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The Lines -
The Peel Line
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Manx Name: Doolish
Next: Pulrose (Racecourse)
Address: Banks Circus, Lake Road
Opened: 1st July 1873
Closed: Seasonally, Since 1967
This article is included for the sake of completeness and is supplemented by a dedication section in the left-hand menu of the site entitled Douglas Terminus where many further details of the site and its environs can be found. The following represents a brief resume of the station.
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This is the main terminus of the railway, serving the capital of the island; although it now only serves the line terminating at Port Erin in the south of the island, in the past it also served the lines to Peel in the west, Foxdale and Ramsey in the north. The station is located on the southern side of Douglas at the end of the North quay on a site formerly known as Lake Road owing to it having been built entirely on reclaimed land on the site of a swamp.
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The station building is Victorian with a grand archway at the end of Athol Street with two gilt-topped turrets, between which a set of steps descends to the station. An entrance at the bottom of the hill avoids the steps. It is now a fraction of its original size, having previously sprawled across the perimeter wall that now demarks the local Tesco supermarket, and has undergone much development in recent years, sharing most of its former yard with the island's buses. The station, now consigned to the corner of the bus yard, was once a grand affair, with two island platforms and full length canopies and a goods yard, all of which were controlled by the signal box, provided by Dutton.
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The yard was drastically rationalised in 1979, losing a platform, the goods yard and the canopies, the original carriage shed then being severed from the running lines by a bus yard. The area was redeveloped in subsequent years, and "Banks Circus" headquarters were established there in 1999 providing the island's central bus garage and yard. A new carriage shed was also constructed at this time further up the yar and the signal box was relocated. The majority of the former goods yard is now given over to a Tesco store, which also utilised the reclaimed timber yard site which also boasted its own internal railway at one time. Today the station remains, albeit a fraction of its original size, still one of the most grand of all narrow gauge railway stations.
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