Great Western Coffee Shop

From a Facebook post I read ...


Which stations across the GWR area are LEAST changed from what they were 50 or 100 years ago?

Blue Anchor?

For many years Hanwell (or Hanwell & Elthorne as the old-fashioned signs proclaimed) was like a remarkable place where time seemed to have stood still since before nationalisation. I assume though that CrossRail and LT have now changed all that.

At platform level very little has changed - other than twice the number of trains stopping during the week and a Sunday service - as I believe it is protected?

Lifts have recently been added though.

From some of my previous posts it will be clear that as a general rule I don’t like getting bogged down in definitions, preferring to rely more on the underlying reason for the rule or he strategy or the policy. However in this case the definitions are important. What exactly does the question mean, and how do you define “least changed?” A few options spring to mind:

Presumably we ignore the change of use of certain rooms. For example, all but the smallest stations had a stationmaster’s office. If that room is still there it probably no longer contains the person in charge of the establishment.

If we mean an identical signalling and track layout to that which existed 50 years ago, let alone 100, we won’t find many. Even if you did happen to find one or two you wouldn’t find many with jointed track and bullhead rail, but perhaps that’s being far too pedantic.

If we just mean architecturally least changed then the numbers begin to rise, helped along by listed building status. So in this category we could have Slough, Twyford, Bristol Temple Meads, Bath Spa and Cheltenham Spa Lansdown to start the list.

If we include station that are substantially the same but have some platforms that no longer have track against all of them, we can add Taunton to the list. Chippenham could not be included under this definition because it used to have a bay platform that is no longer there.

If we mean stations that are virtually identical to what was there in days of old, but is no longer used as a station, Bath Green Park would be high on the list

Um... Blue Anchor?

I do like Blue Anchor... drove a Small Prairie there once, too.

Until its complete relaying as part of the South Island Sewerage Project, the Isle of Man Railway had stations including their signals worked by windlasses unchanged since the 1870's. An utter time warp with rolling stock to match. I drove a small Manx Peacock there too!

Whilst Cheltenham Spa Lansdown is indeed pretty much unchanged at platform level (if one case use the word 'pretty' at all for the platform level), the public side did alas suffer the inelegance of losing the colonnade 1961.  Mind you, it's all much better than poor old Stonehouse ... there's nothing polite to be said about that BR destruction.

Whereas two more stations that are architecturally unchanged are Kemble and Stroud - and Kemble really is pretty.

St Erth is still pretty much unchanged, even down to the signals. Arguably the least changed mainline GWR station.

You’d already mentioned Blue Anchor before I posted so I didn’t need to say it again. You've mentioned it twice now  ;D

One of the problems here of course is that one can only think of and comment on a station if you’ve actually used it and probably a number of times. As pointed out for example, Cheltenham Lansdown looks much the same at platform level and, whilst I’ve changed there on one or two occasions, I have only left and entered the station about half a dozen times in my life, and never back in the 60s. As someone pointed put on another thread some time ago, if you actually wanted to go to the centre of Cheltenham back then, St James was a far better option with Malvern Road being a close second.

In the case of Cornwall I couldn’t really comment because my experience of actually going in and out of stations there is limited to Looe, Par, Newquay, Truro, St Ives and Penzance, and I have changed trains at Bodmin Road/ Parkway and St Erth. What the rest of ‘em look lke from the outside is a closed book to me!

Although this thread is specific in its geographical area, looking briefly further afield two stations that looked virtually identical in 1967 and 2018 are Hellifield and Skipton, Photos to prove it:

Hellifield:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/43305136480/

Skipton: https://www.flickr.com/photos/93122458@N08/45215021952/

Kemble is very pretty. Stroud isn't bad and way back in the past (1970s and 80s, maybe even early 90s) it used to have hanging baskets in the summer, which made it prettier; but I think the tradition might have died out when whichever member of staff it was retired.

Surely Bristol TM, Exeter St D, Pewsey and Yeovil PM are significant contenders.

One of the - err - beauties of this question is that it means such different things to different people.   Perhaps smaller stations will be changed less because there's less to be changed.  I looked at some of the smaller stations on the Looe branch / never had any goods sidings so nothing too change.  Yeovil Pen Mill, yes, feels set back in time.  Took a look at Penmere, but it wasn't even open 100 years ago!   Blue Anchor - not GWR now. Just one small siding gone, as far as I can see.   St Erth - yes, but very recent changes removed the second bay and gave a huge outlet to the south car park. Downside sidings to the east have gone. Temple Meads - the whole old train shed has gone.

...and there are particularly fine surviving buildings in good condition at Mortimer and Charlbury.

That was the case until the bay platform works in 2019.  The engineer's siding was greatly shortened and the platform built out.  This was to better accommodate the bigger numbers travelling through St Erth because of the park and ride moving to there.

Funnily enough,  all the small stations on the Looe line have changed in the last forty years - Coombe Jn lost the second line/loop in the early 80s, St Keyne and Sandplace had new brick shelters with canopies erected in 97/98, Causeland had its shelter pebbledashed around the same sort of time (I think) and all bar Coombe Jn got permanent lighting for the first time around 2003.

 

The station buildings and canopies at Evesham are not much changed.

The platform extension work and removal of much track and the semaphore signals all mean that the station isn't all that much as it was, though

Bradford on Avon

Lovely pint of Spingo too! (if you know, you know)

In many ways it depends on what change is meant. At Maiden Newton the track layout now is not far from what it was in 1857 but has gone through a series of changes.

 The station buildings as they are date from 1862. The original 1857 station buildings were extended in 1859 and 1862.

Edit to add ... images added in-line - grahame

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/mnlayout1.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/mnlayout2.jpg)

Here's some (silent) footage of trains in and around Exeter St Davids just over 50 years ago....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVPbPBsKqsU

I'd say Newcourt has changed very little since it opened!

At the other extreme, the "Trigger's Broom" award goes to Dilton Marsh.

Yes, though if you look back at same location 100 or even 50 years ago ... the original question was