The Abbotsbury Railway was a standard gauge railway line which ran in the west of the county of Dorset in England opening in 1885. Although great hopes of mineral traffic drove the original construction of the line, these failed to materialise and after a quiet existence carrying local passengers and agricultural produce, the line closed in 1952.
Planning and construction First railways to Dorchester and Weymouth The Southampton and Dorchester Railway opened its line to Dorchester on 1 June 1847. The company was friendly to the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) so Dorchester had a direct connection to London over that line. At the time there was intense rivalry between the LSWR and its allies, and the Great Western Railway (GWR) and its associated companies. Because the track gauges of the two groups were different, the competition was characterised as the gauge wars; the GWR used the broad gauge and the LSWR used the narrow gauge, which later became known as standard gauge.R A Williams, The London & South Western Railway, Volume 1: The Formative Years, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1968, E T MacDermot, History of the Great Western Railway, volume I part 1, published by the Great Western railway, London, 1927
The Southampton and Dorchester line had been planned as the first stage of a line via Bridport to Exeter, but that intention was not implemented. The Southampton and Dorchester Railway was taken over by the LSWR on 22 July 1848.J G Cox, Castleman's Corkscrew: The Southampton and Dorchester Railway 1844 - 1848, published by the City of Southampton, 1975
The GWR planned a line to reach Weymouth, and it promoted a nominally independent company, the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, which started construction from near Chippenham. It was taken over by the GWR on 14 March 1850, but progress in building towards Weymouth was slow; it finally reached the town via Yeovil and Dorchester, on 20 January 1857. The line had a separate station at Dorchester, and a connecting link was made to the Southampton and Dorchester (now LSWR) line. The GWR was required by the terms of its authorising act of Parliament to give running powers to the LSWR over the line from Dorchester to Weymouth, and "mixed gauge" track, that is track with rails both for broad gauge trains and narrow gauge trains, was provided.
The line passed through difficult terrain, and there were steep gradients and a tunnel. There was public demand for a station serving Upwey and Broadwey, and the GWR agreed to provide one if local subscriptions reached £150 toward the cost. This was done and the station opened at Upwey,Opening notices published by the GWR and reproduced in Jackson incorrectly spell the name Upway. on the north side of what is now Old Station Road on 21 June 1871.Brian L Jackson, The Abbotsbury Branch, Wild Swan Publications Ltd, Didcot, 1989,
The broad gauge system of the GWR posed difficulties in arranging through traffic to other lines, as goods had to be transshipped and passengers were faced with a change of train. The directors decided to alter the track gauge and in a huge operation, the lines of the former Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth network were converted in June 1874. The Dorchester to Weymouth section was already mixed, of course, so that all that was needed was to remove the broad gauge rails.
Getting parliamentary authorisation In the 1873 session of Parliament, a bill was presented for a line from the west end of Upwey station on the GWR to Portesham and Abbotsbury. Exploitation of mineral deposits, limestone, iron ore and oil-bearing shale, seems to have been the motivation. The bill was opposed by Henry Fox-Strangways, 5th Earl of Ilchester who owned substantial property in the area, and the scheme was thrown out.
Four years later the Earl had been mollified, for another bill was presented, which he did not oppose, and the (40 & 41 Vict. c. ccxi) obtained royal assent on 6 August 1877, capital £54,000. The engineer was William Clarke. Having obtained authority to raise the money, the task now was to actually get it, and a series of meetings were held at which rosy pictures of future prosperity were held out; indeed the iron ore alone made Abbotsbury capable of becoming a second Middlesbrough.
Money shortage and other problems Two practical problems emerged in 1878 over the route of the line. The first was that the plans deposited for the Abbotsbury Railway Act 1877 showed a junction at Upwey aligned towards Dorchester. In view of the steep upward gradient of the main line there, which was in any case well above the level of the approach from Abbotsbury, this made the junction impracticable. The second was that speculators had purchased the land required for the line and sliced it up in such a way that the railway would have to buy unnecessarily large areas of land at high prices.
The latter difficulty induced the directors to consult with the GWR, after which they decided to alter the junction so as to face Weymouth. The first sod had been cut immediately prior to 8 April 1879, and work proceeded; the contractor was Monk & Edwards of Chester. However shortage of subscribed capital was a continuing problem, and in October the company failed to pay Monk & Edwards moneys due to them; a hasty compromise was reached and work continued.
An extraordinary general meeting took place on 13 February 1880, at which it was asserted that the construction of the Weymouth-facing junction at Upwey was outside the company's powers. The defensive explanation of the directors makes it clear that this was the case, and the meeting was asked to approve the change, and to approve a new parliamentary bill to authorise it. However shortage of money was still the pressing problem, and Monk & Edwards were unable to continue the work without it, and in October 1880 they took legal action against the company to recover sums due to them: over £10,000, they claimed.
