Bideford, Westward Ho! And Appledore Railway
The Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore Railway (B, WH & A, R) was most unusual amongst British railways in that although it was built as a standard gauge (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in, 1,435 mm) line, it was not joined to the rest of the railway network, despite the London and South Western Railway having a station at Bideford East-the-Water, just on the other side of the river Torridge from the main town. The line was wholly situated on the peninsula made up of Westward Ho!, Northam and Appledore with extensive sand dunes by the Torridge and Taw estuary. The line opened in stages between 1901 and 1908, but closed in 1917, having been requisitioned by the War Office. Re-opening the line after World War I was considered, but dismissed as a viable option. The B.WH!&A.R. was the only railway company in the British Isles to have an exclamation mark in its company title.
Charles Kingsley wrote the novel Westward Ho! and this led to a tourist boom on the peninsula, followed by the construction of a new town called Westward Ho!. This is the only case of the publication of a novel leading to the construction of a town and then a railway to serve it. The museum at Bideford station on the Bideford and Instow Railway has a display covering the B,WH!&A,R.
Read more about Bideford, Westward Ho! And Appledore Railway: Operation of The Railway, Stations, Halts and Track Layout, Locomotives, Signalling, Railway Employees, Decline, Closure and Disposal, Walking The Old Trackbed in 1970, Bideford Quay Loop, The Fate of Two Signal Boxes
Famous quotes containing the words westward and/or railway:
“We’ve cracked the hemispheres with careless hand!
Now, from the Gates of Hercules we flood
Westward, westward till the barbarous brine
Whelms us to the tired world where tasseling corn,
Fat beans, grapes sweeter than muscadine
Rot on the vine: in the land were we born.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)