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Stations with excursion platforms

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urpert

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Barmouth had one.

I've heard that Crystal Palace had one or more too.

Although not always platforms associated with a main station there were plenty of racecourse and football 'platforms' that tended to be used largely by 'special services' although regular trains may have called additionally on event days.
Highbury & Islington had a "Special Services Only" platform until it was comprehensively rebuilt for the ELL.
 

Taunton

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Besides the excursion platforms, Weymouth in the 1950s also used the Melcombe Regis platform at the start of the Portland Branch
This was a bit like Burnham, mentioned further up, where a onetime station, now closed, continued to be used for excursions, the tracks there having continued to be used by freight.

Both had excursions from Taunton. We never went on one to Weymouth, regular car trips being done instead, but in very youthful times did one to Burnham, a special steam-hauled non-corridor train which appeared to involve every church group, scouts, etc in the town. To get to Burnham it needed to pull through Highbridge station across the diamond crossing, then push back over the connecting link into the S&D platforms (for which a 412xx appeared to have been sent all the way from Templecombe loco to pilot, opening all the signalboxes along the way as it was a Sunday with no other S&D service), then forward over the crossing again, about a mile to Burnham platform. Same in reverse in the evening. It would probably have been quicker to alight at Highbridge and walk!
 

Trainfan2019

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Ah thanks for the info about the Crewe platforms. I just imagined them being used for excursions and now they're long overgrown. Hard to imagine though that so many stations had excursion platforms.
 

randyrippley

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Following on from a previous comment about wartime use..........during WWI the original Lancaster station (now the nurse's home) was used for troop specials despite being long closed to passengers - does that count as an excursion? I have been told that it was also used in WW2, but that may have been an elderly persons faulty memory
 

LocoCycle

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The terminus at Tweedbank on the Borders Railway was built with and two, especially long platforms so that steam specials could use the line.
 

seaviewer

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Plumpton had a separate platform for racegoers arriving from the south. It was just north of the Up platform. Nothing for down trains, as far as I am aware
 

mkrobins

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Mount Florida on the Cathcart Circle used to have a football platform for Hampden Park, but I don't know when it was removed.
 

DavidGrain

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If you want to go back in history Birmingham Curzon Street was an excursion station from 1854 to 1893.
I believe Nottingham London Road Low Level was used for excursion trains only after 1944.
 

Lloyds siding

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The excursion platforms at Southport were platforms 12 and 13, and therefore part of Southport Chapel Street. However they were officially known as Southport London Street, and (as others have observed about excursion platforms) you had to exit through the barriers at Chapel Street, walk out onto London Street and enter the excursion platforms from there. I remember getting an excursion train to Blackpool Central from there in 1964 or so, traveling over the West Lancashire Railway route through Hesketh Bank. Platform 12 was a very long platform, extending beyond the old Southport engine shed (later Steamport museum)...you can see some of it in the photo of Southport Central from Disused Stations here:- http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/s/southport_central/index20.shtml
The site of the excursion platforms, Steamport and Southport Central are indeed now largely beneath the Asda site. Southport London Street started life as the terminus of the Manchester and Southport Railway.
 
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