Westbury railway station

Westbury railway station is a railway station serving the town of Westbury in Wiltshire, England. The station is managed by First Great Western.

The station is a major junction, serving the Reading to Taunton line with services to and from Penzance and London Paddington, Wessex Main Line with services to and from Cardiff and Portsmouth,  services to Swindon (limited service), Heart of Wessex Line providing local services from Bristol to Weymouth, and services to London Waterloo.

The buffet at Westbury appeared in a list of "highly commended" station cafes published in The Guardian in 2009.

History
The station was opened by the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway (WS&WR) on 5 September 1848, and was the initial terminus of the WS&WR line from Chippenham. This line was later extended to Frome, which opened on 7 October 1850. The Salisbury branch opened on 30 June 1856, whilst the opening of the line to Patney & Chirton in 1900 (along with that further west from Castle Cary to Cogload Junction six years later) completed the GWR's new main line from London Paddington to Taunton and beyond.

In the 1880s, the station was one of the meeting places of the South and West Wilts Hunt.

In 1901, Westbury railway station was entirely rebuilt, creating two "island" platforms six hundred feet long and forty feet wide. It has since been rebuilt and remodelled several times, most recently when the area was resignalled in 1985 (when the Down Salisbury platform line was lifted), but without changing the underlying form created in 1901. A freight yard next to the station is used by bulk limestone trains from the rail-served quarries at Merehead and Whatley in Somerset

Services
The station is served by all three main routes that pass through it. On the main Reading to Taunton Line, the station is served by westbound trains to one of Exeter St Davids, Plymouth, or Penzance and eastbound services to London Paddington.

There is a service on the Cardiff Central to Southampton Central and Portsmouth Harbour line and a separate service between Gloucester, Bristol and Westbury on this route. Some of these trains continue through to Weymouth, and there are trains from Weymouth to Bristol & Gloucester. There are services to Frome, Warminster and Southampton plus through trains to and from Brighton.

South West Trains runs a service between Bristol and that calls here.

There is also a limited service run between Westbury and Swindon via Chippenham, Trowbridge and Melksham - this is due to be upgraded substantially (eight trains each way weekdays, five on Sundays) at the December 2013 timetable change.

Future
The line to Westbury is not due to be electrified as part of the 21st-century modernisation of the Great Western Main Line. Although local councillors support it, the extension of electrification beyond Newbury to Westbury was assessed as having a benefit–cost ratio of only 0.31.