Photo "The former Midland and South Western Junction Railway (M&SWJR) extended their main line from Swindon to Andover through Collingbourne Kingston along this route in 1891. However it was not until 1932 that the halt here was built and a photograph available elsewhere on the internet shows that it was nothing more than a couple of short wooden platforms each with a rudimentary corrugated metal hut as a waiting room. The train service was odd to say the least, with a 1953 timetable showing 3 trains leaving northbound for Swindon at 8.18 am, 3.01 pm and 6.07 pm, with the first and the last continuing the full length of the M&SWJR to Cheltenham, while there were 4 trains leaving southbound for Andover at 8.41 am, 4.11 pm, 5.40 pm and 7.57 pm. However the timetable did show the through timings to get from Collingbourne Kingston to Newcastle-upon-Tyne if you so desired (arriving at 6.29 pm if you caught the 8.18 am or 4.22 am if you caught the 6.07 pm...) The whole line was closed in September 1961, just a couple of months after Doctor Richard Beeching became Chairman of the British Railways Board. So the railway was already out of use by the time that Beeching's first report announcing wholesale closures of the railway network was published in 1963." by Nigel Cox (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0) / Cropped from original

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Photo by Nigel Cox (CC BY-SA)