Lympstone Commando railway station - 0845 700 0125

Lympstone Commando railway station is a railway station on the branch line from Exeter to Exmouth in Devon, England.The station is a rare example of a passenger station not open to the general public; it is exclusively for the use of visitors to the Royal Marine Commando Training Centre at Lympstone, despite being accessible by means of a public footpath. The Ministry of Defence have accepted that it is the property of Network Rail, and as such they cannot prohibit members of the public from alighting at the station, although exit from the station is through a locked gate.HistoryThe station was opened on 3 May 1976 by British Rail. This caused some confusion with the older Lympstone railway station, but this has since been renamed "Lympstone Village". It was built using cast platform sections recovered from Weston Milton railway station where the track had been singled and so one platform was no longer needed.For many years troop trains were a feature of its operation about three times each year. The trains were operated with a locomotive at each end as there is no way to run around a train south of Topsham; the leading locomotive on arrival was dragged back to Exeter Central where it was detached. The trains were considerably longer than the platform and loading the passengers was a slow operation as they had to make their way through the train from the centre coaches. A similar operation today is difficult to arrange as the regular timetabled passenger service is much more intensive than in the 1980s.

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