The West Dorset Light Railway…

Whilst looking for something else I stumbled upon this reference to the West Dorset Light Railway, mentioned here as it became another spoke in the wheel of the Col. Stephen’s empire…

Photo © Ben Brooksbank

Bridport West Bay Station (remains), 21 April 1960

Available for reuse under this Creative Commons licence

PUBLIC NOTICE

LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896

(WEST DORSET LIGHT RAILWAY)

NOTICE IS HERBY GIVEN that application will be made during the current month to the Light Railway Commissioners for an Order authorizing the construction, working and maintenance of Light Railways between Bridport Harbour, Beaminster and Crewkerne, all in the county of Dorset, and to seek powers for the incorporated Company acquirer otherwise use the existing undertaking of the Bridport and Beaminster Tramway Co. Ltd. (including the lands in which the same is constructed) and to construct reconstruct adapt maintain work and use the same as part of the Proposed Light Railway and for other purposes.

RAILWAY No.1 commences in the parish of Beaminster at the station of Beaminster and via a route through Broadwindsor and Seaborough to a point 1 mile, 6 furlongs and 3 1/2 chains or thereabouts West of Crewkerne.

The gauge of the Railway will be 4 feet 8 1/2 inches and the motive power steam.

On and after the 30th day of April 1912 copies of the plans sections and Book of Reference of the proposed Railway may be seen at all reasonable hours at the Office of the undersigned where copies of the Draft Order may be obtained on payment of one shilling per copy. All persons having objection to the proposed Railway should address the same to the Secretary, Light Railway Commission, Scotland House, New Scotland Yard, Westminster, London, SW, such communications to be on foolscap paper and written on one side only and a copy thereof send to the undersigned at the address below.

H.F. Stephens

Salford Terrace

Tonbridge, Kent

Light Railways Act - West Dorset Railway

Notice posted in Dorset County Chronicle dated 22nd April 1912

Of course there was never a West Dorset Light Railway, this was the creation of a fellow modeller Harry Dawe. He and I collaborated back in lockdown during 2020 on creating some of the back story and mapping a route. I modelled a wagon, and a locomotive, Harry went a little further (more on that another time) and using the excellent OSMaps app, and full access to their detailed 1:25000 range, I mapped out the route that Harry had proposed. The line is relatively flat to Beaminster before finding itself in a ‘horse shoe’ of hills making any connection onward to Crewkerne very difficult without a tunnel. Harry had proposed the Bridport and Beaminster tramway, initially horse worked running up the valley from the coast, built under the Tramways Act in the 1870s. The Col. Stephen’s acquisition, rebuild and extension were my addition, and together they formed a believable back story to the models we were producing.

In reality, the Great Western reached West Bay, from Maiden Newton with their Bridport Railway in 1884, having opened to Bridport in 1857. The extension was little used and closed in 1930. In this parallel world our West Dorset starts from a station north of the platform at West Bay before crossing the River Brit at the harbour and turning inland towards Bridport and beyond. We proposed most of the stations on our tramway were little more than a wooden shed next to a gravelled ground level platform, like many roadside tramways (think buildings similar to those on the Glyn Valley at Pontfadoc or Dolywern) but later with the Col. Stephen’s light railway order things were improved with low platforms and corrugated shelters in the usual Col. Stephens style. Small goods sidings had been  provided by the tramway to serve local mills and coal merchants, remaining throughout the life of the railway. The extension north to Crewkerne (well Crewkerne Junction!) saw only simple wooden halts erected at Broadwindsor Road and Seaborough. Our planning got as far as a detailed plan for West Bay, although there was a realisation we could do with a coherent story for both locomotive acquisitions and rolling stock, as well as exploring what happened to the line in the 1930s.

Creating a ‘what if’ scenario that has more than a passing sense of plausibility is not only good fun but rewarding too, our stimulating conversations helped through a difficult time in the real world and the generation of this material and depth of research could have just sat in my design file, it served more than its purpose at the time. However, a clear out and reorganisation dug up the route map and speaking with Harry again this week I offered to put a few blog posts together sharing the route and some of the models it generated in the hope that it may inspire others to either create their own back story or perhaps adopt ours! I hope you’ve enjoyed this little flight of fancy, until next time, more soon…

During the same period I was reading about the K&ESR, the Selsey tramway and the Weston Cleveland amd Portishead and some of this generated blog content, so here is a little further reading for today: 

https://paxton-road.blogspot.com/2020/06/light-railway-adventure.html

https://paxton-road.blogspot.com/2021/07/hecate-at-peamarsh-1934.html

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