Apart from Wareham and then Swanage there was only one other station on the original Swanage Railway, and Herston was not one of them!

In the early 1980s it was crucial that Swanage Railway volunteers were able to demonstrate that a rail service was going to be provided by the fledgling company, and a simple wooden platform was installed and opened on Good Friday 1984.  Trains then ran the one mile out from Swanage, then on to Pole 44 for a number of years, and then to Harman’s Cross by the end of the decade. The platform structure was already well used and it had to be refurbished a number of times; indeed  twice the Halt was threatened with permanent closure by the Railway itself. 

In 1997 Herston Halt was adopted by the Royal Corps of Signals and serving soldiers have supported general maintenance and larger capital projects ever since.  Team Herston meets every second weekend of the month, throughout the year and title Project Herston has been used to focus projects such as the fencing of Herston Bank stores compound (2002), the installation of the new stepped and disabled ramp access to the Halt (2004) and then in 2009 the replacement of the wooden platform with an ex Southern Railway structure, previously located at Woodside which now forms the route of Croydon Tramlink.