LMS Route: Evesham to Birmingham

Alcester Station: mra462

A posed photograph of Alcester station's staff with both the Great Western Railway and Midland Railway stationmasters present circa 1910. The Midland stationmaster is seated in the middle whilst his Great Western equivalent is seated on the left of the photograph. The original caption identified the MR stationmaster as Ernest Kilby. Mike Boote writes, 'You may remember that I contacted you some while ago regarding my Grandfather (Ernest Kilby) being Station Master at both Alcester and Studley during his career with The Midland Railway. I have just seen the photograph (above ) and am pretty sure that my grandfather is in fact the gentleman on the left of the picture. As this was taken in circa 1910, he would have been a relatively young man (30+?) where the gentleman sitting centre looks to me to be much closer to late 50s or early 60s. I lived with my Grandparents in Crooks Lane, Studley in the middle 50s for about a year and Grandad Kilby was retired then, although he was still very active and had his allotment on the embankment on the Astwood side of the station, I used to go there with him'.

Just as an aside, my wife and I went to Studley Station a couple of weeks ago, just to see the old place and really to see if it was still in some reasonable state of repair, I am delighted to say that the present owners, Mr & Mrs Poole, have maintained it to a very high standard and retained much of the original featurework such as the Station Master door leading I think into what is now their lounge, the original tiled flooring in the Ticket Office area, original brass light switches etc. it was an absolute delight to see the effort put in to retain the old place in it's original form. They were most helpful and really kind in showing us around some of the old station house and where the platform used to be. We took photographs of the building and Mr Poole also allowed us to take photographs of some of the old photographs he has managed to collect. When I can find the time to edit them, I will send the best to you, although some are fairly poor quality.

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