Locations where the SR and WR/GWR met?

[TomJ]

Having almost finished my Cornish clay layout I'm thinking of my next project! I fancy somewhere I can run my tender locos and corridor stock a bit more frequently than just summer Saturdays - so thinking of an urban terminus, perhaps Minories inspired. Thinking cramped location, retaining walls etc etc.

As most of my stock is WR/ex-GWR then obvious locations are the Midlands, Bristol or perhaps Exeter/Plymouth way. I've also got a few bit of SR locos and stock that it would be nice to run (M7, N, Light Pacific on order).

 

The only place I can think of at the moment where the two met in a urban-ish location would be the West Country, Exeter or Plymouth.

 

Is there anywhere else I've missed? Anywhere in London where the two regions could be seen together?

 

Thanks

[Miss Prism]

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/128190-gwr-and-sr-overlap-questions/

 

[TheQ]

The Midland and South western Junction railway ran from Cheltenham to Andover.

It was the last railway to be grouped as it owed a lot to Midland and had a lot of LSWR help,  but GWR wanted it, only to stop the others having it as it ran through Swindon GWR promptly started running the line down.....

 

As such Southern had some running rights and there was often through coaches from up north..

 

Once BR got their hands on everything, SR locos and carriages often made the entire trip with through trains from Southhampton to Cheltenham.

 

  BR of course closed the line before Beeching(just) by making it almost impossible to catch through trains and then claiming there were no passengers..

 

Me I'm modelling Ludgershall and Collingbourne..

[rab]

Wadebridge, Cornwall.

 

Sorry, just noticed you wanted a teminus.

 

Edited February 13, 2019 by rab

[Ian Morgan]

Marlborough, two stations for the price of one.

Salisbury or Basingstoke, more SR than GWR though.

Weymouth - terminus serving both still.

Reading - a bit ambitious though.

 

 

[Coach bogie]

Shawford Junction, Yeovil, Andover, Basingstoke are others

 

The strangest one is the GWR had running rights into London Victoria.

 

Mike Wiltshire

[KeithHC]

Southampton Terminus but again more Southern than Western. However good excuse to have City of Truro in service in BR days.......

 

Keith

[Wickham Green]

2 hours ago, Coach bogie said:

 

The strangest one is the GWR had running rights into London Victoria.

 

Mike Wiltshire

 ......... on the BROAD GAUGE !

[Vistisen]

Chard junction... That's why I'm building it

Edited February 13, 2019 by Vistisen

[pete_mcfarlane]

3 hours ago, Coach bogie said:

The strangest one is the GWR had running rights into London Victoria.

 

Strictly speaking those weren't running rights - the GWR was a part owner of the Chatham side of the station. 

 

Other urban locations where the two met include Reading, and the West London Extension line (via Kensington Olympia). 

[melmerby]

Oxford

Actually totally GWR but trains into the Station from the SR, LMS & LNER.

It's really odd because you could have a train arrive from the GCR with an LNER loco and it would be changed for a SR loco, the coaches could be either and therefore no GWR about the train at all.

There is a picture in one of the books showing Oxford GWR shed with an LNER, LMS & SR loco in view but no GWR!

 

At a stretch you could really go left field and have Birmingham Snow Hill as between the wars the SR often ran through with their koco from the south coast

Hatton:

 

Knowle:

Also:

 

 

Edited February 13, 2019 by melmerby

[Joseph_Pestell]

18 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Oxford

Actually totally GWR but trains into the Station from the SR, LMS & LNER.

It's really odd because you could have a train arrive from the GCR with an LNER loco and it would be changed for a SR loco, the coaches could be either and therefore no GWR about the train at all.

There is a picture in one of the books showing Oxford GWR shed with an LNER, LMS & SR loco in view but no GWR!

 

At a stretch you could really go left field and have Birmingham Snow Hill as between the wars the SR often ran through with their koco from the south coast

Hatton:

 

Knowle:

Also:

 

 

 

Interesting pics. But not the compact urban terminus the OP mentioned.

[TomJ]

5 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Interesting pics. But not the compact urban terminus the OP mentioned.

 

No - but I’m sure oxford might have had another long forgotten terminus, squeezed into tha city somewhere..........

 

Thanks for all the suggestions, some good ideas and food for thought

[melmerby]

1 minute ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Interesting pics. But not the compact urban terminus the OP mentioned.

