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Home

Welcome

Friends of Alton Station was established to lobby and work in partnership to oversee improvements and conservation of Alton Station (in Hampshire, UK) and its environs.

Our main project is saving the historic 1892 LSWR timber footbridge. The story of the footbridge project starts in 2013 when South West Trains and Network Rail built a new footbridge with lifts, an investment of £1.7million. Whilst we applaud this upgrade to the facilities at Alton Station, local people also wanted to retain the existing footbridge. Our steering group formed in March 2014 with the main objective of negotiating to keep the 1892 footbridge.

In September 2015 we launched Friends of Alton Station as a membership organisation to increase our public profile and to enable us to more accurately reflect the views and wishes of people who use Alton Station. We set up an online petition in July 2016 and it was signed by over 1,000 people. The comments people that people made revealed that as well as local people, there are people across the world who have an interest in Alton station. In March 2017 Network Rail set a demolition deadline of April 2018, later moved to October 2018, then March 2019 and finally March 2020.

The bridge was finally removed in the early hours of Saturday 7th March 2020 and the centre section was stored as a complete section at Brant Storage. Regretfully, the side stairs were wilfully smashed to pieces by Network Rail, so we will have to recreate these based upon photos, the original LSWR plans and a 3D laser scan. At the end of January 2022, the bridge was carefully dismantled into its component parts and stored ready for restoration. Although there is a big challenge ahead of us, we are more determined than ever to see this project through.

We invite you to read about what we're doing and if you're interested, please do join us and/or make a donation. Apart from returning to this website for updates, you can subscribe to E-mail alerts (click on button on top of right-hand column) to receive automated E-mail updates when we add news and events. You will also find regular updates, news and comment on our Facebook page.