REMINDERS that the south-west was once an area teeming with railway lines are all about us.

There are old station houses used as tea rooms, country walks along the paths of now-disused lines, and a number of roads named after this once-thriving method of transport.

Now a Dorset man has compiled a book tracing the routes around the whole country that have long been abandoned but are nevertheless still rich in railway culture.

Paul Atterbury, who lives in Weymouth, is best known for his role on TV’s Antiques Roadshow, but he has written extensively about railways, with seven books on the subject under his belt. He said: “A number of branch lines in the south west were built by small, independent companies set up by local merchants and businessmen keen to expand trade by linking their towns and villages to the national railway network.”

Typical was the Bridport Railway, whose nine-mile line to Maiden Newton opened amid great local celebration on 11 November 1857. In 1884 the line was extended to Bridport Harbour – a busy local trading and fishing port. This reflected the ambitions of the Great Western Railway, which was keen to develop a harbour and port that could rival Weymouth.

Thinking also of the developing tourist trade, the company renamed the harbour West Bay and hoped that the hotels would soon arrive, inspired by the beautiful coast and the new railway link. In the event not much happened and West Bay remained much the same as before, a small but busy local port. However, the carriage of beach gravel became a mainstay of the line and remained so until the closure of the West Bay extension in 1962.

Always popular with local users, the Bridport branch enjoyed a busy service. Indeed, a special bathing train left Bridport at seven each morning. In the early 1960s there were 20 trains each way on weekdays. The line survived the Beeching plan in the 1960s (when the government attempted to reduce the cost of running British Railways, resulting in a reduction of 25 per cent of route miles and 50 per cent of stations).

Paul Atterbury said: “By the 1970s Bridport had escaped a number of closure schemes, and its Houdini-like behaviour gave rise to plenty of local support and optimism. However, it was all in vain as full closure came in May 1975 – one of Britain’s last branch line closures. Had the line lived on for another couple of years, it would surely have survived.”

Today there are plenty of remains to be seen. In the late 1980s, West Bay station was a sorry sight, derelict and tumbledown and the platform used as a store for old boats and marine junk. Since then, this pretty stone building, built in the typical vernacular style of rural Dorset stations, has been fully restored and given a new lease of life as a cafe. Track has been relaid beside the platform, a signal has been erected and the trackbed towards Bridport has been turned into a public footpath.

Both Bridport’s stations have gone, but much of the Bridport branch survives the landscape. A solitary crossing gate just outside the town remains. The steeply graded route followed valleys through the hills up to Maiden Newton and can easily be identified from nearby minor roads.

Cuttings, embankments and bridges survive, along with platforms at Powerstock and Toller, the only intermediate stations.

“Powerstock Station always looked like a private house and that is now exactly what it is,” said Paul. “For those wanting to travel from Bridport to London, the journey was tortuous and involved a number of changes. This makes it even more remarkable that this essentially local railway kept going for so long.”