GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Milcote Station: gwrm591a

This close up of image 'gwrm591' shows the level crossing with the up platform's structure on the left.

Kevin Flynn writes "It was a more substantial structure than that seen on the down platform as it housed additional passenger facilities including the booking office which also handled parcels traffic. A set of sliding-arm platform scales for weighing parcels survived the withdrawal of station staffing and remained in situ in the otherwise bare waiting room right up to the final closure of the station.

The building had two doors onto the platform: the one at the Honeybourne end was for the public; that nearer Stratford was the staff entrance to the booking office. The down-platform building housed just a small waiting room. Both buildings had attached to them open-roofed gentlemen's toilets of the usual GWR type at their Stratford ends, and both buildings also had fireplaces.

Whether the main station building was used by passengers at this time is unknown but the GWR sign above its door (seen on the right) might indicate that certain facilities were retained. A "Ladies' Waiting Room" was probably retained in the old station building because, as noted, the new buildings only had "Gents" and it was also normal GWR practice to provide ladies' toilets behind "the cover" of ladies' waiting rooms. (I suspect that it was thought indelicate for ladies to be seen heading for the lavatory -- they were merely going to rest a while in the ladies' waiting room!).

This room, by the way, survived as a recognizable waiting room right up to the (criminal) demolition of the Station House (though accessible after the station was de-staffed only from within the house itself, where it constituted a kind of "front room" -- complete with padded benches and a large window overlooking the track -- for the signalman's family who latterly occupied the former station master's quarters)".

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