Now a forward thinking service would be a Windsor via Slough to Aylesbury via Bourne End
hang on didn't the
GWR▸ used to do a Slough Aylsbury service 70 years ago
My mother used to use it when she was a County Councillor to attend meeting in Aylesbury. That was when Slough was in Bucks.
Having sat on Slough Station since 1947 let me elborate the changes. Starting on the main entrance side west end.
There was the Windsor Bay Now platform 1 and a line to the South with an end loading dock I think there might have been a runround crossover from the Bay. I remember the end loading dock being used to load the armourmed cars of the Household calvery going on manoveurs. Under Stoke road Bridge where the car park is now was the Shed and between the Windsor line and the Down Main was Slough Middle box.
The Windsor lines had separate double junctions with both the Main and Relief lines. Locos from the goods siding for the shed came Up the Up Relief line and stopped just at the bridge and then reversed over the Down Relief and the Main lines onto the Up Windsor Branch reversed again under the bridge and then reversed again into the shed. Slough Middle had to pull a lot of levers!
There were carriage sidings in the triangle opposite the steam shed.
There was indeed a bay between the current platforms 3 and 4 which was used by the Slough Estate passenger trains and the Aylesbury service. I have caught a train to Windsor from it but we went Down Reief to Horlicks bridge and went rounfd the West curve to Windsor. Engineering work on East curve.
There was also a carriage road between the Down Relief and Up Relief. The Slough stoppers used to terminate in Platform 4. The Tanneroner would pull the empties forward and reverse into the carriage road and either go on shed or runround and come onto the east end. If the loco had gone on shed a new loco would come out of the shed and onto the East end where it would sit until just near departure time when it would pull out the stock and reverse back into the Up Relief platform ready to depart all stations to Padd.
When platform 6 was built Platform 5 was widened and the Up Relief alinged with the carriage road.
At the end of platforms 3/4 was Slough East Box which was unusual in that the lever frame was at right angles to the track. There was a barrow crossing right across in front of the box I spent a summer work experience trundling barrows across with spare motor lorry parts to be put on the Down afternoon parcels which stopped in Platform 2 mid afternoon to load!
There were also a couple of carriage sidngs betweent the Down Relief and Up main as has been mentioned previously.
South of the down main at the East end of teh station was the parcel dock this had a run round loop towards Wexham Road bridge. ther were usually a couple vans which were unloaded in teh morning and loaded in the aftennon which would be picked up/dropped off by one of the numerous parcel trains.
There was alot more track and crossings comapred to today.
However Slough is one of the few places where you can have all platforms occupied blow one whistle and all trains start to move simultaneously. You could even have seventh train in the old end loading dock at the West end of paltform 6 where the tampers are parked.
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