Bournville Shed

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Bournville Shed

Why the shed was built
In 1885 a new section of main line, known as the Stirchley Street and Bournville to Kings Norton Deviation, was opened as part of a major improvement of the Midland Railway route from Derby to Bristol, allowing trains to pass through Birmingham instead of having to change engines and reverse direction. In 1892 three further improvements were made. Birmingham Central Goods Depot was completed, the Lifford Loop was opened, and the line between Kings Norton and Northfield was quadrupled, the quadrupling being extended to Halesowen Junction in 1894. A new engine shed was then opened at Bournville, alongside the realigned main line, in 1895. The surrounding area, then in Worcestershire, was being rapidly developed, and would become part of an expanded Birmingham in 1911. The Midland Railway wanted to be part of this expansion.

Description
Bournville shed was a standard Midland roundhouse equipped with a 50 foot turntable, water tank and sand oven. An embanked coal stage, two water cranes and ash disposal facilities were provided in the yard, plus the usual disposal sidings. It was given an allocation of approximately twenty-five locomotives, outstationed from Saltley shed. In 1935 it was given the code 21B and designated a "garage" of Saltley. This meant it had a permanent allocation but was only responsible for maintenance and running repairs. Saltley, the concentration depot, undertook more time consuming repairs. The company's works, such as Derby, remained responsible for major overhauls. The shed's facilities were adequate enough for its duties and no further investment was made in it, except for the fitting of a 57 foot turntable circa 1948, and the repair and replacement of the same after an accident in 1956.

Traffic
Freight traffic was guaranteed from Cadburys, which had built its own private railway system, and the new Central Goods Station was connected not only to the south but to the north as well, by means of the Lifford Loop Line, completed in 1892. Suburban services from Birmingham New Street reached Kings Norton via both Camp Hill and Bournville lines. The Lifford Loop allowed circular services to operate via Bournville and Camp Hill. Services on the Halesowen Joint Line, opened in 1883, were another Bournville responsibility. The shed also provided engines for main line stopping services to Worcester, Gloucester and Bristol, and for the branch line from Barnt Green to Ashchurch, sometimes known as the Gloucester Loop. Contrary to the shed's rather parochial image, double home workings to London and other distant places were operated in the early years, obliging the engine's crew to sleep away from home and family. A parliamentary act of 1919, limiting the hours men could work, made the continuation of these services uneconomic.

Decline
Hawkins & Reeve, in their book LMS Engine Sheds Volume Two - The Midland Railway, claim that the accommodation was more than adequate and the expected increase in traffic, for which the shed was to be responsible, never fully materialized. Road transport competed too effectively. Cheap and frequent electric trams appeared in the early 1900s, and cars, buses and lorries made further inroads into railway traffic in the inter war years, helped along by road improvement schemes. In January 1941 the Camp Hill line stations were closed and the circular service discontinued. In 1956 an engine fell into the turntable pit, making the shed dependent on Saltley and Bromsgrove for boiler washouts. The turntable was repaired and reinstated, but despite this investment, the shed was officially closed on 14th February 1960. The last locomotive officially to leave the shed whilst still in service was 5MT 4-6-0 No 44843. Demolition of the buildings began in November 1961 and a new use for the site was found soon afterwards.

Allocations
Bournville was a haven for veteran Kirtley double framed 2-4-0s after the great war, judging by the photos taken in 1919,1922 and 1935. By the thirties the depot had become something of a backwater, notable for its allocation of similarly veteran Kirtley double-framed 0-6-0s, which were used on the Halesowen Joint Line. In 1945 there were still six of these, all rebuilds to power class 2F. For those interested they were Nos 22630, 22818, 22834, 22846, 22853, 22863. The first three had round top boilers, the others had Belpaire boilers. The allocation on 31st December 1947, the eve of nationalisation, was as follows:

3MT 2-6-2T - 105, 162, 168, 173, 179
2P 4-4-0 - 439, 517
4P 4-4-0 - 917, 934, 1061, 1064, 1073
4MT 2-6-4T - 2327, 2338, 2339, 2342, 2373
3F 0-6-0 - 3355, 3359, 3562, 3583, 3668, 3675, 3687
4F 0-6-0 - 3968, 4138, 4289, 4333
2F 0-6-0 - 22630, 22846, 22863, 22924, 22953, 22955

