FROM THE WOODS TO THE SEA

ST IVES | 1877 - 1971

St Ives station, 5 August 1993. Photo by Bernard Mills. The former Plym Bridge Halt shelter is at the top end of the platform. This is where the halt was re-erected in 1971 as St Ives’ new station. The platform was then doubled in length in 1979.

Did you know? St Ives station opened on 1 June 1877 and originally took up the whole of the area which is now the car park.

With no freight and smaller diesel trains, together with the urgent need for car parking in the town, it was decided to build today’s station at the far end of the site and provide a large car park where the station had been.

As they had for the new Falmouth station, now Falmouth Town, British Rail looked to see if there was a disused station platform that could be dismantled and rebuilt as the new St Ives station.

The solution was found 70 miles away from St Ives in the picturesque Plym Valley, just outside Plymouth. There sat Plym Bridge Halt which had been on the former GWR route between Plymouth, Yelverton and Tavistock.

Plym Bridge Halt on 22 December 1962, just a week before closure. Photo by the late Keith Holt. Thanks to Bernard Mills for supplying it and permission for use. The photo appears in Bernard’s book “Backtracking Around Plymouth, Tavistock & Launceston”

Plym Bridge Halt had opened on 1 May 1906 to encourage day trippers to visit the Plym Valley by train. It was originally entirely wooden but in 1949, the platform was replaced by a precast concrete one complete with a new shelter.

The line and station were closed on 29 December 1962 after which time Plym Bridge Halt was abandoned and gradually became more and more overgrown.

It was dismantled and re-erected at St Ives, complete with shelter, opening there on 23 May 1971.

The opening of Lelant Saltings as a park and ride station for St Ives on 27 May 1978 was such an immediate success that it was decided to run longer trains when the following year’s season started in May 1979.

This meant that the platforms at both Lelant Saltings and St Ives stations would need to be lengthened. At St Ives, the extension – which doubled the length of the platform - was mainly at the buffer stops end.

Station improvements at St Ives around 2002 saw removal of the old Plym Bridge Halt shelter.

Plym Bridge Halt is now back on the railway as the terminus of the heritage Plym Valley Railway. A smart new station was opened there, on the site of the original one, on 30 December 2012, 50 years and a day since it closed.