A new information board has been installed in Station Court at the entrance to the North Dorset Trailway detailing the history of the site which from 1863 to 1970 was home to Blandford Railway Station.

The board shows a layout of the station describing its role as the main conduit for more than 100 years for freight including mail, coal, military equipment, household goods, brewery and agricultural equipment and products.

There are pictures of the goods yard in operation, with photographs of railway workers in the 1940s, Winston Churchill’s visit with the King during the Second World War, the goods shed, and the view down onto the platform from the Alexandra Street iron bridge.

The board has been commissioned by the Blandford Stour Rotary Club in association with the Blandford Railway Club as one in a series of boards along the route of the former railway, and is part of a project launched by the Rotarians who from 2013 onwards established a fund to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2018 by contributing to a worthwhile project.

One of the projects chosen was to provide enhancements to the North Dorset Trailway to better present its past on the route of the Somerset & Dorset Railway, and last year another information board was sited at the Milldown, site of the Second World War PoW camp, and the buffers at the end of the Trailway, originally put in place as a reminder of the ‘end of the line’ after the closure of the railway, were restored with the help of the Railway Club, Dorset Rangers and contractors Mark Farwell.

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