GWSR Broadway Developments

In order to separate postings about the 5 'Bridges to Broadway' and following suggestions from a number of forum members, I am creating this new thread about the station itself.

I particularly liked the last posting by Kinghambranch. Well done, Sir! What a lovely, atmospheric story. If you have more information about the history of the station, please do tell.

For those that have not yet seen it, the official station site has a number of historical photographs of the station:
http://www.broadwaystation.co.uk/broadwaystation.htm
If you have any others, we would be very interested to see them, in order to build up an archive.

Daily progress can be followed on the station blog: http://broadwaygwsr.blogspot.co.uk/

Have you all bought shares for the bridges? The EIS share issue will close at the end of the summer, and at the moment we are £42.000 short. Not a huge amount; you could make a difference. And getting 30% of the money back from HMRC really works!

 

Station site's really looking good with the addition of the bracket signal, I must make a visit at some point, I still haven't been, perhaps buy something from the shed...

 

Jo. Have you still got those 2 photographs taken from the same standing point. The one in 2009? and the other in......2014?

I was trying to find them recently, and couldn't.

Perhaps you could post them on here.

 

Thank you Breva. My own memories of Broadway Station only go back as far as the end of steam. It would have been around 1961 or 1962 when I was allowed to travel to Broadway with a neighbour to pick up some day old chickens from Broadway goods yard. I seem to remember a black tank loco being around (presumably a Pannier) and several brown (Bauxite colour) box vans. My Dad's neighbour, a local farmer, collected several chirping brown boxes with air holes in them and put them in the boot of his, to me, enormous black car (a Humber Hawk). We then drove back to our village some 1o miles distant and unloaded all these little fluffy yellow "Easter" chicks, which, of course, didn't stay little or yellow and fluffy for long! That was my first memory of Broadway - it might as well have been in a Galaxy far away!

 

I think you mean something like these two, one taken in 2004, and the other in 2014, 10 years later. They were both taken from near the bridge, looking north.

 

Lovely story - thank you !
One of my favourites was an article in the Evesham Journal, say 1930s. Four 10ton coal wagons ran away down the goods yard slope, and overturned at the bottom.
What to do? A photograph in the paper gave the answer:

Take
1 elderly gentleman, moustache, cloth cap
1 bicycle, leaning against the fence
1 shovel.

Please handle !

 

Those are the ones. Trying to match the tree with the fork in the trunk suggests the earlier one was taken from a point a good few feet further north, and now appears to be the one beyond the phone box, which would suggest that the one beyond that in 2004, errr..........fell down?

 

On 4 Aug 1914, exactly a century ago, the railway station at Broadway had been open for a few days longer than 10 years. What is now the GWSR was no doubt settling into a routine existence as part of the mighty GWR. Most of the people named below and their comrades who survived, would doubtless have left Broadway by train, as this was the dominant form of land transport at that time and was, as most historians agree, at its zenith just before WWI.

Names from the War Memorial in Broadway for 1914-1918:

G. Barnett
J. J. Bayliss
W. R. Billey
W. Bishop
A. H. Clarke
B. Clarke
A. W. Collins
W. Crump
J. Cull
T. Daffurn
J. E. Earp
H. Edwards
E. Emms
W. Figgett
O. S. Flower
A. Box
A. Folkes
F. Folkes
H. L. Game
W. Gardner
A. H. Goddard
L. Green
C. R. Haines
G. Hensley
R. B. Hill
J. Hillson
F. Hingles
C. Jackson
W. Jordan
C. H. Keyte
A. Layton
G. Haines
S. J. Painter
E. H. Parker
W. J. Parker
J. Perry
E. Rastall
J. Russell
C. Sandals
G. Scrivens
A. S. Stanley
C. R. Stanley
S. Talbot
W. Tandy
W. Tebby
J. Tustin
E. Vincent
E. Wale

A century later, Broadway station is being rebuilt and soon will be part of the GWSR network again. On this bright sunny day in August, it is all too easy to forget that Broadway Station was a last goodbye for most, if not all of those listed above. I'm sure you'll have your own examples but this is merely a representation.

"Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young. "
A E Housman

 

Yes, it looks great, but what routes from the platform will that bracket signal actually control? I don't know the proposed station layout, but it looks a little odd to me. Broadway isn't a junction, is it?

 

I think it's to do with the siding that's planned making it double track for some way, and for added interest for S&T!

 

Following a comment here, and questions posed elsewhere, I've located the Diagram on the Steaming to Broadway Blog that will, I hope, explain all.


Not that I know naff about signalling. However, this is about the first time I have done a Search on a Blog and actually found what I was looking for.

 

Well done Ken, it is a bit difficult to navigate through that blog, no drop downs like on most. There does seem to be an awful lot of signals, maybe put in just so S&T can justify having such a large frame! Then again I know nothing about signalling too, a complete mystery...

 

Not really a mystery if you have ever built a model railway based on a prototypical location and then realised just how many signals you need! Broadway, I presume, will need quite a few signals as it will be, like Cheltenham Race Course, a terminus (hopefully not for too long) which of course it never was in GWR/BR days (except for a short while when the line southwards was being built) and will need more signals as a result. I'm no signal buff either so doubtless S&T will explain in due course (if they read this!) and all will be revealed.

Incidentally, I wonder whatever happened to the mega-large Ex-Exminster all wooden Signal Box which was originally planned to be relocated at Broadway? It had survived as a nature-watch hide and was carefully dismantled over a 10 day period before being transported to the GWSR. I think it ended up at the Dean Forest Railway but would be interested to know what happened to it (I trust I haven't ruffled any feathers in asking this, that wasn't my intention).

 

If I remember correctly, a then director of the board saved it himself without checking to see if he had backing from the board, which he didn't. I don't know much else, no one does it seems!

As for signalling, my next planned layout is part of the L&MVLR, which had two signals, that's as much as I can manage!

 

I see; that clarifies things a little as to why the Exminster Box was "saved". Thank you.

 

Once you have a track layout and discussed train movements with the operating department you will soon end up with an awful lot of signals. The double loop layout at Broadway is very flexible and not too dissimilar to what we have planned for Cheddleton but with the addition of a level crossing, bay platform and MPD connection. I also see another railway is adopting tokenless working with the use of Acceptance Levers.

 

The layout looks fairly similar to Goathland. The diagram also answers a question of why there is a bracket instead of a normal 5ft starter.

 

I did ask about the fate of Exminster box. It was all rather unfortunate, everyone meant well, but it didn't pan out right. It was a wooden box, which is rather delicate and subject to the weather. It was taken to an arranged location, which fell through quite quickly, so was moved again, and then again, to Winchcombe. There it lay in pieces for quite a while - you might speculate that the rescue was premature as Broadway wasn't ready for it - and finally it was moved to a private address in the Forest of Dean for restoration, but, if my memory serves me right, the chap that was going to do it became unwell and couldn't.
Some of the bits are still at Winchcombe (slates, cladding) and from there I managed to recover four cast iron half pipes, which poke out through the roof in pairs to hold the ventilators. From a similar source I got the two ventilators themselves - these sets will go into Broadway box, and thus play a vital part. They are stamped GWR.
Exminster was a valiant effort, but it just didn't come out right due to circumstances not always within the control of those that put so much time into getting it. Bits of it will live on ! We even have a genuine flag holder, from what seems to be Chipping Campden box
So look on the positive side - we are very determined to get the copy of Shirley right. We have just found a joiner who will make us the doors. The brickwork is just rising above the level of the joists, so the doors need to go in soon.

 

Ironically, I was 'involved' to a limited extent with the original Exminster 'preservation' project insofar as its recovery and removal went, but after that it did all seem to peter out over time. Such a shame, as it had potential IMHO to be a useful asset somewhere as well as being an historical survivor.

I'm intrigued by the provision of a fixed distant under 44, especially given that 45 will be motor-worked. And if there is going to be acceptance lever working to Toddington, then I assume that somewhere in the frame will be a spare/space earmarked for an acceptance lever towards Honeybourne in the future?

 

Congratulations on your progress so far. I see that you are using BTDonate to collect online donations for the project. We are contemplating using it for a scheme on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway and wondered what you thought of it. Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks!