The Wessex Main Line is the railway line from Bristol Temple Meads to Southampton Central. Diverging from this route is the Heart of Wessex Line from Westbury to Weymouth. The Wessex Main Line intersects the Reading to Taunton Line at and the West of England Main Line at .

Places served

The places served are listed below. * Bristol Temple Meads *

Keynsham Keynsham ( ) is a town and civil parish located between Bristol and Bath in Somerset, England. It has a population of 16,000. It was listed in the Domesday Book as ''Cainesham'' (as it is pronounced), which is believed to mean the home of ...

* Oldfield Park * Bath Spa **

Great Western Main Line The Great Western Main Line (GWML) is a main line railway in England that runs westwards from London Paddington to . It connects to other main lines such as those from Reading to Penzance and Swindon to Swansea. Opened in 1841, it was the o ...

diverges to

Chippenham Chippenham is a market town in northwest Wiltshire, England. It lies northeast of Bath, west of London, and is near the Cotswolds Area of Natural Beauty. The town was established on a crossing of the River Avon and some form of settlement i ...

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon unitary authority area had a population ...

and

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great We ...

* Freshford * Avoncliff * Bradford-on-Avon * Trowbridge * Westbury ** Heart of Wessex Line diverges to Weymouth * Dilton Marsh *

Warminster Warminster () is an ancient market town with a nearby garrison, and civil parish in south west Wiltshire, England, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. The parish had a population of about 17,000 in 2011. The 11th-century Minster Church o ...

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

* Dean * Mottisfont & Dunbridge *

Romsey Romsey ( ) is a historic market town in the county of Hampshire, England. Romsey was home to the 17th-century philosopher and economist William Petty and the 19th-century British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, whose statue has stood in the ...

Eastleigh to Romsey Line Eastleigh is a town in Hampshire, England, between Southampton and Winchester. It is the largest town and the administrative seat of the Borough of Eastleigh, with a population of 24,011 at the 2011 census. The town lies on the River Itchen, o ...

diverges to Chandler's Ford and Eastleigh *

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

Passenger services are currently operated by

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

Portsmouth - Cardiff services, supplemented by South Western Railway between Salisbury and Southampton, and by Great Western high-speed express services between Bristol and

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

. Some services start at

. Many services continue beyond Southampton along the West Coastway line to

Portsmouth Harbour Portsmouth Harbour is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Portsmouth and Gosport in Hampshire. It is a Ramsar site and a Special Protection Area. It is a large natural harbour in Hampshire, England. Geographically it ...

and

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

, and beyond Bristol to

Severn Tunnel Junction , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

, Newport and Cardiff Central along the

South Wales Main Line The South Wales Main Line ( cy, Prif Linell De Cymru), originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain. ...

Chippenham branch

There is a link from to , with an intermediate stop at . Despite showing strong passenger growth in the previous few years, the new franchise reduced services in December 2006 to two each way per day, at times barely convenient for commuters. The frequency was increased from December 2013 and services were extended south to and north to , providing a regular timetable branded as TransWilts.

History

Southampton to Salisbury

The

South West Main Line The South West Main Line (SWML) is a 143-mile (230 km) major railway line between Waterloo station in central London and Weymouth on the south coast of England. A predominantly passenger line, it serves many commuter areas including south we ...

of the

London and Southampton Railway The London and Southampton Railway was an early railway company between London and Southampton, in England. It opened in stages from 1838 to 1840 after a difficult construction period, but was commercially successful. On preparing to serve Por ...

, which changed its name to the

London and South Western Railway The London and South Western Railway (LSWR, sometimes written L&SWR) was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Originating as the London and Southampton Railway, its network extended to Dorchester and Weymouth, to Salisbury, Exeter ...

in 1839, had reached Southampton in 1840. A branch to Salisbury (Milford) from a junction on the main line at Eastleigh (then called Bishopstoke) was opened in 1847. The branch passes through

and the Dean valley; today part of its route forms the Eastleigh-Romsey line. A more direct route between Southampton and Romsey was adopted in 1865 on completion of the

Sprat and Winkle Line The Sprat and Winkle Line was the common name of the Andover to Redbridge railway line which ran between Andover and Redbridge in Hampshire, England. In the Romsey area it joined, and then left, the Salisbury to Southampton line. It was built by ...

(at first by the Andover and Redbridge Railway, but taken over by the LSWR before completion). This forms the current route of the Wessex Main Line: departing westbound from Southampton Central via Millbrook and Redbridge before branching north to Romsey.