Most mentioned such as Basingstoke etc. also not as requested!

Oxford is a through station so No.

 

Bodmin? Not very urban.

Barnstable? - Didn't the GWR have running rights from Exeter left from the broad gauge days?

[Kris]

18 minutes ago, melmerby said:

 

 

 

Barnstable? - Didn't the GWR have running rights from Exeter left from the broad gauge days?

That's correct. 

[Joseph_Pestell]

21 minutes ago, TomJ said:

 

No - but I’m sure oxford might have had another long forgotten terminus, squeezed into tha city somewhere..........

 

Thanks for all the suggestions, some good ideas and food for thought

 

As at Cambridge, the University authorities did not take kindly to the railways. So it's not a very plausible  scenario.

[Pacific231G]

On 13/02/2019 at 17:55, TomJ said:

 

No - but I’m sure oxford might have had another long forgotten terminus, squeezed into tha city somewhere..........

 

Thanks for all the suggestions, some good ideas and food for thought

 

 

On 13/02/2019 at 18:18, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

As at Cambridge, the University authorities did not take kindly to the railways. So it's not a very plausible  scenario.

But Oxford did have a long forgotten terminus and in a now long forgotten location. Until 1952 it also had a second station and that was also a terminus. There was even almost another terminus for a more direct line to London near Magdalen Bridge.

 

Rewley Road just to the east of the GWR's second and final Oxford station was the terminus for the Buckingham Railway coming in from Bletchley on a line that connected it with Cambridge. In 1952 it was closed to passengers as, with nationalisation, its trains could use Oxford station but it did remaine open as  goods station, mostly for coal AFAIK  until 1984 and I can remember seeing trains shunting there. For years the passenger station was a  tyre depot but it was preserved and moved to Qainton Road where it was lovingly restored and is now the main public building.

 

The terminus that wasn't built would have been that of the Oxford, Aylesbury & Metropolitan Junction Railway Company. This was promoted by third Duke of Buckingham and was granted an act of Parliament. It would have upgraded and extended his Wootton  Tramway that ran from Quainton Road to Brill to a terminus in Oxford behind 12 High Street, St Clement's, near Magdalen Bridge. This scheme died with the third Duke but when the Metropolitan Railway took over the Brill line they upgraded it and considered reviving this plan with a double track line to Oxford. A line from London to Oxford via Aylesbury would have been a more direct route than the GWR's original branch from  Didcot. 

 

Perhaps more use to you though, and taking advantage of the University's initially hostile attitude to railways, might be the GWR's original station in Oxford which was a terminus at Grandpont immediately south of the river Thames a couple of hundred yards to the west of Folly Bridge. When the GWR extended northwards  to Birmingham in 1852 it passed Oxford about half a mile from the city centre between the river Thames and the Oxford Canal. Oxford station was effectively a spur off the new main line with an awkward shuffle into and out of it for any trains running north of Oxford . To avoid this a new station was built later that year on the Botley Road, where it is today, and adjacent to the LNWR's Rewley Road terminus which had been built the previous year. Grandpont was used as a broad gauge goods station until 1872 when the site was sold off for housing. 

 

However, had the Birmingham line been forced to stick further to the west of the Thames, to give the City a wider berth,  that might have been a bit too far down the Botley road. I don't think that even the GWR would have been satisfied with an "Oxford Road" station over a mile away from Oxford so you could envisage a developed terminus at Granpont and a triangular junction with the Birmingham line similar to the arrangement at Plymouth Millbay. That would give plenty of potential for trains from the Southern as well as GWR trains to come into the terminus with one loco and leave in the opposite direction while most goods trains would pass it by.

 

Anyway, this is my take on Oxford's possible railway alternative

 

 

Edited February 14, 2019 by Pacific231G

[autocoach]

GWR and WR Passenger services from Bodmin had running rights through Boscarne Junction into Wadebridge and then down the Camel Estuary to Padstow which is a small compact terminal. No engine shed but there was a turntable.  The GWR used a B-Set and Prairie. There was a wonderful article in the old Wild Swan GWR Journal a few years back that described this service. The GWRJ article induced me to switch from modeling GWR Brixham to modeling SR Padstow. What Brixham and Padstow had in common was they were both fishing ports. Fortunately between Kernow, Hornby and Bachmann I have been able to acquire nearly all the locomotives and passenger equipment needed to replicate Padstow in the summer of 1947.  This year's Hornby program will add the early SR Bulleid coaches and SR diagram 1543 brake vans. Oxford even helped with a green Southern National Bedford OB coach with a destination board of Padstow. Padstow was a single platform station but was the furthest final terminus of the Southern's Atlantic Coast Express from London Waterloo reduced to 6 coaches but hauled by a West Country Air Smoothed pacific.  Mainline style service with a short train at what was essentially a branch line terminal. 

