The Southern Railway routes west of Salisbury were built by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and allied companies, which all became part of the Southern Railway in 1923. The railway arrived at in 1847 but was extended westwards through the counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall and established an alternative to the route from London to the west built by the Great Western Railway (GWR) and its associated companies.
Network The first route to Salisbury was from Southampton in 1847. By 1857 there was a direct line from , 84 miles away, and in 1859 this extended towards Yeovil via the GWR station in Fisherton.
From Salisbury the main line continued broadly west, passing no major population centre until reaching Exeter. The difficult terrain, with numerous hills and valleys crossing the direction of the route, made selection of the alignment difficult, and several medium-sized towns were passed at a distance of a few miles. Many of these towns had to accept a horse omnibus connection from a remote station on the main line; later, some of them—Yeovil, Chard, Lyme Regis, Seaton, Sidmouth and Exmouth—gained their own branch line.
At Exeter, the LSWR had its own station, Queen Street, more conveniently situated than the St Davids station of the Bristol & Exeter Railway (B&ER), but its elevated location made onward extension into west Devon difficult. When it eventually did so, it descended by a steep and curved connection into the B&ER station, running a few miles northward on that line and then diverging to the west, to Crediton. The line onward led into several main line branches: to Barnstaple and Bideford (and later Ilfracombe); to Halwill and Holsworthy, with Halwill itself becoming a junction later; and to Plymouth, reached at first over part of the route of the rival broad gauge interest.
Securing territory
The London and South Western Railway (LSWR) was formed from the London and Southampton Railway, one of the earliest long-distance lines, which opened from 1838. The first line was successful, and the company then extended its network, at first by building branch lines from the original main line, and then by building new lines. Securing territory, by building a route to "capture" an area quickly became an objective as a part of growing the company's business, and it was a natural consequence that this developed into a competitive battle with companies whose territory lay adjacent.
This competition developed especially fiercely with the Great Western Railway (GWR). This company had opened its main line from London to Bristol in 1838, and developed alliances that extended its influence to Exeter. Most of the railways being built at that time used the standard track gauge (the spacing between the rails) of , but the GWR used a broad gauge of .GWER broad gauge lines were converted to standard gauge by 1892.
Often new railways in a locality were promoted by local interests, often wishing their line to be worked, or purchased, by one of the larger companies. Operation would be inconvenient if it were built to the gauge used by the rival, and the choice of gauge had to be made when seeking parliamentary authority for the construction. That choice implied—perhaps forced—alignment to one or other of the larger prospective parents. This led to the competition being characterised as the "gauge war".
As the territory in the counties near London became saturated, thoughts of expansion turned to the relatively undeveloped west of England. The GWR and the Bristol & Exeter Railway working in partnership had formed a through route from London to Exeter in 1844, and with the South Devon Railway was to reach PlymouthTemporarily at until a permanent station was opened a year later. in 1848; the three companies formed the powerful "broad gauge alliance".
The broad gauge route to Exeter ran via Bristol, leaving much territory as yet unsecured, and despite the agreement, the LSWR determined to build a line to Exeter. But although it had reached Salisbury, this was a branch line from Bishopstoke (Eastleigh), and Exeter was 88 miles away.
Development of LSWR routes
Salisbury first On 17 January 1847, the first LSWR goods train, headed by the locomotive Rhinoceros entered the Salisbury station, at Milford at the south-eastern edge of the city. This event was hugely significant to the city, bringing the possibility of industrial development, so that "Salisbury might become the Manchester of the South".Unnamed speaker quoted in the Salisbury & Winchester Journal in White (1961) p.153
Under the guidance of W J Chaplin, Company Chairman from 1843, the LSWR had been dealing with the demands of Southampton and Portsmouth, and it had neglected the clamour for railway connection from towns and cities to the west. An energetic solicitor from Wimborne, A L Castleman, had developed a scheme for a railway from Southampton to Dorchester, with the possibility of extending westward from Dorchester to Exeter and beyond. His line was so full of curves and diversions that it was called "the water snake" or "Castleman's Corkscrew". His discussions with the LSWR were so forceful that the company rebuffed him, and he turned to the GWR as an ally. The GWR welcomed him and agreed to lease the line, when built, on good terms, as it would give the GWR access to Southampton.
Meanwhile, there were competing attempts by the GWR and the LSWR to reach Newbury, and this led to a determination by a Board of Trade committee in favour of the GWR route. But an agreement was forged between the GWR and the LSWR: the GWR would relinquish any encouragement of Castleman's line, in return for which the LSWR agreed not to promote any competing lines westward of Salisbury or Dorchester; the agreement was signed on 16 January 1845.
Castleman got his company, called the Southampton and Dorchester Railway, incorporated and the line between Southampton and Dorchester via Ringwood and Wimborne opened on 1 June 1847. The Southampton and Dorchester was amalgamated with the LSWR by Act of 22 July 1848, effective on 11 October 1848.
