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LMS Route: Stratford Midland Junction - The Shakespeare Route

Stratford on Avon Station: smjsa283

Ex-LMS 5MT 4-6-0 No 44919 enters the former SMJ station with the empty rolling stock of the royal train on 11th July 1964

Ex-LMS 5MT 4-6-0 No 44919 enters the former SMJ station with the empty rolling stock of the royal train on 11th July 1964. Her Royal Highness the Queen Mother was visiting Stratford upon Avon and had alighted at the former GWR station. The train was held at her disposal overnight in the station. Arthur Jordan wrote in his book, 'Only a few months before final closure of the SMJ line and twelve years after withdrawal of regular passenger services a short stretch of the Up platform, near the signal box. was re-surfaced in preparation for a Royal visitor! After ninety years existence the 'Slow, Miserable and Jolty' was honoured by accommodating the Royal Train which had travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon over the ex-GWR line. The Queen Mother, unlike Shakespeare's Brutus, had not come to bury the SMJ but to praise the volunteers who had restored the Stratford Canal which Her Majesty declared re-opened. Regrettably Her Majesty will never be called upon to perform a similar ceremony for the SMJ. Understandably the ex-GWR station was selected for Her Majesty's entry into Shakespeareland but for her departure in the late evening the honour was bestowed upon the old SMJ station, by then known as Old Town. Fortunately it was too dark for the royal personage to discern the grain silos, Hutchings' transport depot or Quinncy's dairy as she was whisked from theatre to dilapidated station. Incidentally, the resurfacing of the SMJ platform specially for this one passenger prompted a protest from the local branch of the National Union of Railwayman, which considered it an extravagance at a time when British Railways were being subjected to extensive closures and economies'.

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