The Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (WS&WR) was an early railway company in south-western England. It obtained an act of Parliament giving powers to build the line in 1845 to build a railway from near Chippenham in Wiltshire, southward to Salisbury and Weymouth in Dorset. It opened the first part of the network but found it impossible to raise further money and sold its line to the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1850.
The GWR took over the construction and undertook to build an adjacent connecting line; the network was complete in 1857. In the early years of the 20th century the GWR wanted to shorten its route from London to the West of England and built "cut-off" lines in succession to link part of the WS&WR network, so that by 1906 the express trains ran over the Westbury to Castle Cary section. In 1933 further improvements were made, and that part of the line was established as part of the "holiday line" to Devon and Cornwall.
The network was already a major trunk route for coal from South Wales coalfields to southern England, and for Channel Islands farm produce imported through Weymouth Harbour, as well as providing a boat train route, and carrying flows from Bristol to Southampton and Portsmouth.
Much of the network is in operation today, but the Devizes and Radstock branches have closed.
Origins
The Great Western Railway (GWR) had opened its main line from London to Bristol in 1841, and the London and Southampton Railway had opened in 1840; and its successor the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) was extending westwards. The advantage to communities connected to the new railways was immediately apparent; in contrast, places remote from these lines felt strongly the disadvantage at which they were placed.
The areas of south-west Wiltshire were prosperous from sheep farming and wool manufacture, and quickly saw that they too needed a railway.In fact the original Great Western Railway Act had included a branch from near Chippenham to Bradford-on-Avon; this did not get built. The LSWR proposed a line from Basingstoke to Swindon, and at this time there was intense rivalry between them and the GWR to control territory: the railway that was first to have a line in an area would have an enormous competitive advantage there, and could often use that line as a base to extend further. The GWR was building its lines on the broad gauge and the LSWR on what is now the standard gauge (referred to at the time as "narrow gauge"), and they were anxious to ensure that any new independent railway should be on their own preferred track gauge; this rivalry is characterised as the "gauge wars".
The proposed LSWR line to Swindon, the heart of GWR territory, was met with furious opposition, and the GWR promoted two nominally independent lines, the Berks and Hants Railway and the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway. At the first meeting of the nascent GWR company on 9 July 1844, Charles Alexander Saunders, secretary of the GWR, suggested that the necessary sum of £650,000 could be secured on a GWR guarantee; the GWR would be the lessee of the line, and would directly subscribe half of the capital.
Mission creep The Bristol and Exeter Railway (B&ER), a broad gauge line friendly to the GWR, was proposing a line to Weymouth from its own main line at Durston, west of Bridgwater, and the WS&WR promoters decided to add a branch to their own line from Frome to Yeovil to meet the B&ER line there, forming a large triangle and making (with the GWR line) a direct route from London to Weymouth. In September 1844 the Board of Trade assented to this addition; this added £350,000 to the capital required: it would now cost £1 million. A month later, at a meeting in Frome on 23 October 1844, the B&ER announced that it had decided to alter the route of its Weymouth branch, running from Durston much further south through Bridport, with a branch to Yeovil. The Yeovil to Weymouth section would not be built, so the WS&WR added that to their own scheme: the capital cost was now to be £1.5 million.Derek Phillips, The Story of the Westbury to Weymouth Line, Oxford Publishing Co., Sparkford, 1994,
The cities of Bath and Bristol felt left out of these connections to the South Coast, and the Taunton Courier recorded that a deputation of merchants and traders of Bristol had gone to the Great Western Board; they were not warmly received, and
Hadfield adds in a footnote on the same page that "In fact the [west] curve at Thingley [near Chippenham] was specifically authorised (but not built) to give connection between Bath and Trowbridge."Hadfield, page 296
At this period the Board of Trade determined the relative merits of competing proposals, and the huge stakes meant that it was crucial to secure their approval; it was reported in the London Gazette on 31 December 1844 that the Board of Trade were supportive of the WS&WR scheme, provided the GWR sought to construct a connecting line from Bath to join the WS&WR. The GWR immediately undertook to apply for an act of Parliament giving authority for such a line in the 1846 session. However the frenzy of projecting railways at this time was such that the Kennet and Avon Canal proposed laying broad gauge tracks on each side of their canal; this would be the London, Newbury and Bath Direct Railway. It may have been a startling scheme, but it passed its second reading in Parliament in the 1846 session, when the Berks and Hants Railway Bill was thrown out. However the Kennet and Avon company was evidently bought off by the GWR, for they dropped their scheme; their minutes of 9 September 1846 record the first instalment of £5,000 having been received in payment.Charles Hadfield, The Canals of Southern England, Phoenix House Ltd., London, 1955, page 296Henry Grote Lewin, The Railway Mania and its Aftermath, Railway Gazette, London, 1936, page 156
Having deliberated, the Board of Trade announced their decision: they found in favour of the WS&WR scheme, rejecting the LSWR's Swindon line.
