GWR Route: Moreton-in-Marsh to Shipston-on-Stour

Moreton-in-Marsh Station: gwrmm984

View of the Shipston-on-Stour branch locomotive, Great Western Railway 0-6-0ST No 47, standing under the water tank at Moreton-in-Marsh circa 1887. The locomotive was typical of its day in offering little protection for the crew inclement weather having no roof whilst the front weather board with its two circular windows were as much a place to mount the numerous gages and controls as to offer protection. The rear timber weather board similarly was more likely to have been installed to increase the capacity of the coal bunker. This locomotive was one of five 0-6-0 long boiler goods locomotives originally built by RB Longridge & Co for the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway and taken to their stock as No 13 in June 1849. After the S&B was absorbed by the Great Western Railway, locomotive No 13 was renumbered No 47 and rebuilt as a 0-6-0 saddle tank on a slightly extended frame at the Company's Stafford Works at Wolverhampton in June 1868. In August 1875 No 47 received a new domed boiler with a larger 537 gallon saddle tank as seen in the photograph and in this form the locomotive was regularly employed on the Shipston Branch until withdrawn in August 1889.

The combined pillar water tank and crane at the Oxford end of the up platform was replaced with a standard water crane shortly after the Great Western Railway had installed a large water tank at the other end of the up platform, which supplied water facilities of the whole station. The water tank appears on the 1884 OS map (see 'gwrmm3081').

In the background is the standard Great Western Railway type 4b Signal Box, which was built circa 1883. This type 4b design was similar to that constructed by contractors, it had a brick built ground floor locking room and rear wall with brick chimney and had a steep gabled roof with tall wooden finals. The operating floor was twenty feet, five inches long by eleven feet, six inches wide with horizontally sliding sash windows. The operating floor was nine feet above the rail level and accessed by an external wooden staircase to a small landing and porch, which also gave access to a lavatory. The Signal Box has a wooden name-board on to which individual cast iron letters were fixed. This arrangement was typical of the period of construction, but on 10th November 1898 a replacement single piece cast iron nameplate was ordered for this Signal Box.

Robert Ferris

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