150 years ago , the railway reached Torrington.
On 18th July 1872 the line. constructed by the North Devon Railway, carried its first passengers towards Bideford, Barnstaple and beyond. Track had reached Bideford in 1855 but the original station wasn’t well situated for the five-mile extension to Torrington so had to be moved to its present site.
Torrington station had two platforms, a goods shed, an engine shed and a turntable. From the start, passenger trains were operated by the London and South Western Railway. Initially, there were six weekday return services with one on Sunday. By 1963 this had increased to 11 in the week and three on Sundays. Most ran only to Barnstaple for connecting services. One called the Atlantic Coast Express ran through to London Waterloo.
In 1880 the three-foot gauge Torrington and Marland Railway started carrying freight. It was rebuilt as a standard gauge line in 1925 to connect Torrington with Halwill Junction. Passenger trains ran along the line through Yarde and Hatherleigh at a very sedate 25mph. In the 1963 Southern Region timetable, the 20 mile journey took the two daily trains each way an hour and a half. The line also carried china clay from the quarries around Petrockstow and Meeth until 1982.
As well as passenger and china clay traffic, the line through Torrington carried two daily milk trains to London. This continued until 1978. In the seventies ICI opened a fertisiler depot in the station yard and supplies were brought in and out by train for a few years.
Torrington Station in 1985 showing the ICI depot on the right
Passenger services through Torrington ended in 1965 but the line did reopen and carry people again in January 1968 when the one of the area’s road bridges was damaged by flooding. After this, the line again reverted to carrying goods only until was closed completely in 1982.
After full closure and track removal in 1985, the station building at Torrington was converted to a public house, and then to a restaurant/ licensed café called the Puffing Billy. The track bed between Barnstaple and Meeth now form part of the Tarka Trail cycle/walking network.
In July 2008, a railway preservation society was formed to create a heritage railway based in Torrington. The Tarka Valley Railway Society has laid a few hundred yards of track adjacent to the platforms and displaying some rolling stock such as a 1950s Mark 1 carriage, China clay wagon and a small diesel shunting engine.
A longer-term objective is the development of a tourist railway, extending as far as Bideford where the Bideford Railway Heritage Centre has been developed.
A replica of the original signal box was built in 1992 and an interpretation centre’s been opened in a redundant parcels van.
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