On Thursday 27 December 2018 Joseph Rogers, author of the forthcoming title “Britain’s Greatest Bridges”, became the first person recorded by the West Somerset Railway to run from Bishops Lydeard to Minehead via every station on the line.
Here he is at our beloved Williton Station, doing a WSR Station visit before continuing to Doniford Halt as part of his 24.1 mile run.
The route follows safe areas around the West Somerset Railway following public footpaths. Such a challenge had been proposed on the official West Somerset Railway website for the year, with a sheet available to print off to record each station visit, but until now, no such form had ever been completed and handed back to the railway.

Chris Hooper, being a booking clerk, obviously is not very knowledgeable about steam engines.

Offering a bucket of coal to get the train back from Williton to Bishops Lydeard will not be quite enough, Chris.

Although ‘every little helps’ !

Photo: © Richard Salt.

Station Staff member Richard Salt, as can be seen, is mad about Christmas now that the Santa Trains started for the season on December 1st 2018.  Let’s hope Richard returns to normal when these special trains end on Christmas Eve.

Regular station visitor and train traveller ‘Rocky’ Leete sporting his new Postate Cancer UK kerchief on Williton No.2 Platform. Friday 5th October, 2018.

Promoted by the Station Master and created by many of the team, including Peter BBQ Chef and Liz major caterer, with an enthusiastic supporting cast, the annual station barbecue was a delight for all staff attending this private event.

This was one of the first cool days when more than the T-shirt and shorts was now required. Nevertheless with the warmth of excellent burgers and hot dogs, delicious puddings, all washed down with wine, beer, cider and juice (we all were of course off duty!) and good company kept us all in the best of cheer.

The first photo shows Peter and Liz, caterer and chef on the left in deep discussion with Dave and Ron. Further pictures show sated staff after the meal, the Station Master now remembering, as the light fails, that he brought his camera!

We have received a video just completed by Swiss national Beat Hebeisen which was shot when he visited us in 2014!

It’s about 5 minutes long and does include a few scenes at the end, showing watering and coaling, taken at the end of the line.

Here is the link  https://vimeo.com/282346362

Williton Station achieved runner up in The Best Kept Station Competition held this July.

Hard work on buildings refurbishment, fencing repairs, miles of painting, café service, customer care and beautiful flower baskets showed the station to great advantage, convincing the judges of this high status among we ten competitors on the line!

Paul Conibeare, WSR General Manager, presents Williton Station Master John Parsons with the 2018 runner up certificate in the Best Kept Station Competition, organised by WSR Chairman Ian Coleby (right).

With much help from Bev Zehetmeier for 2017 photographs and my son Alex for manipulating the out-of-date software (complicated by its use of now incompatible plugins) the website now getting to the stage where news and photographs can be presented.

Please make your contributions of news,  comments and photographs to stationpix@gmail.com. Each e-mail (message and attachments) must be less than 10mb and the preferred format is JPEG. Images must be at least 640 pixels on the longest side. Include in the message the date the photograph was taken, whose copyright it is, and a brief description.

Chris

This is a difficult period where we are endeavoring to update the website but find very old versions of the software are in use and updating is proving to be extremely difficult and time consuming!

Several of the illustrations have gone missing and many things still need updating and repairing.

Meanwhile the website may show erratic signs of change from day to day!

Please send us photos taken of Williton Station areas from 2017 and 18 to stationpix@gmail.com.