Woody Bay, within the Exmoor National Park, is a station on the former Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, a narrow gauge line that ran through Exmoor from Barnstaple to Lynton and Lynmouth in North Devon. The station was situated inland, about 2 km from Woody Bay itself. It opened with the line (as Wooda Bay until the name was changed in 1901) on 7 March 1898, and closed with it after service on 29 September 1935. From 1923 until closure, the line was operated by the Southern Railway.
Woody Bay station was built in part to serve the expected development of a resort at Woody Bay, a mile or so to the north. A pier was built in the bay, although little further development took place, and the pier was destroyed by heavy seas before any trade could be established with passing steamers, and the development was abandoned when the promotor went into liquidation in 1900, and although a route was surveyed for a branch line to the bay, it was never constructed.
Following purchase by the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Company in 1995, restoration of the station began, and it opened as a Visitors' Centre in 2003. An "out and back" service over a few hundred yards of track began in 2004, and with the opening of a temporary station about a mile towards Parracombe Halt, a regular "point to point" service started in 2006.
Several trees have grown in the intervening years, but these two photos, taken over a hundred years apart, are still recognisably from the same location. The carriage shed built into the cutting beyond the station is a portable structure erected in 2003.
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The L&B Route Then and Now |
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Legend
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Woody Bay station is at: grid reference SS68254641
Preceding station | Heritage railways | Following station | ||
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Killington Lane | Lynton and Barnstaple Railway (2004-) |
Terminus | ||
Disused railways | ||||
Parracombe Halt | Lynton and Barnstaple Railway (1898-1935) |
Caffyns Halt |
Coordinates: 51°12′06″N 3°53′14″W / 51.20167°N 3.88718°W / 51.20167; -3.88718
Famous quotes containing the words woody, bay, railway and/or station:
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—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)
“Shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“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 understandmy 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 arms length.”
—Angela Carter (19401992)
“Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man what see we, but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro worlds unnumberd tho the God be known,
Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
”
—Alexander Pope (16881744)