Station Name: BROADWAY[Source:
Jo Roesen]
Broadway Station Gallery 1: 2nd Day - March 1960 Broadway station on 2 August 1904, the day after opening. An excursion to Stratford was organised, in which no fewer than 623 people participated. They marched from Broadway town centre preceded by a band, and can be seen here lining up the station approach, waiting to buy tickets via the side gate. The train waiting at the platform was unable to take all of them and a number had to wait for the next service train. Behind the brake vehicle of the excursion train one of the navvies’ huts can be seen. In 1904, Broadway was a temporary terminus. The goods shed, just visible on the left, is under construction, and the signal box on the other side of the bridge is not yet there. A contractor’s train is just
visible beyond the bridge. Photo from GWSR (Broadway Area Group) collection 1923 1:2,500 OS map. The station is on the north-west side of Station Road with two facing platforms spanned by a footbridge. Immediately north of the down side a single siding serves a horse dock. The large goods yard is on the south-east side of Station Road with a weighbridge (WM) and office just inside the entrance to the yard. There is a single siding on the up side with five sidings on two levels on the down side. One siding runs alongside the goods shed (incorrectly identified as an engine shed) while another siding loops through it passing alongside the cattle dock and pens. Three parallel sidings at a lower level terminate close to the weighbridge. The 6-ton capacity yard crane is seen between these sidings. The coal yard was on the south side of the goods yard. The signal box is on the down side immediately south of the bridge. Click here for a larger version of this map.
Broadway goods yard under construction. This yard is on made-up ground, with infill brought from Didbrook by train. On one occasion 10 wagons broke loose and ran down the slope, partly demolishing the weighbridge office. The station is already complete, with footbridge, in the background. The contractor's temporary line with FB rail bolted straight on to the sleepers is in the foreground on the right. The other tracks are GWR. The stationmaster's house and workers’ cottages are not yet in place. A man is working on the goods shed roof, and a horse-drawn wagon with flywheel, probably a stone crusher, is parked in front. There are no houses yet along the Evesham Road.
Photo from Broadway Caravan Club Broadway station looking north. Note the early platforms, with wooden extensions, and a wagon standing at the horse dock beyond the platform. Station staff are seen on the left with some passengers on the right. This is a postcard dated November 1905 but the photograph could be a year earlier. The gents’ modesty screen on the right is still there; this was later replaced with a concrete shed. There are four platform lamps, one each side of each building, plus two suspended under the awning. There are no smoke trails under the footbridge, which suggests few trains so far.
Copyright photo from John Alsop collection
A Grange class with steam on hauls a train of hoppers towards Cheltenham. Although undated, the picture must have been taken between 1957, when the horse dock sidings were taken out, and 1959, when the crossover was also removed as in this picture it is still in place, to the left and a little behind the engine. There is interesting detail around the horse dock, an old sleeper-built shed buried in the embankment, next to the end of the dock. A line of GWR spearhead fencing ends in a cast iron GWR post, with a decorative ball on top. Unfortunately the original horse dock cannot be recreated, because the new platform will be extended northwards over the site, and also because the gardens of the stationmaster’s house have been extended, covering part of the dock.
Photo by John Diston GWR 5421 trundles into Broadway station on a wet day in the 1950s. Two female passengers have stepped to one side to let the photographer get a good view of the incoming auto-train. The auto-coach, with its distinctive step handrails half way down the side, can just be made out behind. One lady is clutching a shopping bag, so perhaps a trip to Cheltenham is in the offing. 5421 was one of a small series of tank engines built by the GWR in the early 1930s for light passenger work, and all 25 examples were fitted with push-pull apparatus for auto-train operation. They were fast runners, but in the 1950s branch line work started to decline and the first withdrawal of the class was in 1956, with 5421 being withdrawn in 1962, when last based in Oswestry. None of the class has been preserved. In our collection is also a photograph of 5418 waiting at the station (author unknown). This loco
was withdrawn in 1960. Photo by John Diston A Castle with a long down 'Cornishman' is about to thunder through the station in the late 1950s. Note the pigeon baskets awaiting dispatch, the early style GWR benches, the lamp hut and two sack barrows parked under the bridge; the station is otherwise deserted.
Photo
by John Diston
A heavy freight train thunders through Broadway station, heading south c late 1950s. The loco is 9F 92224, a Crewe-built example which was scrapped in 1967 after a last allocation to 8B Warrington Dallam, following an initial allocation to Banbury. The train consists of mineral wagons and is typical of the type of freight that used the line between the Midlands and the South Wales coalfields. The headlamp code shows this to be an express freight train, one which would have shaken the station to its very foundations!
Photo by John Diston Broadway station in June 1959, nine months before the end of passenger services. Access to the horse dock beyond the buildings has been removed (1959), but the signals are still there. A trolley on the platform shows that the station is still open.
Copyright photo by RM Casserley A typical ‘Coffeepot’ picture of Broadway, with 1424 about to continue in the Honeybourne direction with a single coach auto-train. There are no visible passengers. A schoolboy in macintosh and shorts is watching two members of staff in peaked caps go through some paperwork. The signal is ‘off’ and the sun is shining; only a few more days before passenger services ceased.
Photo from John Mann collection Click here for Broadway Station Gallery 2:
March 1962 - May 1969
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