North of Salisbury

The line through Wiltshire and Somerset was completed in stages, after the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (WS&WR) was authorised by Parliament in 1845. The first section to be opened, in 1848, ran from Thingley junction to the west of Chippenham on the

, via Melksham and Trowbridge to Westbury. The WS&WR company was unable to fund further construction, and in 1849 the directors decided to sell their line to the GWR. The GWR's branch to Salisbury from Westbury was completed through the Wylye valley in 1856, with the first section, as far as

, having been opened in 1851. The route from a junction near Staverton, north of Trowbridge, to

Bradford-on-Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon or Bradford upon Avon) is a town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset, which had a population of 9,402 at the 2011 census. The town's canal, historic buildings, s ...

had been constructed in 1848 but the rails were not laid. This branch, via Bradford then along the Avon valley to join the GWR main line at

Bathampton Bathampton () is a village and civil parish east of Bath, England on the south bank of the River Avon. The parish has a population of 1,603. The Kennet and Avon Canal passes through the village and a toll bridge links Bathampton to Bathea ...

, was completed in 1857.

Across Salisbury

Further work was required at Salisbury to complete the Bristol-Southampton route, as the GWR station was in the west of the city at Fisherton, about away from the earlier LSWR station at Milford on the southeast side. In 1857 the LSWR's

West of England line The West of England line (also known as the West of England Main Line) is a British railway line from , Hampshire, to in Devon, England. Passenger services run between London Waterloo station and Exeter; the line intersects with the Wessex Ma ...

(London-Exeter via Basingstoke and Andover) arrived in northeast Salisbury, at first using the Midford station. In 1859 the LSWR opened a new station at Fisherton, immediately south of the GWR station, to serve two lines: the Andover line, which had been extended across the city, and the new Salisbury and Yeovil Railway towards Exeter. The Milford station was then closed to passengers. A

transit shed A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before or after carriage in a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, although sometimes they were built ...

was opened between the two Fisherton stations in 1860, to allow goods to be transferred between the GWR's broad gauge wagons and the LSWR's standard gauge. Following the conversion of the GWR to standard gauge in 1874, a connecting siding was built in 1878 to allow shunting of wagons. A direct route for passengers came into use with the inauguration of a Cardiff to Portsmouth service in 1896.

20th century

At Salisbury, the LSWR station (which had been expanded in 1878) was further expanded and remodelled, with a large extension to the station building completed in 1902. The GWR station continued to be used by branch services until it was closed to passengers in 1932; it was used as a goods depot until 1991 and is now part of Salisbury Traincare Depot. Milford continued as a major goods depot until 1967. Westbury station was rebuilt in 1899 to cater for the Stert and Westbury Railway, opened 1900, which now forms part of the Reading-Taunton line. On the Chippenham branch, the halts at Beanacre and

Broughton Gifford Broughton Gifford is a village and civil parish about west of Melksham in Wiltshire, England. The parish includes the hamlets of Norrington Common and The Common. History Formerly much of Broughton Gifford and the surrounding area was covered ...

closed in 1955. The smaller stations on the Salisbury branch –

Heytesbury Heytesbury is a village (formerly considered to be a town) and a civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The village lies on the north bank of the Wylye, about southeast of the town of Warminster. The civil parish includes most of the small neig ...

Codford Codford is a civil parish south of Salisbury Plain in the Wylye Valley in Wiltshire, England. Its settlements are the adjacent villages of Codford St Peter and Codford St Mary, which lie some southeast of Warminster. The two villages are on th ...

Wylye Wylye () is a village and civil parish on the River Wylye in Wiltshire, England. The village is about northwest of Salisbury and a similar distance southeast of Warminster. The parish extends north and south of the river, and includes the h ...

and Wilton North – closed to passengers in the same year, although in most cases goods service continued into the 1960s. In Hampshire, Nursling station closed in 1957.

and

Limpley Stoke Limpley Stoke is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. It lies in the Avon valley between Bath and Freshford, and is both above and below the A36 road. The parish is surrounded to the north, west and south by the Bath and North E ...

stations closed in 1966. The same year saw closure of the remaining local stations on the Chippenham branch: Lacock Halt, Beanacre Halt, ,

Holt Holt or holte may refer to: Natural world *Holt (den), an otter den * Holt, an area of woodland Places Australia * Holt, Australian Capital Territory * Division of Holt, an electoral district in the Australian House of Representatives in Vic ...

(along with the entire Devizes branch) and Staverton Halt. The section of line between Thingley Jn and Bradford Junction continued to be used by freight trains and occasional passenger trains, such as during engineering works or summer excursions. A regular passenger service was reinstated in 1985 with the reopening of Melksham station.

References

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