Notes: Dartmouth station was located in the town of Dartmouth on the river front. The station was very unusual in that it never was served by trains. Indeed no actual railway was ever to reach Dartmouth. The nearest that steel rails ever came to Dartmouth was on the opposite side of the river Dart at Kingswear.

There had been various schemes during the 1850s to build a railway to Dartmouth during which was an important maritime town but all had come to nothing. That was until the Dartmouth and Torbay Railway Company were formed so that a line could be built from the South Devon Railway, which ran from Newton Abbott to Torre near Torquay, to Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth and Torbay Railway reached Paignton on the 2nd of August 1859 and Brixham Road, later renamed as Churston, nearly two years later. The line was completed to Kingswear on the 16th August 1864 and it was on that date that Dartmouth Station opened. Dartmouth Station was a single storey wooden building with a pitched roof topped of with decorative ironwork. A canopy faced onto the street and a covered walkway linked to a floating landing stage. The floating landing stage allowed vessels to dock at the station at all states of the tide. The landing stage itself was 58 feet long making it capable of handling substantial passenger traffic. The station master at Dartmouth was paid more than his colleague at Kingswear due to the important traffic to HMS Britannia which later became the Royal Naval College Dartmouth.

In January 1872 the Dartmouth and Torbay Railway company was absorbed into the South Devon railway and in 1882 the lines between Newton Abbot and Kingswear became part of the GWR. By this date regular express services ran from Kingswear to London Paddington. The area around Torbay was promoted as a tourist area and during the summer many extra services ran. In 1892, in common with the entire GWR Broad Gauge network the line to Kingswear which had been built as broad gauge

During the First and Second World Wars regular passenger traffic and tourist traffic was interrupted. However this was more than compensated for because of the Royal Navy presence at Dartmouth which meant that many special trains ran. After the Second World War regular passenger services and holiday traffic returned to the previous levels. In 1948 Dartmouth

During the 1960s passenger numbers began to decline as road transport competed for the railways business. By 1971, apart from Summer holiday services, Kingswear was only served by 12 DMU operated trains per day. Onward ferries to Dartmouth were more frequent though as they were used by local people.

As early as 1968 the Paignton to Kingswear line had been earmarked for closure, although interestingly the 1963 Beeching Report had suggested that the line be kept open. The threat had not gone away and a Company of Enthusiasts was formed called the Dart Valley Light Railway Co (DVLR). The DVLR started to negotiate a purchase of the line from British

The new company started to run trains from the start of the summer timetable in 1973. British railways included the DVLR services in its own national timetable. In the 1990s the DVLR became the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway (PDSR). Interesting the PDSR now runs the ferries that connect Kingswear to Dartmouth just as the GWR had once done. Dartmouth Station

See also: Churston