LMS Route: Rugby to Wolverhampton
LMS Route: Rugby to Leamington
LMS Route: Rugby to Tamworth
LMS Route: Rugby to Leicester
LMS Route: Rugby to Market Harborough

Rugby Station: lnwrrm881j

Close up of image 'lnwrrm881' showing Rugby's shunting hump in its entirety and the unusual formation of the Bedwas Coke train which occupied it. Stephen Weston writes in 'LNWR Society Journal Volume 5 Edition No 4 'This 'shunting hump' as it is called on an official plan, was a 'mass earth' structure, unlike the hump at Nuneaton which was supported by side retaining walls, and was only three feet high; its purpose was to speed up the sorting of wagons arriving or departing on the four lines from the north. The train of loaded and recently painted Bedwas Coke wagons looks impressive, although the two cattle wagons, complete with bovine occupants at the rear slightly less so. The four grimy coke wagons in between cannot be identified. At the rear is a brake van but it is not the last vehicle, which is an open wagon. So it is hard to know whether the train is about to leave for the south or is to be pushed over the hump for sorting. In any case, something looks a little odd with the shunting process: have the coke wagons been reversed into position on the hump, in readiness for sorting? If so, the open wagon at the rear seems a strange feature, and also the rear of the train seems perilously close to the engine fly-shunting the tank wagon. The hump was very much an LNWR feature and was only removed during electrification work in the 1960s.'

back