LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Tamworth

Wilnecote Station: mrw1285

Wilnecote Station's unassuming welcome to intending passengers viewed from the A5 Watling Street in Two Gates on the 21st March 1967. The street level booking office, seen beyond the entrance, at the top of the long flight of steps leading to the down platform, was a modest timber structure with a hipped slate roof extending to provide a degree of shelter over the ticket window for passengers buying their tickets. There is a maroon enamel sign 'Tickets' to the left of the window and to the right a bell push with a small enamel sign including an arrow to the left. The writing is too small to read, but may have been to summon staff from the platform if the office was unattended. The building was painted in the LMR's maroon below the ticket counter, and cream above. Reference to large scale Ordnance Survey maps of the site show that this building was constructed some time between 1902 and 1923, presumably saving northbound passengers a long walk down to the platform and back up the steps to cross the line by the road bridge.

The large poster board headed 'Wilnecote Station' on the right, facing the Watling Street, shows: Eleven trains to Birmingham daily and nine to Derby, what appears to have been a poster advertising an excursion to the Blackpool Illuminations (defaced) and a poster promoting the 'Leading hotels of Northern Ireland' including the Midland Hotel in Belfast, the Great Northern and the Northern Counties, this apparently being a poster from 'Ulster Transport'. The small poster board on the wall to the right of the gateway displays Midland Red bus timetables with their emblem at the top of the frame.

Toby Clempson

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