There were thirty-four altogether, sixteen of them being former Midland Railway engines. By 1950 traffic may have temporarily increased, as no less than four 5MT 4-6-0s were on the allocation, but it was not to last. By March 1959 there were only twenty-one engines allocated, thirteen of which were former Midland ones. Of those on the 1947 list, seven of the former Midland ones were still there. The full list for 21st March 1959, less than a year before closure, is as follows:

2P 4-4-0 - 40439, 40568
4MT 2-6-0 - 43012, 43027, 43033, 43040
3F 0-6-0 - 43263, 43359, 43521, 43523, 43583, 43668, 43675, 43687
4F 0-6-0 - 43855, 44516, 44571
5MT 4-6-0 - 44981
2F 0-6-0 - 58138, 58143, 58167

Stored engines
The shed's sidings were used to store redundant engines as long ago as 1935, as evidenced by several of the photographs. Shortly before closure, the sidings were being put to the same use. There were 16 engines stored outside in the yard in 1959, all officially allocated to either Bournville or Saltley. They were as follows:

3MT 2-6-2T - 40012, 40115
2P 4-4-0 - 40439, 40443, 40511, 40568
3F 0-6-0 - 43490, 43675, 43693
4F 0-6-0 - 43858, 44084, 44227, 44406, 44515
2F 0-6-0 - 58168, 58261

Those reprieved and reallocated were 40012, 40115, 40439, 40443, 40511. The others were condemned either shortly before or after the shed closed. They were cut up by Doncaster and Derby works in 1960, except for 58261, which was cut up at Gorton works.

Photographs
The earliest one looks official, with two Johnson engines posed with staff outside the shed when it was new in the 1890s. The next seven were taken on two Sundays, one in 1919 and the other in 1922. Everything looks very clean and ordered in them. High standards were obviously being maintained, despite the loss of manpower during the war. The photographers seem to have been stimulated into action in 1935. Perhaps it was the sense that things were changing as Stanier's radical new designs appeared, with the likelihood that older designs would be withdrawn to make way for them. It was probably then that Bournville acquired its reputation for accommodating displaced engines on its underused disposal sidings. The other draw was probably the allocation of elderly double framed engines, a draw that must have intensified after the second war when it was realized that some were still extant. By the fifties they were gone, and the surviving Johnson 2Fs became the veterans that attracted photographers.

Why Sundays?
Most of the close ups on shed were taken at weekends, especially on Sundays. The reasons are not hard to find. Like everybody else amateur photographers would have had to work for a living. The weekends, especially Sundays, were their time off, giving them a chance to practice their hobby. There were also usually more engines to be seen on shed than during the week. The lull in economic activity meant that many of them, usually kept continuously in steam during the week, could be given time consuming maintenance and running repairs at their home shed. As each locomotive came off its last weekday turn, its fire would be allowed to die down, leaving just enough steam for shed staff to dispose of it under its own power. The fire would be dropped, ashpan emptied of ash, smokebox emptied of char, tank filled with water and tender topped with coal. Once in the shed, the boiler was allowed to cool until it could be washed out and any scale removed. If the bay was in demand, the serviced engine would be shunted onto a disposal road in the yard and left there until needed. Sundays were, therefore, a good day to visit the shed. Both shed and disposal sidings were full of engines at rest, waiting to be captured on camera for posterity.

Acknowledgments
I was a trainspotter as a boy in the late fifties and always associate Bournville shed with the lines of engines stored on its sidings back then. I never did get more than a glimpse inside the roundhouse, as the foreman did not tolerate young trespassers. At a much later date I researched my family history and found, to my surprise, that my great-grandfather had been an engine driver at the shed, living nearby and working there until he retired in 1918. Discovering all the photos on Mike's site brought memories back and I took him up on his suggestion that I write captions for them. I enjoy writing them and trust my efforts are of interest to others. I am not an original researcher, so am indebted to numerous books and a few relevant websites for much of the content of both captions and the foregoing preamble. For those interested, many now out of print books, describing and illustrating former Midland Railway lines and installations in the Birmingham area, can still be found advertised for sale on the internet. I've striven to present information gleaned from them accurately, hopefully in clear and digestible form. Books I find particularly useful for the history of Midland Railway engines are the four volumes of "An Illustrated Review of Midland Locomotives" by RJ Essery and D Jenkinson and the "British Locomotive Catalogue 1825-1923 Volume 3A Midland Railway and its constituent companies" by the late Bertram Baxter. Allocation lists can be found in "BR Steam Locomotives 1948-1968 - Complete Allocations History" by Hugh Longworth and in reissued editions of the well remembered "British Railways Locomotives - Combined Volume and Locoshed Book" published by Ian Allan.

John Dews