Great Western Coffee Shop

This one seems to fit the bill perfectly - Manorbier Station building is up for sale at just shy of ?400,000.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/welsh-homes/family-home-once-train-station-19031216

https://www2.housescape.org.uk/cgi-bin/mobilefull.pl?&GUY1&&R10199&&

Grand according to spec ... reminds me slightly of those location, location, location shows ... where the couple describe what they want and then when they're shown it change their minds.   Except - it looks lovely.   Agents say about 7 trains a day - classic mistake of only counting in one direction. Through trains to London on Summer Saturdays.   About a dozen passengers arriving and a dozen departing each day.

Or if you want something grander.

Droxford on the closed Meon Valley line.

https://www.countryhousecompany.co.uk/2020/07/unique-exciting-and-steeped-in-history/ (https://www.countryhousecompany.co.uk/2020/07/unique-exciting-and-steeped-in-history/)

Interesting ... but, utterly, we are now at the point in life where we have simplified and pared down, even in any dreams.  There are marvellous things to be done with stations on open lines, especially potential at open stations; back in 1999 when we moved from Easterton to Melksham, save for family and life in the area, Manorbier would have been attractive.   The line through Droxford may, I suspect, be one of the few that's never been proposed as a preservation or re-opening schema (unless readers know better?)

The mind (and thread) wanders in the middle of the night.   Is Alton unique in the South East in loosing 75% of its lines ... four directions - to(wards) London, Winchester, Portsmouth and Basingstoke. Just London remains, with a heritage branch to a teminsua at Alresford.  Adding - no, not unique - I can think of another with similar stats.

They failed to mention the adjacent level crossing barriers that are a distinctly tuneful prelude as well. Luckily, the last train is before 20h00  :)

It may prove to be a timetable that never comes (back) ... but the National Rail timetable for May to December this year has final services to Pembroke Dock at 22:03, back at 22:46 to Tenby and Carmarthen, slightly earlier on Saturdays and Sundays.  Unwise to buy if the late evening noise is a significant concern on the expectation that the service will always finish before 20:00.  Having said which, the first married first time, I lived under the flight path of Luton Airport and soon got used to sleeping through.

grahame must of course be referring to the terminus of my local line - Carhaix.

So what does Carhaix's situation have in common with Alton? Well, Carhaix was once the main hub of the Reseau Breton, with five of its lines converging on the town, all built to the metric gauge:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/R%C3%A9seaux_ferr%C3%A9s_en_Bretagne.svg)

These lines were:

Carhaix - Guingamp
Carhaix - Morlaix
Carhaix - Ch?teaulin
Carhaix - Rosporden
Carhaix - Loud?ac

In 1966, as a response to the depopulation of the countryside and a significant increase in motor vehicles, the Reseau Breton became the subject of its own version of the Beeching Report. This plan provided for an increase in road funding for Central Brittany, the upgrading to standard gauge of the Carhaix-Guingamp line, and the closure and bustitution of the other lines.

Between February and July 1967, the Carhaix-Guingamp line was set to standard gauge. For this operation, nearly 200 workers from the Reseau Breton were mobilized. They laid nearly 44 km of rails, 9,750 sleepers and 100,000 tonnes of ballast. On the equipment side, four tampers, a dresser and a leveller were used. The gauge change required the reconstruction of 16 bridges. The operation often reminds me of what happened on the Isle of Wight, when its network was reduced to just one line between Ryde-Shanklin, which was then remodelled and transformed into an electrified railway during almost the exact same time period.

The other lines closed to passengers on 9 April 1967, and to freight on 30 September 1967. This has effectively left Carhaix at the end of a long branch line from Guingamp - via my home station of Callac (https://marleywarleysboutique.com/pages/callac-railway-station-26-february-2018) - ever since:

(https://i.servimg.com/u/f67/19/80/32/69/image010.jpg)

There is currently no heritage branch into Carhaix, but the hope is that there will be in the not too distant future, as the line from Carhaix-Loudeac is being gradually revived on that basis. The section from Gouarec-Bon Repos has already been completed, with extensions west towards Rostrenen and east towards Mur-de-Bretagne via the iconic Bon Repos viaduct next on the radar.

The trackbeds of the other lines have been preserved as Greenways, for the benefit of the walkers and cyclists of today, but also explicitly with the aim of keeping them available to be reopened as railways if and when this becomes viable. The restoration of the Gouarec-Bon Repos section was a successful example of how this will work in practice. There was no competition between the modes for who should get priority - The restoration of the railway and the renovation of the existing Greenway were planned jointly, and a parallel road improvement scheme was specifically configured to ensure enough room for both restored railway and renovated Greenway alongside.

