Closed lines on our patch

[whole diary]

[FarWestJohn]

A FORGOTTEN piece of Kingsbridge's railway history, which has lain hidden and half buried for decades, has been literally unearthed in a move to turn it into a new landmark gateway to the town.

The old Primrose Line railway bridge on the western entrance to Kingsbridge once brought thousands of rail passengers a year into the heart of the town.

The line was closed and the rails were ripped up in 1963 and a modern road was eventually built to bypass the narrow and no longer needed railway bridge opposite South Hams Hospital.

Over the years the bridge became buried until virtually only the parapet wall was still visible.

Now members of the town tourist information centre and the town's bloom volunteers have teamed up to give the old bridge a new lease of life as a kind of living memorial to the old steam rail line which disappeared almost half a century ago. See lik for more...

http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/news/Primrose-Line-unearthed/article-776881-detail/article.html

[Andy]

Great story - and nice to see that another piece of the "lost" rail network in the southwest is being remembered. By all accounts it was a very scenic line. The story reminds me somewhat of Helston, where part of the platform has been made into a feature for the garden of the sheltered housing complex which now occupies the station site. I have a feeling that more of the platform still exists but is now buried. There, too, the cutting at the station throat was filled in and the road bridge which crossed it, ultimately buried.