Introduction

The railway station and signal-boxes at Radstock were situated on the main line of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway (S&DJR), on the section from Bath Junction to Evercreech Junction in the county of Somerset which was known historically as the 'Bath Extension'.

In 1874 the Somerset and Dorset Railway (S&DR) opened its 'Bath Extension' from Evercreech Junction to Bath and a station was provided at Radstock. At first the line was single-track throughout with a few passing-places, one of which was at Radstock according to an undertaking given to the Board of Trade (BoT) by the S&DR on 15-July-1874. The S&DR became the S&DJR in 1875 when the line was leased jointly by the Midland Railway (MR) and London & South Western Railway (L&SWR). Click here to read more about early S&DR/S&DJR Signalling and the nature of the original signalling and layout arrangements on the Bath Extension.

With a steady increase in traffic various sections of the Bath Extension were doubled piecemeal, until by 1894 the entire line had been doubled between Midford and Templecombe No 2 Junction. After the Grouping of the railways of Great Britain in 1923 the S&DJR became a Joint line 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 were nationalised in 1948 and in 1950 control of the Bath Extension section of the S&DJR passed to British Railways (Western Region) (BR(WR)) until the line closed on 6-March-1966.

An Up train passes Radstock North 'B' signal-box circa-1965

A note on naming: When the station was opened in 1874 it was named simply 'Radstock' and its subsequent two signal-boxes were named Radstock East and Radstock West. In British Railways days the station was re-named 'Radstock North' (in order to distinguish it from the nearby former Great Western Railway (GWR) station, which became 'Radstock West') on 26-September-1949 and its two signal-boxes were renamed Radstock North 'A' and Radstock North 'B' respectively. For consistency the original S&DJR names are used in RailWest except where the context requires the use of the BR-era names.

For information about the S&DJR's Clandown Branch at Radstock please click here.

To be continued...

© CJL Osment 2021
Photograph courtesy Colin Maggs collection.