General information | |||||
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Location | Coombe, Cornwall England | ||||
Coordinates | 50°26′42″N4°28′52″W / 50.4449°N 4.48109°W | ||||
Grid reference | SX239635 | ||||
Managed by | Great Western Railway | ||||
Platforms | 1 | ||||
Other information | |||||
Station code | COE | ||||
Classification | DfT category F2 | ||||
Key dates | |||||
1896 | Opened | ||||
Passengers | |||||
2018/19 | 204 | ||||
2019/20 | 188 | ||||
2020/21 | 28 | ||||
2021/22 | 112 | ||||
2022/23 | 120 | ||||
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Coombe Junction Halt railway station (Cornish :Gorta Kemper Komm) serves the villages of Coombe and Lamellion near Liskeard,Cornwall,England,UK. It is situated on the Looe Valley Line and operated by Great Western Railway. [1] All trains on this line have to reverse at Coombe Junction,but very few continue the short distance into the platform to allow passengers to alight or join the train.
The Liskeard and Looe Railway was opened on 27 December 1860 to carry goods traffic;passenger trains running from 11 September 1879. The railway in those days connected with the Liskeard and Caradon Railway at Moorswater and there was no station at Coombe but a platform was provided here from 1896 and trains would call to set down passengers going to Liskeard if they notified the guard,as the steep road from Coombe to the station was considerably shorter than the route from Moorswater through Liskeard. [2]
The extension line from Coombe Junction up to Liskeard opened for goods traffic on 25 February 1901. Passenger trains started to use this line on 15 May 1901 when Moorswater was closed to passengers. All trains called at what is now Coombe Junction station while the locomotive ran around to the south end of the train to continue the journey. The original track layout included a loop south of the station to allow two trains to pass,but from 1928 this was combined with the platform road and after this trains could only pass after the first had run round and shunted onto the through line,when the second could be allowed into the platform.
It is one of the only two stations in the National Rail Timetable to have the suffix 'halt' (the other being nearby St Keyne Wishing Well Halt). [3] The term 'halt' was removed from British Rail timetables and station signs and other official documents by 1974;the return of the term came only for these two stations in 2008 although Coombe Junction had not previously had the "halt" designation.
The station is rendered on tickets as 'Coombe Cornwall'. [4]
Liskeard and Coombe Junction stations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There is just a single platform, on the right of arriving trains, which can be accessed from the road at Lamellion, at the north end, or from a footpath running alongside the track from the level crossing to Coombe House, to the south.
Passenger trains have to reverse at Coombe Junction, but most do so without entering the station. The line continuing beyond the platform is no longer used, but runs to the now disused cement terminal at Moorswater, which lies just beyond the Moorswater Viaduct, carrying the Cornish Main Line across the valley.
Due to the rural location and limited service, the station has relatively few passenger facilities: only a basic shelter and a help point. It used to have a payphone inside the shelter, but this has since been removed due to damage. [5]
Coombe is served by just two trains a day in each direction Monday-Saturday. There is no Sunday service. [6] The station used to get a more regular service in the 1960s. [7]
Preceding station | National Rail | Following station | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Liskeard | Great Western Railway Looe Valley Line | train reverses | ||
St Keyne Wishing Well Halt |
Coombe Junction signal box was situated on the west side of the line near the junction, but since 1981 the points have been worked by the guard of the train using two ground frames on the east side of the line. Number 1 Ground Frame is at the junction south of the station, and Number 2 Ground Frame is just north of the platform for the section to Moorswater.
With 26 passenger entries and exits between April 2014 and March 2015, it was the second-least used station in Great Britain that year, behind Shippea Hill. [8]
The railway between Liskeard and Looe is designated as a community rail line and is supported by marketing provided by the Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership. The line is promoted under the "Looe Valley Line" name. [6]
The Looe Valley Line is an 8+3⁄4-mile (14 km) community railway from Liskeard to Looe in Cornwall, England, that follows the valley of the East Looe River for much of its course. It is operated by Great Western Railway.
Liskeard railway station serves the town of Liskeard in Cornwall, England. The station is approximately 18 miles (29 km) west of Plymouth on the Cornish Main Line and 264 miles 71 chains (426.3 km) from London Paddington via Box and Plymouth Millbay. It is the junction for the Looe Valley Line. The railway station is situated approximately 0.5 miles (0.80 km) south-west of Liskeard town centre.
Par railway station serves the villages of Par, Tywardreath and St Blazey, Cornwall, England. The station is 281 miles 66 chains down the line from London Paddington, measured via Box and Plymouth Millbay. It is the junction for the Atlantic Coast Line to Newquay.
