The Fovant Military Railway by Peter Harding

[Moonraker]

Hot off the press is The Fovant Military Railway, a 24-page booklet by Peter A Harding. This was a short-lived railway line (and also short in that it ran for only 2 miles 73 chains from Dinton Station on the Salisbury-Exeter main line) that was created in 1915 after much of the building of Fovant Camp, which caused local roads to be churned up by heavy vehicles. After the Armistice, it still saw a great deal of use conveying troops to the Camp, which had become a demobilisation centre. From 1921 to 1924 it was re-opened to help with the demolition of the camp. The track was lifted in 1926, though a small part of the trackbed close to Dinton Station was used again in 1936 to serve RAF storage bunkers in former quarries.

 

Peter has sourced a number of photographs new to me of staff (military and civil) at the grandly-named Fovant Central Station (toilet and ticket office) and of the military badges carved in the hillside above Fovant. Best of all perhaps, he has found plans of the track, showing its continuation from Fovant Central across the Great South West Road (now the A30) to engine and goods sheds - something no one else has published in recent times.

 

Peter has published some 25 other booklets on minor railways, including those serving Bisley Camp, Bordon and Bulford.

 

No indication of the price, but the other titles are listed on the Web at £4 each.

 

I got a courtesy copy because I provided a photo and some information. Also in the booklet (courtesy of its current owner)  is a reproduction of a rare postcard of railway staff that I foolishly swopped for several ordinary "military Wiltshire" postcards about 19 years ago.

 

Moonraker

[Moonraker]

Yesterday I re-visited Fovant for the first time in some years with the aim of following the route of the military railway as best I could. A bit disappointing (as is a YouTube video). Even when knowing (more or less) where to look, I saw hardly any traces. The only suggestion was where the track ran along the eastern edge of the village on a "ledge" carved out of the hillside but now on private properties. About 20 years ago a resident showed me a small stone retaining wall and also a rail embedded in Green Drove  south of Greystones,  that has disappeared. (The public footpath linking Fovant and Greystones was completely covered by crops; it was indicated by a waymark at its western end, but nothing at all at the eastern end, not even a gap in the hedge.)

I was struck by some of the gradients the trains had to tackle. I'm guessing that a camp railway hadn't been intended (elsewhere in Wiltshire they were laid very early in the construction of the camp), but the roads were reduced to quagmires after the very wet winter of 1914-15, leading to a necessary afterthought.

EDIT: Where I vaguely recall the rail to have been was a length of wood that I thought might have been a sleeper, though it looked rounded. Having consulted Peter A Harding's The Fovant Military Railway,  I see that he too thought it was a sleeper. (After closure, local residents acquired many other sleepers.)

Edited 5 June , 2023 by Moonraker