New display opened to celebrate Pulborough’s railway heritage and historic station

Tim Fooks, the High Sherriff of West Sussex, opened the display which will become a permanent feature of the station ticket hall, on Saturday September 12.

|SEE MORE: Pictures of Pulborough’s new railway history display |

The slides showed the background to the development of the railway at Pulborough and subsequently throughout rural West Sussex and how it changed Pulborough residents lives and the employment of the area.

The Managing Director of Southern, Angie Doll, thanked the team who created the display, and said how she, and those attending, were impressed by the historic pictures of the railway and the towns and villages beyond walking distance that the coming of the railway made accessible to the ordinary Pulborough people.

Also how the railway and station transformed Pulborough into a tourist and recreation destination for city dwellers looking for rural peace and river exploring.

The slides included historic pictures of how the change to railway transport destroyed the Wey and Arun Canal which was only completed some 50 or so years before the railway, but created new business opportunities with a cattle market in the station yard and local market gardening growing a huge sales outlet for fresh fruit and vegetables in London picked less than 24 hours earlier in Pulborough.

The slides went on to show how motor transport then changed to use of the railway and closed some lines plus the commercial and technology changes that transformed the service to the safe rail service we know today.

Those attending the opening were shown round the station and listed signal box to view the surviving evidence of these transformations.

The event was part of the planned Pulborough Heritage Weekend of which all other events, including a huge working model of the station of 1910, had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 virus but are now planned for 2021.

This Heritage event and facility was organised by the Pulborough Society and Pulborough Community Partnership with the support of the rail organisations.

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