Introduction

The railway station at Burnham (later renamed Burnham-on-Sea) was the terminus at the western end of a branch of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway (S&DJR) from Evercreech Junction via Highbridge in the county of Somerset. On 28-August-1854 the Somerset Central Railway (SCR) opened a single-track broad-gauge (7' 0¼") line from a junction with the Bristol & Exeter Railway (B&ER) at Highbridge eastwards to a terminus at Glastonbury and this was the first section of the future S&DJR. On 3-May-1858 the SCR opened an extension of its line westwards from Highbridge to a new terminus at Burnham. In 1862 the SCR merged with the Dorset Central Railway (DCR) to form the Somerset and Dorset Railway (S&DR) and in 1863 opened a continuous line from Burnham to Wimborne. The DCR was constructed as standard gauge (4' 8½") and so the existing SCR system becoming mixed gauge, but in due course the broad gauge fell into disuse and was removed from the S&DR system about 1870.

In 1874 the S&DR opened a line from Evercreech Junction to Bath and in 1875 it became the S&DJR when the whole line was leased jointly by the Midland Railway (MR) and London & South Western Railway (L&SWR). After the Grouping of the railways of Great Britain in 1923 the S&DJR remained a Joint line, but now under the control of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) and the Southern Railway (SR), who were the successors to the MR and L&SWR respectively. The railways of Great Britain were nationalised in 1948 and in 1950 the Joint line west and north of Evercreech Junction came under the control of British Railways (Western Region) (BR(WR)). Normal scheduled passenger traffic between Highbridge and Burnham ceased on 29-October-1951, but occasional excursion traffic continued until 8-September-1962. Goods traffic survived until 20-May-1963, after which the line west of Highbridge was closed completely. The remainder of the S&DJR closed completely to passenger traffic on 6-March-1966.

A map of Burnham station from an 1883 survey

To be continued...

© CJL Osment 2021
1883 map reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.