A company without funds and with a judgment against it for default on paying its contractor was obviously going to find it difficult to resume construction work; and so it proved. A small series of apparently willing contractors were found, only for them to leave the negotiation at the last minute, until a deal was struck with Green and Burleigh, a London company, were prepare to complete the work "for the remainder of the shares and debentures".They would receive all the unissued shares in the company in payment, and would be creditors for the full authorised amount of the debenture loan, one third of the value of the share capital. In fact Green and Burleigh owned £32,770 face value of shares and the general public £21,230.Jackson, page 16
The company had by now, on 19 May 1882, obtained a further act of Parliament, the (45 & 46 Vict. c. xii), authorising the altered junction arrangement at Upwey, and to issue £10,000 in preference shares and an additional £3,000 of debenture loan. On 8 February 1883 the Great Western Railway had agreed to work the line for 50% of gross receipts. Having only secured subscribed capital of 39% of the authorised value from the public when the line captured local imagination, it was clearly impossible to issue the preference shares now that the line was in financial trouble, and an approach was made to the Great Western Railway to take the shares. In April 1884 it was reported that Green and Burleigh were not progressing the work as fast as was hoped, and the directors write to them, expressing their disappointment. At this time there were still 20 parcels of land required for the construction and not yet acquired.
On 5 September 1884 it was reported that construction work was at a standstill; Mr Burleigh had failed to attend the last four meetings. A notice was sent to him stating that the works would be put in the hands of another contractor unless he resumed the work immediately. Green and Burleigh were the majority shareholder, of course. It may be surmised that Green and Burleigh themselves were financially embarrassed, for at a meeting on 7 October 1884 Burleigh introduced a Mr George Barclay Bruce, who undertook to complete the works, taking over all the shares allocated to Green and Burleigh; this arrangement was formalised on 16 December 1884. Burleigh and Green (as the partnership seemed to be styled now) went into liquidation in March 1885.
At the annual general meeting on 19 March 1885 it was announced that the Great Western Railway had agreed to a loan of £10,000,The original proposal was that the GWR might take the £10,000 of preference shares. Instead a loan guaranteed against those shares was probably a device to overcome legal objections to the GWR becoming a significant shareholder in another railway company. and also to the construction (by them) of an interchange station at "Broadwey Junction".
Last lap to opening The half yearly shareholders' meeting on 2 October 1885 was held in Weymouth, and it concluded with a trip to Abbotsbury by train. At last the line was all but complete. Colonel Rich of the Board of Trade carried out the formal inspection on 28 October 1885. He found the line generally satisfactory, although a large number of minor technical points concerned with the signalling were commented upon. The working arrangement was to be "one engine in steam" for the time being, until the junction station at Upwey was completed, passenger trains were to run through to Weymouth.
The line opened to the public on 9 November 1885. Six miles of railway had taken six years to build, and three men had lost their lives during the construction. At the beginning of 1886 the GWR remitted the first instalment of the Abbotsbury Railway's share of receipts for the half year: £99 12s 8d.
The GWR junction station was to be called Broadwey Junction, but it was not ready for opening day, so for a period trains on the branch terminated at the Abbotsbury Railway Broadway station, and onward passengers were conveyed by horse and carriage to Upwey GWR station. On 19 April 1886 the junction station was ready, now to be called Upwey Junction, so that the stations on the line were then:
Upwey Junction: GWR station on the main line, with a platform for branch trains; the junction was a short distance to the south; Broadway Portesham Abbotsbury.
The GWR Upwey station was closed on the same day. As it had been built partly from a public subscription, a Mr John Lipscombe wrote to the GWR asking for a refund of the money, but there is no record that it was given.
Note: the spellings of Broadwey were very inconsistent, even on official GWR notices, and Ordnance Survey maps of the period used Broadway for the settlement. Broadway station was officially renamed Broadwey on 24 June 1896.
The hoped-for boom in extraction of iron ore and other minerals did not happen, but an unexpected rush of day tripper traffic took place in the spring and summer of 1886; on Easter Monday the afternoon train from Weymouth had been formed of two engines and 18 carriages. In the following year, however, the novelty value had worn off and passenger carryings settled down. In 1890 the directors reported that income for a certain period had amounted to £419 but interest payments on the loans amounted to £907, and the total outstanding debt was £4,609.
The initial train service was four passenger trains each way daily except Sunday, and ran through to and from Weymouth. The service timetable for 1889 shows that the goods train is running as a mixed (passenger and goods) train, and there is a new entry: at 4.30 a.m. a "Contl. Fish" (Continental fish) train ran if required to Weymouth, returning empty. If the train was to run, special arrangements had to be made the afternoon before to ensure that the junction signal box was open and ready.