Truro railway station serves the city of Truro, Cornwall, England. The station is on the Cornish Main Line and is the junction for the Maritime Line to Falmouth Docks. It is situated at milepost 300.75 miles (484.01 km) from London Paddington, which is measured via Bristol Temple Meads, although most trains use the shorter route via Newbury.
Quintrell Downs railway station serves the village of Quintrell Downs in Cornwall, England. It is 300 miles 16 chains measured from the zero point at London Paddington, on the Atlantic Coast Line. The station is managed by Great Western Railway with local services in each direction all calling here.
Looe railway station serves the twin towns of East and West Looe, in Cornwall, England. The station is the terminus of the scenic Looe Valley Line 8.75 miles (14 km) south of Liskeard. It faces out across the estuary of the River Looe.
Sandplace railway station is an intermediate station on the scenic Looe Valley Line in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The station serves the hamlet of Sandplace and is 6.5 miles (10 km) south of Liskeard.
Causeland railway station is an intermediate station 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Liskeard on the scenic Looe Valley Line in Cornwall, United Kingdom, which serves the hamlet of Causeland.
St Keyne Wishing Well Halt railway station is an intermediate station on the scenic Looe Valley Line in Cornwall, England. It serves the village of St Keyne, and is adjacent to the Magnificent Music Machines museum of fairground organs and similar instruments.
The Cornish Main Line is a railway line in Cornwall and Devon in the United Kingdom. It runs from Penzance to Plymouth, crossing from Cornwall into Devon over the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash.
Moorswater is an industrial suburb of Liskeard in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated approximately half-a-mile (0.8 km) west of Liskeard town centre.
The Liskeard and Caradon Railway was a mineral railway in Cornwall, in the United Kingdom, which opened in 1844. It was built to carry the ores of copper and tin, and also granite, from their sources on Caradon Hill down to Moorswater for onward transport to market by way of Looe Harbour and coastal shipping. At first this was on the Liskeard and Looe Union Canal and later on the parallel Liskeard and Looe Railway.
The Liskeard and Looe Railway was a railway originally built between Moorswater, in the valley west of Liskeard, and Looe, in Cornwall, England, UK, and later extended to Liskeard station on the Cornish Main Line railway. The first section was opened in 1860 and was owned by the Liskeard and Looe Union Canal Company, whose canal had earlier been built to convey sea sand and lime up the valley of the East Looe River, for the purpose of improving agricultural land.
There are seventeen disused railway stations on the Cornish Main Line between Plymouth in Devon and Penzance in Cornwall, England. The remains of nine of these can be seen from passing trains. While a number of these were closed following the so-called "Beeching Axe" in the 1960s, many of them had been closed much earlier, the traffic for which they had been built failing to materialise.
There are eight disused railway stations between Wadebridge and Bodmin North on the former Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway in Cornwall, in the United Kingdom, with ten other closed sidings on the branches to Ruthern Bridge and Wenfordbridge. The section from Boscarne Junction to Bodmin General is currently part of the Bodmin and Wenford Steam Railway; the line from Wadebridge to Wenfordbridge is now part of the Camel Trail, and the line to Ruthern Bridge can be followed for much of its length as it runs parallel to a public road.
Moorswater railway station was the centre of operations for the Liskeard and Caradon Railway and the Liskeard and Looe Railway. The two railways made an end on junction here. It was the site of the lines' engine shed, also a china clay works which is now used as a cement terminal.
The Truro and Newquay Railway was a Great Western Railway line in Cornwall, England, designed to keep the rival London and South Western Railway (LSWR) out of the west of the county. The line was completed in 1905 and closed in 1963.
Sandplace is a small village in the parish of Morval, two miles north of Looe in Cornwall, Great Britain. It is situated on the B3254, the old Liskeard to Looe road which joins the A387 to the south. The village is alongside the East Looe river and has been served by Sandplace railway station, on the Looe Valley Line since 1881.
Samuel Syrus Hunt (1873–1953) wrote poetry under the pseudonym Bernard Moore. He had six books published of both his own and collected works beginning in 1914. His subject was mainly Cornwall, in particular its fishermen but he also wrote war poetry. Many of his poems are written in the Cornish dialect. He also collected some Cornish songs. He is best known for his poem 'Travelling' which contrasts the sights and sounds of a railway journey through grimy urban London with the tranquility of one on the rural Looe Valley Line.
The St Germans & Looe Railway was a proposed new railway in Cornwall by the Great Western Railway, providing a direct connection between St Germans and Looe. The railway was proposed in 1935 and authorised in 1936, and work commenced in 1937. By the time that war began in 1939 only a small amount of work had been completed, and it was abandoned. Had the railway been completed, it would have involved the construction of four stations, three tunnels and two viaducts.