The S & D that’s still going strong

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Last year the Daily Mail eulogised about ‘the stations so tiny that you have to stick out your arm to stop a train.’ Well, Dorset has a railway line with three of these. The stations are Thornford, Yetminster and Chetnole and the railway is the Yeovil to Weymouth, entering the county south of Yeovil Pen Mill and continuing to Dorchester West, after which it joins the coastal line from Bournemouth, heading for Weymouth.
The first thing to record is that we’re lucky having this line at all today. Beeching infamously closed the other Somerset and Dorset railway, a loss still prompting its fan club to go misty-eyed with longing. The fact that railway lost its battle for survival was possibly a reprieve for the Yeovil to Dorchester, as even the railway bogeyman couldn’t close both.
Thornford is hard to dislike; there are nice thatched cottages in Church Road, the village pub (the King’s Arms) close by and the village store where I obtained information about parking – a lay-by ¼ mile from the station via a footpath. If you’re used to Clapham Junction, Thornford comes as a shock: a single platform, a tiny shelter in case of rain (or sun) and a single track bending away towards Yeovil. Loiter here and you’ll see rabbits, fox and possibly
a deer.
Fewer than ten passengers a day habitually use this station; one of these is David Greening, who is clearly passionate about Thornford’s rail link – he won first prize in the National Community Rail Awards in 2009 for this halt. He was stocking up leaflets in the shelter (‘Bristol to Weymouth Line Guide’) and boarded the same train as me, heading deeper into Dorset. 45 minutes earlier I’d seen David’s daughter board the 9:31 for Yeovil, although I hadn’t appreciated who she was at the time.

Rattling south in our single unit (the 10:18), I was aware that I was on a pretty historic line – at Yetminster there is a blue plaque commemorating the first passenger service in January 1857. The second train leaving Weymouth that day apparently carried a consignment of turtles. It started off as broad gauge, the line was converted to standard gauge in June 1874 by an army of navvies. Beeching killed some intermediate stops, including the railway’s highest station at Evershot, but delightful halts remain.
The train is surprisingly busy, packed with young mums wielding immense buggies, dogs, bikes and little sprats with buckets and spades destined for Weymouth; it has a bit of a carnival atmosphere. There is a guard/conductor – with an authentic Dorset accent – who is a necessity as buying a ticket at any of the stations is another bit of history.

The journey to Yetminster is a couple of miles long and takes all of three minutes. The station here has changed significantly; buildings have been demolished, a platform lost (it’s now a single line), the old signal box and signalling removed, yet the station lives on, albeit with just a shelter for passengers. From the platform you can see the former Railway Inn, now a car showroom and across the track is the beautiful Station House.
Chetnole resembles Thornford, just a single platform with shelter, accessed via gate and steps from a road bridge. Descending to the platform, one is aware of being, literally, alone in the midst of Dorset greenery; one could stay here a couple of hours and most likely not meet another human as there are even fewer passengers joining and alighting here than at Thornford.

All along the line the word verdant springs to mind to describe the scenery. Whilst trains are now operated by a descendant of sorts of the GWR, First Great Western, it feels like ‘God’s Own Railway’ in ‘God’s Own County’. Approaching Maiden Newton one gazes out over healthy looking allotments then a piggery atop a hill; it’s a
rural world getting on with business with timeless, unhurried grace.
Compared to what precedes it, Maiden Newton is a significant stop; there are still two platforms and substantial knapped-flint station buildings dating back to Brunel – now used by ‘Station Stoves Ltd’. The signal box survives, though closed, and there are no signs of branch trains to Bridport any longer.

This was a junction station up until 1975, when branch-line operations ceased. It’s still possible to see from where those trains departed, a fence at the northern end of the ‘Up’ platform where passengers boarded trains for Bridport, back in the days when station name-boards proclaimed, ‘Maiden Newton for Bridport Branch’. The former branch line is now a cycleway and footpath. Thomas Hardy was a passenger here once; he was stranded when a connection was missed on the Bridport branch.

Journey’s end today is at Dorchester West; after this the line reaches a junction with the Waterloo line and as the traffic increases, the romance abates. Dorchester West once had the unhappy reputation as one of the dingiest stops on the network, but has improved significantly thanks to its ‘friends’. The ‘Friends of Dorchester West Station’ have been helping to keep the station tidy, planted and with improved customer information for five years. In fact, most of the stations on the ‘Heart of Wessex’ line have been adopted by local voluntary groups. My view of the railway had changed as the day progressed; it’s not some neglected backwater, rather it is a small but essential artery, that was being used and about which people cared enough to devote their time.

Crossing the footbridge at Dorchester to take a train back to Thornford there is a good view north-west with the Keep Military Museum still a prominent landmark, as it was in distant steam days. The last steam on the line was in July 1967, ‘perishables’ heading from Weymouth to Westbury.
On the return journey the same guard was on duty: ‘You want Thornford? That was a quick journey then.’
To alight at a request stop one has to let the guard know beforehand, but he was one step ahead. A highlight for younger passengers is the Frampton Tunnel, on the way back to Maiden Newton, at 660 yards the longest tunnel on the line.
Being plunged into darkness for a few seconds still feels like an adventure. The tunnel was built so that the Chantmarle estate was not blighted by a railway driven across its land. Nor is it the only tunnel; just north of Dorchester is Poundbury tunnel (a dainty 264 yards long). Hardy’s teacher, William Barnes, successfully campaigned for a tunnel to protect Poundbury Camp, an Iron Age hill fort.
The train is busy on its return towards Thornford, busier even than on the outward journey. There are clues: wellies, a trolley stacked with cider, people buying tickets to Castle Cary. It is Glastonbury festival time and this line goes to the station nearest the site. From sand and sea to mud and music in one return journey. ‘Anyone for Chetnole or Yetminster?’ booms the guard.
Emerging into the sunshine from the friendly carriage at Thornford, I pause to take a picture of the train that had carried me hither and yon: ‘Are you,’ asks someone clearly destined to be working as a festival clown, ‘a train spotter?’
If I were, there would be relatively slim pickings: there are eight trains a day in each direction Monday to Friday, with some lengthy gaps in between. No more are the 22-carriage excursion trains, from the days when the English seaside was ‘de rigueur’, but the line still looks healthy and has that indefinable feel of a holiday line. There are still, though, extra trains in summer, including the ‘Weymouth Wizard’, which leaves Bristol at 9:06 on Saturdays, arriving in Weymouth in time for lunch, with return trip at 17:28.
Beeching is responsible for causing in some circles something resembling mass melancholia, yet whilst he managed to account for intermediate stops, this line still operates and, in many ways, the journey has been an evocation of that other much-loved S&D line.
Volunteer helper and his daughter, guard/conductor but no more porter; lonely request halts and market towns, charming tunnels and cuttings and downs.
Buckets and spades and sea, sun and sand; wellies and cider and new favourite band. Yetminster, Chetnole and Maiden Newton, Dorchester West, o’er the bridge and back on. Betjeman’s ‘Dorset’ and Auden’s ‘Night Mail’, coupled at Thornford so travel by rail. ◗