Churston Station is the the railway station serving the parish of Churston Ferrers in Devon. Opened in 1861 by the Dartmouth and Torbay Railway, the station and associated line was taken over by GWR in 1876 until it was absorbed into British Rail in 1948. British Rail closed the station in 1967 but it was then taken over by private ownership and operated as a heritage railway by the Dartmouth Steam Railway which ran steam trains from Paignton to Kingswear.
During Christie's time, this station was the nearest one to Greenway and she would have used it when travelling to and from her holiday home. After Christie's time, in 2012, Greenway Halt was opened on the Dartmouth Steam Railway. This station, within walking distance of the Greenway Estate, was set up for the convenience of visitors. Since 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic however, scheduled trains have not stopped at either Churston or Greenway Halt. The future plans of the Dartmouth Steam Railway are not known.
Churston Station features in the novel The A.B.C. Murders. Hastings and Poirot arrive there and are taken by police car to Churston Ferrers where the "C" murder took place. To get to Churston, Hastings consults a ABC guide himself, which gave him the first available train, a midnight sleeping car train to Newton Abbot from Paddington arriving at b6.08 a.m. and then a local service to Churston arriving at 7.15 a.m.
Churston Station also features in Dead Man's Folly where it is known as Nassecombe Station.
Next to the station is the Railway Inn which Agatha Christie used to frequent while waiting for her train.
Although trains no longer stop at Churston Station, the station is a suitable place to begin the "ABC Murders Walk", a route which traces the supposed paths of Poirot and Hastings around Churston and Elberry Cove during the investigation into the "C" murder.[1]
References[]
- ↑ This link leads to a downloadable pdf file entitled "The ABC Murders Walk" provided by the Dartmouth Steam Railway and Riverboat Company. It details the supposed route Poirot and Hastings took down to Elberry Cove - URL of downloadable pdf