AQ23 - 21st December - some wartime openings

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Can you identify these locations?

1. The station was opened on 28 October 1940 by the Great Western Railway. It was only open to miners. The last train was shown in the timetable on 18 September 1955.

2. The station was built to a design of Southern Railway architect James Robb Scott and opened on 28 May 1939. It was intended as a through station on the line being built to Xxxxxxxxxx. However, construction of the line stopped, never to be resumed, upon the outbreak of World War II and the up platform was never used for passenger trains

3. The station opened on 5 June 1939 to serve a new housing estate and was named after a nearby battle where King Xxxxxx was killed. It closed on 6 January 1964 together with the line and has been demolished entirely.

4. It was reopened unadvertised for workers on 27 October 1941, and opened to the public fully on 31 May 1948. The station never served goods trains. It was closed on 23 November 1964, when passenger traffic ceased ...

[Worcester_Passenger]

2. Chessington South. The line was being built towards Leatherhead.

[Western Pathfinder]

2 might be Chessington south ?...

[stuving]

3. must be Penda's Way station in Manston, Leeds. All the facts (from Wikipedia) fit except one - it was named not for a battle site, but after the road it was accessed from. That Penda's Way was part of the new housing, and perhaps the area was known informally after its biggest road.

Penda was a king who was killed in battle, at Winwaed. That was somewhere near Leeds, though exactly where is disputed. A newer housing estate was and is called Pendas Fields, from the place named, speculatively, after him. This was near enough to the station to be served by it, but built after it closed.

En route to there, I came across a lot of other stations opened in June 1939 - mostly wireless stations, power stations, bathing stations, etc. The most bizarre was "a special experimental station has been opened by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in Japan, where frog shoes and gloves hail from, for the purpose of studying how feminine demands can best be met in the frog line". And that's about using cured frog skin, which is quite bizarre enough - without involving whatever you were imagining.

Nearest miss was a new station that opened in Market Bosworth, which does meet the battlefield requirement. But that was a fire station (and in December).

[grahame]

3. must be Penda's Way station in Manston, Leeds. All the facts (from Wikipedia) fit except one - it was named not for a battle site, but after the road it was accessed from. That Penda's Way was part of the new housing, and perhaps the area was known informally after its biggest road.

Penda was a king who was killed in battle, at Winwaed. That was somewhere near Leeds, though exactly where is disputed. A newer housing estate was and is called Pendas Fields, from the place named, speculatively, after him. This was near enough to the station to be served by it, but built after it closed.

En route to there, I came across a lot of other stations opened in June 1939 - mostly wireless stations, power stations, bathing stations, etc. The most bizarre was "a special experimental station has been opened by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in Japan, where frog shoes and gloves hail from, for the purpose of studying how feminine demands can best be met in the frog line". And that's about using cured frog skin, which is quite bizarre enough - without involving whatever you were imagining.

Nearest miss was a new station that opened in Market Bosworth, which does meet the battlefield requirement. But that was a fire station (and in December).

Yes - it IS Penda's Way station.   Sources vary - http://disused-stations.org.uk/p/pendas_way/index.shtml refers to the Battle.  All very interesting to interpret - with King Penda long perished before the days of the Internet (or even printing) we will probably never know for sure.

[Mark A]

Nearest miss was a new station that opened in Market Bosworth, which does meet the battlefield requirement. But that was a fire station (and in December).

Fitting. Close to where an aunt, a few years later, and billeted in a loft, and unfamiliar with old rural buildings, illuminated her surroundings with a candle and found out about the flammable nature of thatched roofs.

Mark

[eightonedee]

4 - The delightfully named "Chittening Platform" station on the Severn Beach branch

[grahame]

4 - The delightfully named "Chittening Platform" station on the Severn Beach branch

Correctly identified as Chittening - not sure I would describe it as being on the "Severn Beach Branch" though. It was (is, still open for freight) on the Filton, Henbury, Avonmouth cut off with a need to reverse at Stan Drew's Road to reach "The Beach" at  present.   There is a new cutoff proposed to make the junction a triangle and once done there will be a better claim (IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion')) to say that Chittening is on a Severn Beach branch

[Red Squirrel]

4 - The delightfully named "Chittening Platform" station on the Severn Beach branch

Correctly identified as Chittening - not sure I would describe it as being on the "Severn Beach Branch" though. It was (is, still open for freight) on the Filton, Henbury, Avonmouth cut off with a need to reverse at Stan Drew's Road to reach "The Beach" at  present.   There is a new cutoff proposed to make the junction a triangle and once done there will be a better claim (IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion')) to say that Chittening is on a Severn Beach branch

All a bit moot really. Severn Beach Station was originally a through station on the branch from Pilning to Avonmouth (Engineer’s Line Ref AMB, Avonmouth Branch), and the rest of the line is cobbled together from bits and pieces, mostly CNX. It’s not really a branch line in the traditional sense, is it? But Chittening Platform is was very much on the Henbury Loop (ELR: AFR, Avonmouth and Filton Railway)

[grahame]

No. 1 was Nantewlaeth Colliery Halt on the South Wales Mineral Railway. Very much a station on a railway of a bygone age, carrying materials of a bygone age.