It looks as if we've reached the end of the road when it comes to determining what the Roebuck subway was for, unless there are clues tucked away in some archival document. I'd vaguely hoped that someone might volunteer some info about that long siding from Tilehurst Station to the Roebuck. (See my post 85.) I guess that the best source would be
Tony Cooke's track plans (which I found very useful into my early research into military railways in Wiltshire). But Reading Library appears not to have a copy.
I went down this morning for another, inconclusive look, first venturing onto Platform 4 at Tilehurst Station, an hour before any trains were due. There were
two ambulances on stand-by and I wonder what the crews thought. Despite having made thousands of journeys from Platform, I just wanted to see how the siding would have been accommodated. Then up to Roebuck, to see where it would have ended, and up to the gateway to the path through Skerrett Wood, peering over the wall on either side.
Not for the first time,, I wondered why the slits in the pillbox were facing across Oxford Road at an angle, rather than down it, in the direction from which invading forces would have come.