How To...Build A Modern Branch Line Terminus

The modern branch line terminus may lack the romance of the steam era, but there’s still much to model.

- Chris Leigh

My dislike for the destruction of railway buildings in the aftermath of Beeching is pretty well known, as is my love of the traditional GWR ‘BLT’, or branch line terminus. From Staines West to Stourbridge, and Cirencester to St Ives, there’s scarcely a GWR terminus, rural or urban, that I didn’t love. Most were simply bulldozed after the lines which they served were closed, but the real tragedy was that even those lines which escaped closure generally had their commodious all-weather stations demolished and replaced by nothing more than a minimal shelter.

A few lines escaped Beeching’s ‘axe’, and those that did were generally in the West of England, serving coastal villages which were popular holiday destinations. Two examples, St Ives and Looe, were both reprieved on the grounds that road access was poor and that the villages themselves had narrow streets which wouldn’t be able to cope with the extra road traffic, or were unsuitable for buses. Beeching wanted to close everything beyond Plymouth, but Cornwall would not countenance being a county devoid of railways (having been one of the first to have them). Once the main line to Penzance was safe, it paved the way to saving the branches to Newquay and Falmouth, as well as those to Looe and St Ives.

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