Weymouth harbour branch

[Pwig]

Found this video on YouTube.

What an utterly bizzare thing, did anyone go on a train or use the station before it shut?

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=EQquPjGhIUc

[truck71]

Remember this well, we used to go on summer holiday in Dorset and would look forward to watching the train head along the road. There would be cars parked outside a pub with drivers having to be retrieved to move them out of the way!

Harwich boat train was great to watch as well as it was loaded from the quayside onto four deck tracks in the ship.

[Truckosaurus]

I once got my bicycle wheels stuck in the track groove, that was an interesting few seconds.

[Europa1]

There's some rich material in that video for the bad parking thread.

[ralphrj]

Pwig said:

What an utterly bizzare thing, did anyone go on a train or use the station before it shut?

Yes, we used it when we took the ferry from Weymouth to Guernsey in 1982. The journey was very slow as cars had to be bumped out of the way. I can remember the slightly surreal feeling of looking out the train window and looking over car roofs and pedestrians on the pavement.

[spitfire-ian]

I can just remember it from a few visits to Weymouth when very young.

[ecsrobin]

I was walking along there the other day, I think I saw it a couple of times as a small child. My dad tells me a story of when he was a young apprentice getting drunk in a pub at the harbour side and then seeing a train go past the window, he decided he'd had too much to drink!

If you're ever in the vicinity of Weymouth near the harbourmasters office is the Royal Air Force Association. It has a cannonball lodged in the wall from I believe the English civil war!

[Digitalize]

Think it all stopped happening before I was born, felt like we learnt about it in history pretty much every year. It was an interesting solution but very outdated by the end. Most of the evidence that it used to happen still exists, station platforms, tracks in the road etc, not sure if they'll ever remove/cover them or not. Considering how busy the harbour is on a daily basis it would cause mayhem if that happened today.

[Truckosaurus]

ecsrobin said:

... It has a cannonball lodged in the wall from I believe the English civil war!

Indeed. Either side of the harbour were on different sides at one point.

[Pwig]

Been doing googling.

Seems the last train ran in 1999 down there in 1999, and that the line was only officially closed in February this year!

[paul789]

This pic makes me sad!

[Digitalize]

Pwig said:

Been doing googling.

Seems the last train ran in 1999 down there in 1999, and that the line was only officially closed in February this year!

Hmm, I would have been 6. I certainly never saw it in use.

[tuffer]

Digitalize said:

Hmm, I would have been 6. I certainly never saw it in use.

I saw it around 83 - 85. was a bit of a spotter back when I was a kid so seeing class 23 ? and 33? locos was all a bit exciting.

[Digitalize]

tuffer said:

I saw it around 83 - 85. was a bit of a spotter back when I was a kid so seeing class 23 ? and 33? locos was all a bit exciting.

I was pretty in to trains when I was a kid but never saw it for some reason. Slipped on the rails drunk many times though.

[Wacky Racer]

Should have just pushed the selfish fkwits out of the way with the train.

They wouldn't park there again.

[ralphrj]

Digitalize said:

I was pretty in to trains when I was a kid but never saw it for some reason. Slipped on the rails drunk many times though.

According to the wikipedia page regular services stopped in 1987. After that it looks like there were only a handful of special trains until the final one in May 1999.

[boyse7en]

Used to see it often as we used the Cross channel ferry from Weymouth 2-3 times a year when I was a kid.

Would have been from about 1980-1988 or so.

[Dogwatch]

Now we know what pwig stands for!

Apparently there was a colour light signal protecting a level crossing, I think the one near B&Q, which was still shining down the line until quite recently even though there hadn't been a train for years!

[Truckosaurus]

Wacky Racer said:

Should have just pushed the selfish fkwits out of the way with the train.

One year in the '80s during the annual Trawler Race festival there was a pre-planned skit where a car was blocking the line as the train came along and was 'accidentally' pushed into the harbour to the delight of the crowd.

[rs1952]

Pwig said:

What an utterly bizzare thing, did anyone go on a train or use the station before it shut?

Yup.

I went down there, by accident I suppose you could say, on 22nd April 1967.

The caption to the photograph tells the whole story

https://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/8473502...