Fishguard and Goodwick railway station

Fishguard and Goodwick
Welsh: Abergwaun ac Wdig
A Class 153 Sprinter unit calls at Fishguard & Goodwick on the day of its reopening, 14 May 2012. This was the 09:56 Fishguard Harbour to Carmarthen service.
Location
Place	Goodwick
Local authority	Pembrokeshire
Coordinates	52°00′13″N 4°59′41″W / 52.0035°N 4.9948°WCoordinates: 52°00′13″N 4°59′41″W / 52.0035°N 4.9948°W
Grid reference	SM945381
Operations
Station code	FGW
Managed by	Arriva Trains Wales
Owned by	Pembrokeshire County Council
Number of platforms	1
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2012/13	12,072
2013/14	17,062
2014/15	19,874
History
Original company	Great Western Railway
Pre-grouping	Great Western Railway
Post-grouping	Great Western Railway
1 August 1899	Opened as Goodwick
1 May 1904	Renamed Fishguard and Goodwick
6 April 1964	Regular services ceased
3 August 1964	all passenger trains ceased
1965	Reopened for Motorail services only
19 September 1980	Closed
14 May 2012[1]	Reopened for passenger services
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Fishguard and Goodwick from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Fishguard and Goodwick railway station is a railway station sited 1 mile from Fishguard in the neighbouring town of Goodwick, Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is owned by Pembrokeshire County Council and just over .5 miles (0.80 km) from the larger Fishguard Harbour station. Following its closure in 1964 (1980 for Motorail), it reopened on 14 May 2012 following investment from Network Rail and Pembrokeshire County Council.

History

Construction of the line

The station was the planned terminus of the Rosebush and Fishguard Railway. Complications meant that, despite work having begun at Rosebush in 1878, the line was not completed by 1898 when the company (now called the North Pembrokeshire and Fishguard Railway) was purchased by the Great Western Railway Company. It is likely that this takeover was prompted by the North Pembrokeshire & Fishguard Railway's plans for a harbour at Goodwick to attract Irish traffic (the GWR had a major such port at Neyland) and/or their ambitious plan to link this new harbour to Carmarthen with their own line to break the GWR's monopoly of rail lines into west Wales.

Early 20th-century view of Fishguard and Goodwick Railway Station

Early years

Goodwick station opened on 1 August 1899 under GWR ownership. The station was called Goodwick until 1 May 1904 when it was renamed Fishguard and Goodwick.^[2] It was a terminus until the GWR opened their extension to Fishguard Harbour in 1906 and moved their Irish ferry operation there from Neyland.^[3]

Closure and subsequent usage

The station was closed on 6 April 1964 by British Railways, when local trains between Fishguard and Clarbeston Road were withdrawn. After closure to normal passenger trains the station remained in use for workmen's trains to the RNAD Trecwn, until these services were withdrawn on 1 August 1964.

From 18 June 1965 the station became the terminus of a seasonal motorail service from London, the end loading dock behind the former main (Up side) platform being used for unloading the cars. Early photographs show the station building to be shorter than it is today, with the extension carried out along with refurbishment for motorail traffic. Motorail kept the station in use each summer season until the regular service ended on 19 September 1980^[4] and the occasional peak service on 16 September 1982.^[5]

The station was used temporarily in June 1982, when the railway lines at Fishguard Harbour were moved and re-laid.^[6] High speed train services ran through the site of station until the early 1990s but services ceased in 1994.^[7]

The overgrown and derelict state of the station in 2007

Reopening

Reopening Fishguard and Goodwick as a rail/bus interchange had been considered by Pembrokeshire County Council for some years. For this reason it purchased the (disused) station site. This was sometime before an increased service frequency on the Fishguard line was secured, and no visible progress was made towards reopening until the announcement of extra trains.

In March 2011, it was announced that Welsh Assembly Government subsidy would be provided to allow an increase in train frequency on the Fishguard line from two trains per day to seven from 12 September 2011 for three years.^[8] This prompted a search for funding to re-open Fishguard & Goodwick railway station; funding was successfully found and it was announced that the station was to re-open in March 2012.

The new Fishguard and Goodwick Railway station under construction 2012

The re-opening work cost £325,000, including realignment of the track by Network Rail by the end of 2011^[9] and laying of tarmac over part of the station yard to provide a car park (with further tarmac over the rest of the station yard, to enlarge the car park, a future possibility^[10]). Another aspect of the work was demolition of the station building, which took place in August 2011^[11] between the announcement of extra services and their launch (on 12 September. Since the station is within the Goodwick Conservation Area, this demolition violated policy 80 of the Joint Unitary Development Plan for Pembrokeshire,^[12] but went ahead anyway as the building was in a dangerous condition with very little in a state that could possibly have been salvaged.

The work to reopen the station was a joint operation between Pembrokeshire County Council and Network Rail. In March 2012, Network Rail announced that the station would reopen on 14 May 2012 and would be served by the seven trains each way per day which currently run through the station.^[13] The station duly re-opened on 14 May 2012.^[14] It was adopted under Arriva's adopt-a-station scheme by the local community group POINT.^[15]

References

1. Fishguard Trains 3 April 2012
2. Butt, R.V.J. (1995). The Directory of Railway Stations. Yeovil: Patrick Stephens Ltd. pp. 106, 97. ISBN 1-85260-508-1. R508.
3. Parker, Richard; Morris, John (2008) [1981]. The Railways Of Pembrokeshire. Corhampton: Noodle Books. ISBN 978-1-906419-07-3.
4. Parker & Morris 2008, p. 238
5. Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (January 2010). Western Main Lines: Carmarthen To Fishguard. Midhurst: Middleton Press. figure 73. ISBN 978-1-906008-66-6.
6. Parker & Morris 2008, p. 
7. Intercity Magazine Network Map 1993 Retrieved 5 December 2012
8. "Pupils' petition for more Fishguard trains pays off". BBC News. 30 March 2011.
9. "Goodwick railway station near Fishguard to reopen". BBC News. 2 January 2012. Retrieved 2 January 2012.
10. "Fishguard Trains - Boys From The Black Stuff".
11. "Fishguard Trains - Goodwick Station Demolished".
12. "Policy 80". Retrieved 13 July 2011.
13. "Fishguard and Goodwick station to reopen after 50 years". Network Rail. 16 March 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
14. "Fishguard and Goodwick train station officially reopens after 48 years". BBC News. 14 May 2012.
15. "Pembrokeshire Youngsters Adopt Wales' Newest Station". Arriva UK Trains. 24 October 2012. Retrieved 1 November 2012.

External links

• Train times and station information for Fishguard and Goodwick railway station from National Rail

Media related to Fishguard and Goodwick railway station at Wikimedia Commons

• Joint Unitary Development Plan For Pembrokeshire
• Fishguard and Goodwick Station on navigable 1954 O.S. map
• Fishguard & Goodwick. The original station building photographed in-situ in 2006