The station site is now occupied by builders’ merchants 'Buildrite' which uses the station building as an office. The GWR goods shed remains in good condition to the rear of the large 'Buildrite' retail store which butts up to the west side of the station building.

Notes: The station opened with the line and was originally named Broadway. It was sited on the west side of the main Dorchester - Weymouth Road, close to the village centre and only 600yd from Upwey Junction station on the main line. On 24 June 1896 the spelling was changed to Broadwey after official advice had been taken. This spelling had been used in GWR timetables since 1893. The origin of the name is from the River Wey, as in Upwey and Weymouth, but the standard spelling seems - illogically - to have been Broadway well into the twentieth century. Ekwall's Oxford dictionary of English place-names (1960 edition of original 1935 publication) refers to 'Broadway' whilst associating the name with the River Wey. Although shown as Broadway on early Ordnance Survey maps, the post-war Popular' one-inch map spells the village 'Broadwey', as do current maps

The station had a single platform on the down side of the line. A single-storey warm yellowish limestone building with a hipped slate roof and three tall chimneys stood in the centre of the platform. It was similar to the buildings at Abbotsbury and Portesham and was constructed by sub-contractor Edwin Snook of Upwey to a design by William Clark, a freelance railway

The station had a small goods yard, also on the down side. This took the form of a loop siding with passed through a typical GWR stone goods shed. From the east side of the loop a short siding ran back behind the platform to serve a cattle dock and pens, with another siding from the west end of the loop running diagonally across the yard behind the goods shed. A 5-ton crane stood on a stone plinth between the cattle dock and the goods shed. Road access to the goods yard was from the station forecourt where a weighbridge and office were located, and rail access was controlled by a signal box on the down side, just west of the goods shed. In 1904 the box closed and was replaced with two ground frames: one was opposite the station building, and the other was west of Watery Lane bridge.

The station’s name was modified to Broadwey (Dorset) on 12 January 1906, probably to avoid confusion with Broadway in Worcestershire. A further change of name to Upwey took place on 1 January 1913, even though the station was in Broadway, Upwey village being ¾-mile to the north.
By the 1930s the valance on the canopy had been cut down to half its original depth. By the 1950s the station was still kept clean and tidy with neatly trimmed hedges on the down side of the line; some of the platform lighting had, however, been removed.  
               
After closure to passengers on 1 December 1952 the station remained open for goods traffic and was renamed Upwey Goods from that date. By 1961 the station canopy had been removed and the track had been re-laid as far as the end of the platform with new ballast and concrete sleepers. The station finally closed from 1 January 1962 and the track was lifted in 1965.

By the 1960s the trackbed had been filled up to platform level, and a warehouse had been built across the trackbed and goods yard, butting up to the west end of the station building which was retained as an office. The site was occupied by 'Bredy Supplies Ltd', a British Leyland tractor agent. In 1977 the site was bought by John House as a base for his already successful roofing contracting company 'I J House'. John House retired in 1994 but the business remained in the House family. The company is now trading as 'Buildrite', a trade builders and roofing merchant with a DIY and hire shop.Click to read the history of the company at Upwey. The station building is still in use as an office.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ABBOTSBURY RAILWAY
The Great Western Railway opened a mixed gauge line to Weymouth on 20 January 1857; this allowed trains from both Paddington (broad gauge) and Waterloo (standard gauge) to operate a service into the town. The Weymouth & Portland Railway Act was passed in 1862 authorising the extension of this line to Weymouth Quay; services would be provided jointly by the GWR and LSWR, and a freight-only line from Weymouth to Portland would be constructed which was operated solely by the GWR.  Both lines opened on 16 October 1865.

