Monmouth Troy railway station, 1985
A disused station on the Wye Valley line
(Photos and words ©urban75, Nov 2009)

I'll come clean and admit it: I've always had a bit of a thing about disused railway stations.

Now before you start painting a mental picture of me sat at the end of railway platforms with band-aid glasses, a notepad full of locomotive numbers and a portfolio of curious body twitches, let me get one thing straight: I am not a train-obsessed nutter!

I couldn't care less who designed the asynchronous left hand sprocket-drive of a Class 57 diesel, but I do find old railway stations strangely romantic - and the more desolate the location, the better!

I'd seen a few photos of Monmouth Troy when I was a kid, and during a 1985 day trip around the Wye Valley, persuaded a girlfriend to come along and visit the station site.

I don't think she was too impressed, but I ended up liking the location and buildings so much, I began to foster wild plans of buying the station and turning it into a recording studio.

Sadly, a chart-untroubling music career put paid to that plan!



Opened in 1857, Monmouth Troy was once a busy country junction, connecting the county town with lines to Pontypool, Ross-on-Wye and Chepstow (via the gloriously picturesque Wye Valley branch, once described as "the most beautiful journey in Britain").

Passenger services to Monmouth stopped on 5th January 1959, with the line being completely abandoned after goods services ceased on 6th January 1964.

In the photo above, you can see the closed main station building, taken from the filled-in trackbed (you can see the platform edge in front of the pile of tyres).

As the tyres suggest, the building was being used as a garage, with the space underneath the attractive wooden canopy bricked in to form a workshop area.

» Click here to see interior workshop view




An external view of the Booking Office entrance. Although there's piles of rubbish strewn around, the building is in good condition, despite being closed for over thirty years.


A view across a goods yard piled high with coal, taken from near the station building. Just imagine how many polluting truck journeys could have been avoided if the railway was still open...


Another view of the goods yard, taken from the station entrance.




A view of the station frontage, with a large trailer parked in front of the building. Compare with this 1950s view


The station was set in a beautiful location, with the River Wye flowing by the eastern end of the station. This view was taken from the opposite river bank, showing the two large viaducts carrying the lines to Ross on Wye (right) and Chepstow (left).


Another view of the handsome stone viaduct that carried the line from Monmouth along the Wye Valley branch.


Monmouth Troy Station in April 1981. (Photo by Nick Catford)



Update:
In 1986, the Monmouth station building was taken apart, brick by brick, and reconstructed at Winchcombe, on the preserved Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Railway.

There's not much left of the original site, although you can still spot the remains of the two platforms and the bricked-up tunnel at the west end of the station. The large goods shed was demolished in 2002 to make way for a small housing estate.