Grass Platforms and Tramways

[whole diary]

[grahame]

... Back in the day of course when the line from Burnham-on-Sea crossed Church Street it was all so different. It is unlikely that particular line will be reopened in the coming years but there is one possibility and that is a tram line. It could run down the street as they do in Sheffield or Edinburgh ^ and it could be a summer excursion from the station to Pier Street.

A new tramway from Highbridge to Burnham? It can't be done

Don^t say it can^t be done. The East Devon town of Seaton did exactly that and has as a result continued to thrive off the back of extra visitors.

From this is the west country

Some interesting discussion on journalist swho got it wrong over 100 years ago, and on the grass platform at Burnham on Sea ...

[trainer]

As a small boy (in the 1950s) I lived in Church Street, Highbridge only a few hundred yards from the level crossing on the S&D^▸ (Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway) extension to Burnham-on-Sea and well recall the chaos caused when the gates closed across what is the A38 and summer traffic which had no alternative but to queue for hours, even in those days, to get through the town.

There was clear countryside between the two towns then and the conglomerated urban area today, like so much else, is unrecognisable. The thought of a tram line from Highbridge to Burnham is a delightful fancy and, I submit, uneconomic.  Comparisons with Seaton need to take into account the difference between the River Axe, with its birdlife, leading to the South Devon Coast and the River Brue and its mud flats leading to more mud flats in the Bristol Channel for much of the day. And of course a driven hobbiest with a set of trams to house!

By the time my memories begin, passenger trains were confined to rare excursions and I cannot claim a firm memory of seeing anything than trucks being shunted across the crossing to the Wharf sidings. Not much of the old track bed is unobstructed these days.

The irony today is that the supermarket that fills the old Burnham station area is itself now closed as uneconomic.

[Bmblbzzz]

<Irrelevant>I remember a childhood holiday in Burnham-on-Sea. I was extremely small, maybe four, and I don't know how we got there ^ I expect we took a train to Highbridge and then a bus. We stayed in a house that, in my memory, was actually on the beach, but in reality it must have been nearby. In my memory, the beach was sand, too!</Irrelevant>