Marlborough railway stations refers to the two railway stations which served Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, until 1964.
The stations were on separate routes. A branch line was built by an independent railway friendly to the Great Western Railway (GWR) from Savernake to Marlborough in 1864. A north–south railway, later to be part of a long-distance trunk route, opened from Swindon to its own station at Marlborough in 1881, extending south to Andover in 1881. The two routes came under the same management at the "Grouping" of the railways in 1923 and some rationalisation took place. Passenger services to Marlborough were withdrawn in 1961 and goods services in 1964.
The Great Western Railway Branch
Marlborough Railway
On 11 November 1862, the Berks and Hants Extension Railway (B&HER) opened a broad gauge railway line from Hungerford, itself originally the terminus of a branch line from Reading, to Devizes. At Devizes the new line linked up with the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway branch line from Trowbridge which had opened in 1857. The line was worked by the larger Great Western Railway (GWR).
Although Marlborough was an important market town, the new B&HER main line passed some distance to the south, near the village of Burbage. Local businessmen promoted an independent branch line, the Marlborough Railway, to connect their town to the Savernake station of the B&HER, north of Burbage. It opened on 15 April 1864; it was 5 miles 49 chains (9.0 km) in length, and built using the broad gauge. There were no intermediate stations, and trains departed from a new platform at Savernake.
This line too was worked by the GWR, and the B&HER and the Marlborough Railway were absorbed by the Great Western Railway in 1886; the Marlborough Railway was purchased for £9,250 in cash. Both lines were converted to standard gauge in 1874.
Marlborough GWR station
The GWR station in Marlborough was to the south-east of the town centre, on the west side of Salisbury Road; it had a substantial L-shaped red brick building with waiting rooms for both first-class and ordinary passengers. It had a single platform, and goods facilities were provided at the northern end. There was also a separate goods yard to the south of the station and an engine shed to the north-east near the buffer stops.
Marlborough GWR station became the focus for road traffic in the area, with horse buses at first along the Bath road; motor buses were introduced in 1904. Many of the bus services were operated by the GWR.
The Midland and South Western Junction Railway
The Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway
Original plans for railways in the Marlborough area had focused on a scheme for a north–south line to link Swindon with Andover, passing through Marlborough. Though the GWR branch line got to Marlborough first, the north–south plans were revived with an Act in 1873, and the Swindon, Marlborough and Andover Railway was built in two halves. The northern section, from Swindon Town south to Marlborough, was opened in July 1881; the southern section, from Andover Junction north to Grafton and Burbage, opened the following year, 1882.
The new Marlborough station opened as a terminus just to the east of the existing GWR station. It had a station building on the up platform (towards Swindon) with a huge canopy. There was a goods yard behind the up platform to the north-west of the passenger station, with a large goods shed.
Links to the GWR
Having built its lines from the north and the south, the financially strapped SM&AR then found that it could not join them, being unable to afford to persuade landowners to sell their property to build the missing link. Instead, it built a short link within Marlborough to the GWR branch line just south of Marlborough GWR station and another link from the GWR's Berks and Hants Extension Railway just east of Savernake station southwards to Grafton and Burbage station. From February 1883, SM&AR through trains used the GWR Marlborough branch and a short section of the B&HER main line, including Savernake station. A condition of the GWR lease was that passengers wanting to change at Savernake to other GWR services had to use the GWR trains from Marlborough.