I was reading though an old copy of The Railway Magazine - as one does during a moment of morning solitude - and came across an interesting snippet in the ‘Notes and News’ section of the February 1941 edition quoted below. It caused me to investigate further this curiously named piece of antiquity.
As a complement to the photograph of the old Midland Railway terminal station at Gloucester, published on page 502 of the September, 1940, issue, a photo is reproduced of the surviving structure of the curious “Gloucester T Station,” of which the history is fully told in E.T. MacDermot’s “History of the Great Western Railway.”
When the line between Swindon and Gloucester was completed , in May, 1845, the only G.W.R. station accommodation at Gloucester was a temporary platform adjoining the Birmingham & Gloucester terminus. In October, 1847, the G.W.R. began to use the Gloucester-Cheltenham section, which was of mixed gauge and owned in equal parts with the Midland Railway (as successors since 1846 to the Birmingham & Gloucester Company).
To enable certain trains to avoid reversal at Gloucester, a broad gauge avoiding line, 52 ch. in length, was constructed to connect Millstream and Barnwood junctions. This avoiding line lay to the east of Gloucester station, with which it was connected by a short broad gauge spur forming with it the shape of the letter T, whence came the names T station and T line.
As the avoiding and T lines met at a right-angle, connection between them was by means of turntables, which were used to transfer through Gloucester coaches to and from the expresses between Paddington and Cheltenham and vice-versa.
After the new Great Western station at Gloucester was brought into use in September, 1851, the T station and avoiding line were abandoned; but while the station and its spur line went out of use altogether, the avoiding line was extended and reopened as the Cheltenham Loop, for freight traffic in November, 1901, and for passenger traffic in July, 1908.
The accompanying photograph of the old T station, taken shortly before the war, shows the building as now used as a staff cottage; the view is directly eastward from the site of the T line, with the present Cheltenham Loop behind the fence in the background. [D.S. Barrie]
That fabulous National Library of Scotland map section did not disappoint, and
a map from 1873 shows the T station (named as such) on the perpendicular confluence of two disused railways, and it was not where I first expected it to be on my initial read. The building was still extant
on the 1944 1: 2500 detailed map named T Station House, but now with the rebuilt Cheltenham Loop besides it. A slider to see the present location on Google Satellite shows that it lies under the site of the wartime road bridge connecting Gloucester to the wartime aircraft factory that is currently (and controversially) being replaced. I couldn’t find a map showing the T line in place, but its trace can be seen on all subsequent maps.
I suspect that the building's appearance on a 1944 (and later) map was because the bridge and road was still a national secret!
Photo below credited to DS Barrie - Fair use for academic study and research
Click on the map to explore geographics
