Sunday, 2 October 2011

Crowcombe Heathfield Rail Station: spherical restitution.


"Please Mister, can we have our ball back?".
Crowcombe Heathfield station, part of the West Somerset line, is another place of interest (no, really). It dates from the mid-1800s, and the original signal box, past which the Beatles trotted/cycled for one of the more amusing bits of HDN, was constructed in 1879.
Here it is as pictured in the 1950s:


And a good then & then from 1966:


Soon after les Fabs made ludicrous use of it, at around the time of the above pic, the station was "rationalised" by British Rail, and began to fall into disrepair. It eventually closed altogether in the early '70s. The signal box was demolished, and this shot shows that side of the platform after it had been removed:


Happily, the station re-opened in 1979, and a team of volunteers has restored it to a pristine state. They even tracked down a similar signal box at Ebbw Vale Sidings, and moved it to the former position of the old one on the station platform. So there it now sits, marking the spot of a famous bit of Beatle burlesque:

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