Now the Railway Mania was in full spate, with a frenzied promotion of railways everywhere, and three schemes to reach Exeter were presented in Parliament in 1847. Two were approved, including the LSWR scheme which would have provided a direct line between Basingstoke and Salisbury as well as reaching westwards, but suddenly the financial bubble had burst, and the LSWR and its competitors found that money was too scarce to permit building new railways. It was not until 1 May 1857 that the direct line from Basingstoke to Salisbury was opened, also to the Milford station: a connection from there to the present-day Salisbury station, involving a tunnel, followed on 2 May 1859.
Salisbury to Yeovil
The truce created by the agreement over the Southampton and Dorchester line required the LSWR not to promote a line westward of that line. This agreement proved to be much regretted: now the GWR promoted the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, already by 1851 reaching Salisbury and Frome, and building onwards to Dorchester and Weymouth.
In 1853 the directors of the company proposed a scheme to extend from Dorchester to Exeter, having been encouraged by declarations from the military that communications across the country without a break of gauge were strategically important; but at a special meeting of the proprietors on 15 November 1853, the proposals were rejected.
In 1854, the independent Salisbury and Yeovil Railway (S&YR) company got its Act of Parliament (on 7 August) to build from Salisbury to join the GWR and B&ER, both of which were already in Yeovil. It was not until 21 July 1856 that the LSWR Coastal Scheme (reaching Exeter via Dorchester) was dropped.
The first section of the S&YR opened from Salisbury to Gillingham on 2 May 1859. The Salisbury station was a new construction at Fisherton Street, opened the same day, immediately south of the GWR station that had opened on 20 June 1856 to serve the line from Westbury. On the same day the LSWR opened connecting lines from the Bishopstoke and Basingstoke lines to Fisherton Street, and closed the Milford station to passengers.
The Salisbury & Yeovil company extended its line to Sherborne on 7 May 1860, and from there to Yeovil on 1 June 1860 (to passengers; goods on 1 September). The Yeovil station was the Bristol and Exeter Railway station at Hendford, up until then the terminus of their line from Durston. The two companies planned a joint station which became , and the B&ER made a separate narrow gauge track from the point of junction to Hendford, providing mixed gauge track in their goods yard there.
From Yeovil to Exeter When the S&YR had been authorised and the Coastal Scheme abandoned, the course of the LSWR route to Exeter was clear, and they now easily got an Act for the line on 21 July 1856. Construction was swift, and the line opened throughout from Yeovil to Exeter Queen Street on 19 July 1860—seven weeks after the opening of the S&YR. The Bristol & Exeter Railway, a broad gauge company, had reached Exeter 16 years previously.
The LSWR line made a junction with the S&YR—in reality simply a continuation of the main line—at Bradford Abbas, and built a station called Yeovil Junction, and a connecting line from the Hendford line, forming a triangle. The LSWR worked the S&YR line from the outset.The LSWR acquired the SYR in July 1878 The main line from Salisbury to Exeter Queen Street was single throughout, with intermediate crossing stations at Wilton, Dinton, Tisbury, Semley, Gillingham, Templecombe, Milborne Port, Sherborne, Yeovil Junction, Sutton Bingham, Crewkerne, Chard Road, Axminster, Colyton, Honiton, Feniton, Whimple, and Broad Clyst.
The route traversed difficult terrain, with most river valleys running transverse to its direction, so that gradients were significant, 1 in 80 being typical. Nonetheless only three tunnels were needed: Buckhorn Weston (sometimes known as Gillingham Tunnel, 742 yards long, two miles west of Gillingham; Crewkerne (206 yards, a mile west of Crewkerne station) and Honiton (at 1,345 yards the longest on the LSWR system, two miles west of Honiton). Due to the difficulty of the landscape, the line passed by most of the important towns in the area, and this led to the eventual construction of several branch lines to bring railways to the towns.
Yeovil Town station opened on 1 June 1861, and LSWR passenger trains ceased to run on to Hendford; goods trains continued to use the yard there. In 1860 there were four passenger trains each way between Salisbury and Exeter, and at least one each way ran via Hendford, using the Bradford Abbas curve between the Salisbury line and Hendford, with others having a connecting shuttle from the Junction station.
The siding accommodation at Hendford was very cramped, and to facilitate goods exchange traffic, the GWR built a short goods branch line to Yeovil Junction from the Weymouth line. This was officially referred to as the Clifton Maybank Siding and opened on 13 June 1864. It was broad gauge and there was no common siding accommodation; the exchange was by transhipping the goods.
The east curve was closed on 1 January 1870, after which trains from Salisbury to Yeovil Town reversed at Yeovil Junction. On 1 July 1870, the entire line between Salisbury and Exeter was doubled.
Exeter and North Devon