In 1872, a six-mile branch from the Weymouth line at Upwey to the village of Abbotsbury was proposed.  Abbotsbury was established in the eleventh century on the site of an existing religious community. It would have been one of the most important villages in the county, with the settlement laid out around a wide market area. After the decline of its monastery, Abbotsbury became the quiet village it is today. It is set amongst the hills behind Chesil Beach and the lagoon known as the Fleet, and is known worldwide for its Swannery and the Sub-tropical Gardens; the swan sanctuary is over 600 years old. The reason for promoting the line was primarily for freight, anticipating the commercial development of shale oil deposits and stone at Portesham, as well as iron ore at Abbotsbury which would be shipped to South Wales

Construction was slower than had been hoped owing to the difficulty in raising promised capital.  This caused problems with the contractors, Monk and Edwards of Chester, and all work stopped in 1881 forcing the company to apply to Parliament for an extension of time; they also sought powers to make small changes to the route at Upwey and Portesham after a speculator bought land on the original route and then demanded extortionate terms. Parliamentary approval was received on 19 May 1882.

In February 1883 the local company reached an agreement with the GWR to work and maintain the line on its completion.  After new contractors Green and Burleigh had been appointed, work restarted in October that year.  This was not the end of the line’s difficulties, however, as the contractors were declared bankrupt at the end of 1884. The established consulting civil engineer George Barclay Bruce was given the job of finishing the line. Bruce had an excellent reputation as a railway engineer: he worked for many railway companies in Britain, Europe, Asia and South America and was knighted in 1888. The GWR advanced £10,000 towards the cost of completion and appointed a director to the Abbotsbury board. The branch station buildings were constructed by sub-contractor Edwin Snook of Upwey.

Some of the navvies working on one of the contracts were black men who had been aboard a ship which was wrecked. Instead of returning to the USA they found work in constructing the Abbotsbury branch. A curious cultural legacy of their time in Dorset was that

On 2 October 1885 progress in construction was sufficient to allow a trial trip to operate on the line for directors and shareholders. Colonel Rich inspected the line for the Board of Trade on 28 October 1885 and found it satisfactory. Therefore, after eight years, the short branch finally opened to freight and passenger traffic on 9 November 1885, but with little ceremony. Because the station at Upwey Junction was incomplete, a horse-drawn carriage conveyed passengers between Upwey station on the Abbotsbury branch and the original Upwey station on the Dorchester line, half-a-mile north of Upwey Junction. This arrangement continued until Upwey Junction opened on 19 April 1886, replacing the original station. Intermediate stations were at Broadway and Upwey, and a single-road engine shed was provided at the Abbotsbury terminus for the branch locomotive. From the start the line operated under 'one engine in steam'.  The 1887 Bradshaw shows five up trains and five down trains with an additional evening service in each direction on Wednesday, and two trains in each direction on Sundays.

An incline was constructed at Portesham to link local quarries on the hill near the Hardy Monument. Once the line had opened it was quickly apparent that the expectations for it could not be fulfilled. There was only a little shale oil and it was not of a quality worth extracting; the iron ore was confined to one small area with no more to be found, and the stone at Portesham had no chance of competing with the extensive quarries at Portland. The extension was soon found to be impractical and once it was established that the line was not going to bring wealth to the area, it settled down to handle purely local traffic, with brisk passenger business at holiday times. On Easter Monday 1886, such was the demand that a double-headed eighteen-coach train ran from the branch to Weymouth in the afternoon.  In summer months Abbotsbury Swannery attracted many visitors who reached it by rail.

An accident occurred on 23 January 1894 involving the derailment of an Armstrong tender 0-6-0 locomotive when the train was on the tight curve between Upwey Junction and Upwey stations; this revealed that the curve was sharper than had been indicated in the official plans. A check rail was fitted and a ban introduced on six-coupled locomotives that

In August 1896 the company was vested in the Great Western Railway by virtue of the Great Western Railway (Additional Powers) Act of 7 August 1896. The engine shed at Abbotsbury was closed at the end of September 1894, shortly before the line was absorbed by the GWR. By the turn of the century the Sunday service had been withdrawn but it was reinstated in 1905 only to be withdrawn again a few years later. It was again reinstated in 1933, lasting until at least 1938. The 1902 Bradshaw shows five trains in each direction on weekdays. As with many branch lines, more convenient road transport and the introduction of motor cars and rural bus services would eventually lead to an irreversible decline in passenger numbers.