The act obtained at last
The Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway obtained its authorising act of Parliament, the (8 & 9 Vict. c. liii), on 30 June 1845. It was to be on the same broad gauge as the GWR network, and to run from near Chippenham to Salisbury, with branches to Weymouth, Dorset, Sherborne, Devizes and Bradford-on-Avon, and a coal branch to Radstock. In the same session, authorising acts were passed for the Berks and Hants Railway (Reading to Hungerford and Basingstoke, sponsored by the GWR) and the Taunton to Yeovil branch of the B&ER.
The routes of the line had been designed in some haste, and after passage of the act a number of modifications were decided upon; the initially planned GWR route for connecting Bath to the WS&WR had been from the Radstock branch to Twerton, west of Bath, but on 7 October 1845 Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer to the GWR and the WS&WR, reported that a better route was through the Avon valley from Bradford to Bathampton, east of Bath. The course of the WS&WR between Frome and Bruton was modified to make it more suited to main line running; this change, and an extension to the quay at Weymouth, were authorised by the (9 & 10 Vict. c. cccxiii) of 3 August 1846. Next, insurmountable difficulties were discovered over the hilly route between Dorchester and Weymouth, and a major deviation was needed there; this had to be authorised in the 1847 parliamentary session, by the (10 & 11 Vict. c. lx) passed on 25 June 1847, so that much time had been lost before construction could start there.Colin Maggs, The Bath to Weymouth Line, Oakwood Press, Usk, 1982, David St John Thomas, A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume 1: The West Country, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1966E T MacDermot, History of the Great Western Railway, volume I part 1, published by the Great Western railway, London, 1927
By now the Southampton and Dorchester Railway, friendly to the LSWR, had reached Dorchester (on 1 June 1847). The line had been independently promoted, and it had wooed both the GWR and the LSWR at times, and its loss to the narrow gauge camp was a blow to the GWR. That company had always intended that the WS&WR should be part of a through main line to Exeter, and was now considering how that might be created; as its construction would put the friendly B&ER at a disadvantage, the GWR proposed purchasing the B&ER, an offer that was rejected. The GWR now actively planned its line to the west: it would infill the Hungerford (Berks and Hants) to Devizes (WS&WR) section, and build a new line from Yeovil (WS&WR) to Exeter via Axminster. This latter line was not built by the GWR,An almost identical route from Yeovil to Exeter was later built by the LSWR. but its development as a scheme provoked renewed hostility from the LSWR camp, and also opposition from the otherwise friendly B&ER.
First sections: Westbury
Starting from the junction at Thingley, a couple of miles southwest of Chippenham, the line was constructed via Melksham and Trowbridge as far as Westbury. It was inspected by the Board of Trade inspector on 26 August 1848 and approved for opening. After a trial trip for the directors on 2 September, this section was opened to the public on 5 September 1848. At this date, before the introduction of interlocking signalling, facing junctions on the main line were regarded as potentially dangerous, and therefore the junction at Thingley was laid out so that trains reversed into a siding before continuing on the Westbury line.
At the same time the spur from Staverton, north of Trowbridge, to Bradford-on-Avon was physically completed, but rails were not laid and it was not presented for opening, so it lay unused for the time being.There are complexities about the Bradford triangle. MacDermot (volume I part 1 page 286) says in connection with the first opening, "The short branch from Staverton to Bradford was made, and even the Bradford station built, but for some reason the rails were left unfinished, and no attempt was made to open it. So matters remained for some years to the extreme discontent of the inhabitants." Staverton to Bradford is clearly the north curve, although of course only the trackbed was made at this time and no actual track; the main line was open. Phillips (page 14) also says "from Staverton". Later, discussing the opening from Trowbridge to Bathampton on page 414, MacDermot says "As far as Bradford, with the tunnel (159 yards) and even the station there, it had been practically ready, save for part of the permanent way, as we have seen. It left the main Wilts and Somerset line about miles north of Trowbridge by a fork, on the southern branch only of which the rails were laid [and ran on to Bathampton]." He annotates a footnote against the word "laid", which reads "The northern curve was not used till March 1895." MacDermot's "southern branch" of the fork is clearly the original main line.
All this appears to mean that Bradford was originally intended to be served by the north curve only, allowing direct running from Chippenham to Bradford. When the Trowbridge to Bathampton line was built, it had been decided to omit the north curve, so that Bathampton had direct running from Trowbridge but not from Chippenham via Holt.
Sale to the GWR In this period, actually obtaining money that had been subscribed was proving exceptionally difficult, and the company was unable to fund continuing construction work. Only the large, established railway companies with an actual income could raise money, and as the pressure increased, the directors realised that the only way forward was to sell their line to the GWR. That decision was taken by them in October 1849, and the transfer took place on 14 March 1850; it was confirmed by the Great Western Railway Act 1851 (14 & 15 Vict. c. xlviii) on 3 July 1851, which dissolved the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway Company.
Frome and Warminster