that this connection could be preserved, but it too succumbed within a few months.
Read more about this topic: Padstow Railway Station
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