Edited February 13, 2019 by autocoach

[TravisM]

Salisbury is another place that the SR and WR were regularly seen together.  From Quidhampton to almost the station approach, the SR and WR had separate running lines, and I even heard that they had their own platforms at the station up until the end of steam but I stand to be corrected.

[brianusa]

5 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Interesting pics. But not the compact urban terminus the OP mentioned.

 

But the pictures were worth the price of admission!

 

Brian.

[RJS1977]

I believe GWR locos used to work goods trains through Reading as far as Feltham and Guildford.

 

And another one that's just occurred to me - Cuneo's painting of Clapham Junction includes a Pannier tank! (Presumably working down through Kensington Olympia to Victoria?)

[Flying Pig]

4 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

However, had the Birmingham line been forced to stick further to the west of the Thames, to give the City a wider berth,  that might have been a bit too far down the Botley road. I don't think that even the GWR would have been satisfied with an "Oxford Road" station over a mile away from Oxford so you could envisage a developed terminus at Granpoint and a triangular junction with the Birmingham line similar to the arrangement at Plymouth Millbay. That would give plenty of potential for trains from the Southern as well as GWR trains to come into the terminus with one loco and leave in the opposite direction while most goods trains would pass it by.

 

Like it - Osney Mead perhaps, a fairly cramped site south of the Botley Road? The main line would presumably run very close to the present route of the A34 and the station buildings would no doubt have a suitably Gothic revival appearance (though come to think of it this pretty much the default for early GWR).

[pete_mcfarlane]

45 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

I believe GWR locos used to work goods trains through Reading as far as Feltham and Guildford.

 

And another one that's just occurred to me - Cuneo's painting of Clapham Junction includes a Pannier tank! (Presumably working down through Kensington Olympia to Victoria?)

There was a batch of pannier tanks allocated to the Southern for working empty stock to and from Waterloo at one point in the later 50s/early 60s. 

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Like it - Osney Mead perhaps, a fairly cramped site south of the Botley Road? The main line would presumably run very close to the present route of the A34 and the station buildings would no doubt have a suitably Gothic revival appearance (though come to think of it this pretty much the default for early GWR).

Thanks.

I think if it had been at Osney Mead it would have been very difficult to stop it being extended north a bit further east than it was in reality. The advantage of Grandpoint (from our point of view not the GWR's ) is that the line couldn't sensibly have been extended north from there as it would have crossed the city centre, In Oxford, that was never going to happen.

 

I've added a redrawn map of Oxford as it might have been to my post. I've assumed that the GWR station remained at Grandpoint, now just called Oxford Station, where there would have been room to enlarge it and I've assumed a simple station - possibly called Botley Road station or halt (something like Reading West) about half a mile west of the real Oxford station. I saw the main line as running the other side of Port Meadow along the west bank of the Thames before crossing it to return to more or less it's present route. but Eynsham junction might be a bit futher west and Godstow would likely have got a station. 

I've left the LNWR station where it was but any link between that line and the GWR would have been much further north. Why the LNWR would have been allowed to be closer to the city centre than the GWR  isn't clear in my alternative reality

 

I've also added the Metropolitan Junction Railway terminus in St. Clements though that would have been built in the 1880s so a bit later than the 1879 of my map (Oxford would by then have been rather more built up)  Ron Alcock called his OO terminus, based on the idea of the MR extending from Brill,  Oxford Victoria but I think Oxford St. Clements  or even Oxford Riverside (The Cherwell not the Thames) might have been more likely. This could be the end of a straggling single track branch or a busier double track station but the main purpose of this exercise was to create a terminus that could see trains of the GWR and SR and possibly the LMS and that would be Oxford's main station at Grandpoint.

Oxford shed (81F) might well have been built within the triangle. I pinched the curve from the Thame branch to give a sensible radius for the northern arm of the triangle but it is tight.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Pacific231G

[john new]

Weymouth/Portland Branch - became a rare GW/LSWR jointly owned branch.