GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill: gwrbsh2686

Porters at Birmingham Snow Hill continue sorting parcel traffic as normal outside the heavily sand-bagged telegraph offices on Platform No 7 in 1940.

With a European war imminent the Government authorised a £4 million grant to the railway companies for Air Raid Precaution (ARP) measures in January 1939. The grant included significant sums for duplicating headquarters and control facilities in safer locations (where possible away from urban centres). It also paid for the duplication and provision of protection for communications and electrical power control infrastructure, especially where these telephone exchanges, power and sub-stations served critical network locations on the nations railways. Additional emergency connections were also to be made between Railway Company Telephone systems and the General Post Office (GPO) telephone network.

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