The way many Reseau Breton stations were designed, with station buildings separate from island platforms, has  aided this process by allowing the Greenways to follow the original rail alignments even though the original station buildings have often been sold into private ownership.

I have extensively surveyed all of these routes as part of my work over here, and have taken shedloads of photos as a result, which I will put online as and when I get the opportunity. In the meantime though, I have put together a selection of photos which give you a flavour of what the former Reseau Breton lines out of Carhaix look like today. You can find these here. (https://marleywarleysboutique.com/pages/former-reseau-breton-lines-out-from-carhaix)

You will note that a photo of an Intermarche supermarket features in the Carhaix-Rosporden section. This was built on the site of the former Gourin station, and a condition of planning permission was that they keep a line of route clear should the railway ever be reopened. This has happened in the UK as well, an example being the agreement between Sainsburys and Tunbridge Wells Borough Council to leave a corridor to allow Tunbridge Wells West station (and thus the Spa Valley Railway through to Eridge on the Uckfield line) to be reconnected to Grove Junction and Tunbridge Wells Central should this be proposed in the future.

Finally an honourable mention should go to the excellent Reseau Breton museum housed in the restored station building at Guiscriff on the Carhaix-Rosporden route, which really brings the history of the lines to life, and is well worth a visit.

I will now let you get back to guessing the name of the station that grahame actually meant  ;D 

Barnstaple still has one operational line and lost several other links. If you don't count the narrow gauge then I think 3 were lost making it similar to Alton?

Indeed.  Not the one I had in mind, though, which is in the South East. Barnstaple has done very badly, with the line also cut back from the town centre station to one which is on the outskirts. Looking at other stations that are now termini in the South West, Newquay, Gunnislake, Paignton, Exmouth and Severn Beach have each lost one line, and Weymouth has lost two (to Portland and to the Quay). St Ives, Looe, Henley on Thames, Marlow and Windsor and Eton Central have lost no lines.

Luckily for Grahame, in the last seven years his SE station regained one route. I very much doubt it will ever see the other two again though.

Clues on the line involved include one that starts with a riddle, and another that is close to being dormant.

You are clearly thinking of the same place that I am.

Taunton has lost four lines/services

Minehead
Barnstaple
Yeovil
Chard

as well as local services that once ran on what's left

I guess most of us will know where we are thinking of now, the SE is the clue.Won't spoil it for others!

Is it East Grinstead?

Yes indeed ... just the London line left to the north.  West to Three Bridges, East to Tunbridge Wells and south to Horsted Keynes all lost - through that latter has been restored by the Bluebell Railway.

Noting that East Grinstead has the same population as Melksham, I may have wondered why it retained a complete railway to serve it and Melksham didn't keep even a station on the Lin passing through.  Amongst the suggestions are (a) its nearness to London and (b) that a  Dr Richard Beeching lived there and commuted from there.

Looking "up thread" - yes, Taunton has lost four local services .. but it has retained trains in three directions and not just the one of Barnstaple and of East Grinstead.  I did wonder about Kings Lynn ... and outside the south east about Bishops Auckland.  There are some doubtful cases too - Whitby used to have train to Redcar, Scarborough and Pickering - just one line remains via Battersby.  However, I'm not sure if I would count the Pickering line out of Whitby, since it shares the first few miles with the line that's still open.

Of course, if you look right across the British Isles you'll find towns with a single line where you could have caught trains in three extra directions in the past - to Fenit, Listowel and Dingle, and a city with just a single service remaining and terminating where - from other stations in the city - you could have travelled to Burptonport or Cardonagh, to Strabane or Omagh, and to Stronalar, Donegal and Killybegs.

I think King's Lynn quite likely does have it - four abandoned lines and one extant. But that depends on your not limiting this to post-war line closures.

In 1884 three lines left King's Lynn station, and two divided before any station to go: west to Sutton Bridge (and thence Spalding), southeast to Swaffham, northeast to Fakenham, north to Hunstanton, and the line south to London. Then a direct line was built from the westward line at the junction at South Lynn, via Gayton Road, to join onto the line to Fakenham. The direct link from King's Lynn to this eastward line was lifted before 1904. (And that's not on Richard's map!)

Spalding has also lost four lines, but kept two.

I am very pleased indeed to be able to confirm that Reseau Breton heritage passenger trains between Gouarec and Bon Repos will begin operating from Sunday 23 May  :)