The Bristol & English Channels Direct Junction Railway, as proposed in 1845, was a highly unlikely proposition, intended to link the Dorset port of Bridport Harbour (now West Bay) with the Somerset port of Watchet. It never happened, and more than ten years passed before a more practical proposition for a railway link to Watchet was put forward. Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself was present at the launch of what was locally known as the Taunton & Watchet Railway in 1856, but it was the West Somerset Railway Act of 1857 that finally enabled serious planning to begin. The first engineering work on the West Somerset Railway began in 1859, and up to three hundred navvies worked on the project. Two years later, as the line approached Watchet, local photographer James Date was on hand to record the works. The line opened to traffic in 1862 and Watchet was the terminus from then until 1874.
Originally laid in broad, 7 foot (214 cm) gauge, like the Great Western Railway, the West Somerset, by then a GWR branch line, was converted to standard gauge in 1882 and operated in total for 109 years, closing in 1971. That was not the end, however, for out of the closure grew the private West Someset Railway, which to this day keeps alive the spirit of a Great Western branch line, steam trains and all.
One of James Date’s 1861 stereoscopic ambrotypes showing the construction work on the West Somerset Railway as it approached Watchet past centuries-old thatched buildings.
The hotelier and the butcher: in this remarkable hand-tinted ambrotype from the early 1860s, Henry Chidley, landlord of Watchet’s London Inn, and Mr Thorne, the local butcher, pose in the photographer’s studio as if negotiating over the price of a rack of lamb.