Somerset Railway Stations – Mike Oakley

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As New condition, Hardback

Somerset has been served by some 180 railway stations and halts; today only 30 remain open, and 11 of these are on the privately run West Somerset and East Somerset Railways. Remarkably, for the people of Somerset were once as familiar with their local station as the village or street in which they lived, this is the first book specifically on the county’s stations to be published, and includes photographs – many of them rare – of all but a handful.

Somerset’s first station opened in 1840; the most recent in 1990. Collectively, they exhibit a great variety of styles and building materials, usually reflecting designs adopted by the railway companies that built them. Many were built with local materials, making their buildings – from ticket offices to goods sheds, signal boxes to station master’s houses – of considerable architectural interest.

Bustling city stations with many platforms once handled passengers bound for tiny rural halts – some only with wooden huts, others whose fretted canopies, decorative barge-boards and well-tended gardens gave Somerset’s country stations their character. Some have vanished without trace, others lie derelict, whilst others have taken on a new role, in many cases as attractive houses.