Early in the twentieth century the GWR reduced maintenance and wage costs by installing ground-frames to replace signal boxes. In 1905, GWR steam rail-motors were tried on the line. In conjunction with the new rail-motor service, Radipole Halt was opened on the main line between Weymouth and Upwey Junction on 1 July 1905 and Coryates Halt was added

There was a reduction in services during WW1, initially down to four trains a day, but in 1917 this was further reduced to three.  With the high demand for oil during the war there was renewed interest in the shale oil deposits. A siding was laid at Corton (near Portesham) to allow the shale to be loaded onto wagons by German prisoners of war, who were brought each day from their camp near Dorchester.  In January 1918 there was a proposal to close the line and lift the rails for re-use in France, but this never happened. The Corton shale siding was out of use by September 1921. After the war the branch settled back to a quieter existence with diminishing passenger revenue after the war as the popularity of motor cars increased. This decline continued when a local bus service was established in 1925.

By 1949 road transport had lured most of the passengers from the Abbotsbury branch, with an average of approximately five passengers on each of the winter trains, and between eight and nine on the trains in summer. In 1950 seven up and seven down trains operated, with an additional Saturday service in both directions. The 10.25am and 1.40pm Saturday-only trains from Abbotsbury ran into Melcombe Regis instead of Weymouth and then continued to Easton.

When the railway system was nationalised on 1 January 1948 the new British Railways Western Region largely corresponded to the extent of the former Great Western Railway lines. However on 2 April 1950 there was a major revision of regional boundaries, one effect of which was to transfer the whole of the main line from Sparkford (just south of Castle Cary) to Weymouth, together with the Abbotsbury, Bridport and Easton branches to the Southern Region. However the existing operating arrangements were continued, with the Western Region providing the passenger train services and showing them in its regional timetable. The Southern Region passenger timetable for winter 1951/2, for example, did not include the Abbotsbury branch.

The Easton branch was particularly vulnerable to bus competition as it was paralleled by a main road for most of the way to Portland. Apart from the Bridport - West Bay route, the Easton branch was the first Dorset line to close to passenger traffic (on 3 March 1952) but it was retained for goods traffic.  The Abbotsbury branch was also vulnerable to competition

Towards the end of the line's existence GWR diesel railcars were used to reduce costs, but they could not prevent its inevitable closure. As the branch never lived up to expectations for goods traffic, despite local protests and an improved service it closed completely on 1 December 1952, with only a short section between Upwey Junction and Upwey (originally Broadway, then Broadwey) remaining open for another nine years to serve the goods depot at Upwey.  It was built there because the position of Upwey Junction station on the embankment leading to Bincombe Tunnel had always made that station unsuitable for handling goods traffic. 

West of Upwey, the track was lifted in 1955. The last passenger train to travel on any part of the Abbotsbury branch was the REC ‘South Dorset Rail Tour’ on 7 June 1958 which visited Upwey goods depot. The line to Upwey closed to goods traffic on 1 January 1962, and the remaining track was lifted in 1965.  Radipole (The ‘Halt’ suffix was dropped in 1969) on the main line remained open until 31 December 1983 when the cost of repairs to the platform could not be justified.

Today just over a mile of the Abbotsbury branch can be walked, from the western edge of Portesham to the site of Abbotsbury station.

Tickets from Michael Stewart, Bradshaw and BR WR timetable Chris Totty. Route map drawn by Alan Young.

Sources:

• J H Lucking - Railways of Dorset RCTS 1968
• Colin G Maggs Branch lines of Dorset Sutton Publishing 1996
• Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith - Branch Lines around Weymouth Middleton Press 1989
• Wikipedia
• Dorset Echo - 27 November 2012

Further reading :

• Brian Jackson The Abbotsbury Branch Wild Swan 1989

See also: Abbotsbury, Portesham, Coryates Halt, Upwey Junction
& Radipole Halt