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Danzey for Tanworth Station
The station was opened in 1908 and being close to Danzey
Green and Tanworth-in-Arden was named accordingly. Whilst the station's
passenger facilities were very modest in keeping with many others on the line
it did however boast a goods yard from the outset. The passenger buildings on
the two platforms and the weighbridge located in the goods yard, were, in
common with other stations on the line, constructed from asbestos (Eternit)
sheeting fixed to timber framing. The station was approached via a short
driveway off Danzey Green Lane, the latter also served the goods yard but from
a separate entrance on the other side of the line. The goods yard was
effectively one long siding with a corrugated goods shed and two small huts.
Like all other goods yards along the route Danzey for Tanworth's goods yard was
a casualty of the rising domination of road traffic and closed in 1964. The
station remains open today as an unmanned halt.
Much of the information on this and other pages of
Warwickshire Railways is derived from articles or books listed in our 'bibliography'.
Danzey for Tanworth Station in 1908
Danzey for Tanworth Station under ownership of British
Railways
The Goods Yard
Miscellaneous
Maps and schematic plans
Umberslade Hall and the bridge over its drive
According to Colin Maggs in his book Branch Lines of
Warwickshire one of the bridges near Danzey was built of stone not the
normal structure built in brick found elsewhere on the route. The bridge
carried the railway over the drive to Umberslade Hall, and in order to secure
the passage of the railway through this estate the drive had to be crossed by a
bridge of three elliptical arches, built of stone in order to match the stone
of the Hall.
Robert Ferris writes that the GWR Magazine of 1908
had the following article on the bridge. The bridges on the line are of the
usual types, in blue brick, but the most expensive of all is, strangely enough,
an accommodation bridge. It carried the railway over a disused drive leading
towards a fine old house, built of local stone from quarries which have since
been worked out and closed. When the line was proposed the stipulation was made
that it should cross the drive on three elliptical arches of stone obtained
from Derbyshire of colour to match the house. This affords little idea of the
difficulties encountered in designing and building it. All arches which are
segments of a circle on a line square to the abutments show an elliptical curve
on the face when built on the skew, but this arch although built on the skew
had to be elliptical on a line square to the abutments. In a skew bridge of
which the span is anything considerable the voussoirs have to be laid as nearly
possible square to the face line.
A ruled sheet of paper rolled obliquely over a ruler
gives a good idea of the courses on a segmental skew arch. All these corners
are curved lines, and the joints between the ends of the adjacent voussoirs
themselves are curved. Even the joints of the voussoirs where cut by the skew
face are curved. The curves are spirals or functions of spirals based on the
circle and have all been investigated and reduced to rule. On an elliptical
skew arch all this is changed, for the radius of the arch itself changes
continually from a maximum at the crown to a minimum at the springing. The
result is that the six faces of all stones of which the arch is built have each
to be cut to a different curve, and each curve itself is constantly altering
inch by inch.
Another result which costs much money is the amount of
stone which must be cut to waste. This increases enormously as the curvature
increases near the springing, so that in a long voussoir much more stone is cut
to waste than used. An extended search has revealed no record of a masonry
elliptical skew arch having previously been built. An attempt to design a
suitable arch on a false ellipse had to be abandoned, because the abrupt
changes of curvature were found unsightly. In flat elliptical arches, like
those in question, the line of the centre of thrust passes out of the back of
the arching before it reaches the springing, and meeting the trust of another
arch, or the reaction of the abutment, gradually loses its horizontal
component, and passes more or less vertically into the pier or abutment. In
some skew segmental arches built in France this has been recognised in the
design, and before reaching the springing the spiral courses have ceased and
courses parallel to the springing line have taken their place.
This desirable feature has been adopted resulting in a
great saving of cost and relief to the contractor compared with the original
design, because the courses being straight and parallel have four plane faces,
and the waste due the changing spiral course is altogether avoided in the
places where it would be greatest. The parallel courses were built to a true
ellipse, all difficulty in cutting to changing curves being avoided, because
the one template serves for two whole courses in each arch.. Above the parallel
courses the change in curvature of the ellipse is greatly reduced, and for this
part of the arch an approximation of three circular arcs was calculated, which
differs from a true ellipse by a very small fraction of an inch. The
difficulties were thus greatly reduced, for the spiral courses became true
spirals and were marked out as for segmental arches of two different radii,
instead of to unknown constantly changing curves. Methods based on, but vastly
more complicated than those used for segmental arches were followed.
On receiving the drawings Mr GB Sharples, the
contractor's engineer, with great zeal devised methods of setting out and
succeeded in having all the stones cut with utmost precision. Only one stone
was wasted, and the joints are as nearly perfect as possible. This bridge is
believed to be the only one of its kind in existence.
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