page_title: Disused railway stations on the Bristol to Exeter Line
section_title: Flax Bourton
hierarchical_section_title: Disused railway stations on the Bristol to Exeter Line / Stations / Bristol to Taunton / Flax Bourton
caption_attribution_description: English: Flax Bourton railway station on the Bristol to Exeter Line. The station closed in 1963 and has been derelict ever since.
context_page_description: There are 22 disused railway stations in the 75 miles between Bristol Temple Meads and Exeter St Davids, 12 of which have structures that can still be seen from passing trains. Most were closed in the 1960s but four of them, especially around Weston-super-Mare, were replaced by stations on new sites. 13 stations remain open on the line today, but there have been proposals to reopen stations at Cullompton and Wellington.
context_section_description: A station known as Bourton was opened in 1860 just west of the short tunnel at the summit of the climb from Bristol. It was renamed Flax Bourton on 1 September 1868. A house was provided for the station master on the road side above the cutting in which it was situated, a signal box and a couple of small buildings were on the platform.
  A new station was built a little to the west of the original station and opened on 2 March 1893 with improved facilities. It was closed to passengers on 2 December 1963. It remained open for goods traffic until the end of the following July, after which a Ministry of Fuel and Power depot remained for another forty years or so, but even the connection to this has now been severed.
  The house by the road still stands, as does a derelict goods lock-up on the up (eastbound) platform. Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways in their Autumn 2011 newsletter called for the reopening to be considered in the reletting of the Greater Western passenger franchise, and there are some suggestions that the station be used as a transfer point for passengers going to Bristol Airport.
  The next station open southwards is Nailsea and Backwell.
caption: The main station building of 1893 at Flax Bourton as it stands today.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "3936", "Image ImageLength": "2624", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "PENTAX", "Image Model": "PENTAX K-x", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:29 12:22:26", "Image Artist": "Matt Buck", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Matt Buck", "Image XPKeywords": "[66, 0, 114, 0, 105, 0, 115, 0, 116, 0, 111, 0, 108, 0, 32, 0, 116, 0, 111, 0, ... ]", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 33, 0, 1, 0, 22, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "968", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1562", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6576", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:04:25 15:57:06", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:04:25 15:57:06", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "995723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2485427/500000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3903", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2518", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1448", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "3", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "-380"}