This article describes the history and operation of the railway routes west of Salisbury built by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and allied companies, which ultimately became part of the Southern Railway in the United Kingdom. Salisbury forms a natural boundary between the Southern Railway core routes in the counties surrounding London, and the long route connecting with the Devon and Cornwall lines.
Network
The routes within the scope of this article spring westward from , which was reached from Southampton in 1847. By 1857 there was a direct line from , 84 miles away, and in 1859 this extended towards Yeovil via the GWR station in Fisherton.
From Salisbury the main line continued broadly west, passing no major population centre until reaching Exeter. The difficult terrain, with numerous hills and valleys crossing the direction of the route, made selection of the alignment difficult, and several medium-sized towns were passed at a distance of a few miles. Many of these towns had to accept a horse omnibus connection from a remote station on the main line; later, some of them—Yeovil, Chard, Lyme Regis, Seaton, Sidmouth and Exmouth—gained their own branch line.
At Exeter, the LSWR had its own station, Queen Street, more conveniently situated than the St Davids station of the Bristol & Exeter Railway (B&ER), but its elevated location made onward extension into west Devon difficult. When it eventually did so, it descended by a steep and curved connection into the B&ER station, running a few miles northward on that line and then diverging to the west, to Crediton. The line onward led into several main line branches: to Barnstaple and Bideford (and later Ilfracombe); to Halwill and Holsworthy, with Halwill itself becoming a junction later; and to Plymouth, reached at first over part of the route of the rival broad gauge interest.
Securing territory
The London and South Western Railway (LSWR) was formed from the London and Southampton Railway, one of the earliest long-distance lines, which opened from 1838. The first line was successful, and the company then extended its network, at first by building branch lines from the original main line, and then by building new lines. Securing territory, by building a route to "capture" an area quickly became an objective as a part of growing the company's business, and it was a natural consequence that this developed into a competitive battle with companies whose territory lay adjacent.
This competition developed especially fiercely with the Great Western Railway (GWR). This company had opened its main line from London to Bristol in 1838, and developed alliances that extended its influence to Exeter. Most of the railways being built at that time used the standard track gauge (the spacing between the rails) of , but the GWR used a broad gauge of .
Often new railways in a locality were promoted by local interests, often wishing their line to be worked, or purchased, by one of the larger companies. Operation would be inconvenient if it were built to the gauge used by the rival, and the choice of gauge had to be made when seeking parliamentary authority for the construction. That choice implied—perhaps forced—alignment to one or other of the larger prospective parents. This led to the competition being characterised as the "gauge war".
As the territory in the counties near London became saturated, thoughts of expansion turned to the relatively undeveloped west of England. The GWR and the Bristol & Exeter Railway working in partnership had formed a through route from London to Exeter in 1844, and with the South Devon Railway was to reach Plymouth in 1848; the three companies formed the powerful "broad gauge alliance".
The broad gauge route to Exeter ran via Bristol, leaving much territory as yet unsecured, and despite the agreement, the LSWR determined to build a line to Exeter. But although it had reached Salisbury, this was a branch line from Bishopstoke (Eastleigh), and Exeter was 88 miles away.
The onward development forms the main content of this article.
Development of LSWR routes
Salisbury first
On 17 January 1847, the first LSWR goods train, headed by the locomotive Rhinoceros entered the Salisbury station, at Milford at the south-eastern edge of the city. This event was hugely significant to the city, bringing the possibility of industrial development, so that "Salisbury might become the Manchester of the South".