Dean railway station, on the London and South Western route from Bishopstoke (Eastleigh) to Milford (Salisbury), opened to passenger traffic on March 1 1847. It is situated in the village of West Dean, nine miles east of Salisbury and some 20miles to the west of Southampton. The main station building is in Wiltshire but the county border with Hampshire cuts across the platforms and station yard. The yard leads to four railway cottages. Each cottage had a small allotment and a pigsty, built from sleepers.
On the north side of the station were two sidings, a long one which ran the full length of the platform next to it, and another approximately half the length. At the station end of the long platform was a cattle pen with iron water trough, and along the yard were two large storage sheds, one of corrugated iron and the other of pre-cast concrete. The latter was cast at Exmouth Junction concrete works. These were used to house cattle feed, which came in by rail and were referred to as Sillcocks, who produced the majority of the feed. Between these two stores was a hand-operated crane, set on a concrete plinth. These sidings were controlled from a ground frame on the opposite side of the fence from the front gardens of the cottages.
On the east side of the station, on the eastern side of the platforms, was a long holding siding. This served to ‘loop’ goods traffic to allow passenger trains to pass, hold engineers’ trains until the main track was clear for work and for the occasional item of rolling stock that was running a ‘hot box’. In steam days
