The Architecture The Railways Built
Broadcaster and historian Tim Dunn has recently filmed a new TV series for UKTV’s Yesterday Channel, and has chosen 10 highlights from the 40 locations visited.
Railway historian and broadcaster Tim Dunn picks 10 of his civil engineering highlights as his new TV series on railway architecture airs nationwide.
THE most enduring parts of railway history in day-to-day view are its buildings and civil engineering, yet most of us enthusiasts tend to focus our eyes on locomotives or rolling stock. Perhaps for good reason: trains are fleeting beasts and we may feel lucky to catch them in a moment; yet buildings, we often pass by. We presume they’ll always be there: they are literally part of our landscape.
However, as an enthusiast and hands-on conserver of architecture and design heritage, I find myself increasingly studying the glories, quirks and rationale behind our railways’ buildings and structures. They have stories just as fascinating as the mechanical marvels that run beside, inside, on or between them. They are the places where railway principles meet those of the rest of the world.
I’ve always enjoyed historical research and listening to architecture experts give context, so when a TV programme concept I worked on with Brown Bob Productions
– The Architecture The Railways Built – was commissioned in 2019, I was, to use a wellworn phrase, chuffed to bits. For here was a chance to tell the stories of lesser-spotted locations to a wider audience – beyond our usual history and railway enthusiast communities – and to work with true experts from very specific fields.
As you read this, episode one will have aired, so, I thought I’d pick 10 of my favourite interesting locations from the 40 we visited across the series. And, like the series, it is not an exhaustive detailed study of building types, but stories I hope encourage people to investigate further.
■ Great Malvern station (completed 1862): With more than 6,000 stations across Britain at our railways’ peak extent – and perhaps 10 times that across Europe – it was hard to pick out the gems that we could feature. But Great Malvern station had to be, for its fine ironwork and French Gothic details that mirror the Europeaninspired architecture of the spa town it serves. Designed by E W Elmslie and with carvings by W Forysth, perhaps the feature I’d draw you to enjoy most is the series of glorious wrought iron canopy decorations: each is a wreath of local flowers and leaves. Also intriguing is ‘the worm’ – a curious iron-roofed corridor that leads from the platform to the nearby former Imperial Hotel.
■ Ddaullt spiral (completed 1971): Not so much architecture here, but civil engineering. We all know its story: the Ffestiniog Railway’s route was cut off by the Central Electricity Generating Board’s flooding of the route, yet the Deviationists just wouldn’t let it lie. Next time you’re travelling the route, look out for the concrete bridge with its spiral markings: the columns were cast on the spot and the casts were peeled off like loo roll inners. Ddaullt and its Deviationists are a story of the men
(and indeed women) playing the long game, never saying no, and ‘sticking one’ to faceless authorities who stood in their way.
■ Swindon Railway Village (1840s): If we’re talking architecture that the railways built, we shouldn’t just stop at the boundary fence. So, not only did we visit Shildon, the world’s first
true railway town, but toured Swindon ‘New Town’, too. Model dwellings, facilities and streetscapes: it’s well worth a look, even in 2020. Conceived mainly by Brunel, it is of the GWR: even its streets are named after destinations served by the vehicles built by the people who lived there. Its Mechanics Institution is a vast Gothic pile in need of TLC – but the whole area has recently been formally recognised by Historic England and Swindon Council as worthy of extra investment, and there have been ambitious plans put forward for the ‘Hyrdo’
(the town baths) – so do watch this space.
■ Rotterdam Centraal (2014): A striking arrow into the commercial centre on one side with a softer form on the other, facing houses and tree-lined avenues. This metal-clad structure spearheaded the regeneration of the neighbourhood, too. It takes cues from the post-war station formerly on the site (beloved by many but severely outgrown by its traffic), and even reuses that building’s sign lettering and clock above the new entrance.
■ Ribblehead Viaduct (completed 1874): Monumental in the landscape today, these structures were a shock of the new when they were seen to wreck the wilds, accompanied by thousands of seemingly terrifying navvies. Ribblehead was one of the excuses BR wanted to close the route – but you must visit Settle Museum to see a 3D model from that period, which depicts four alternative concrete viaduct proposals that could have replaced it – but thankfully never did.
■ Dartmouth station (c.1880): One of those rare beasts – a station never to actually have had a train draw up at it. I’ve read urban myths about the timber GWR station-style building being constructed in anticipation of the Dartmouth & Torbay Railway making a river crossing upstream, but these are nonsense – it came well after the railway. It was however classed as a station for ticketing purposes, and shares this honour in the UK along with Hull Corporation Pier station. The rights to the ferry crossing over to the railhead at Kingswear were taken up by the Dartmouth Steam Packet Co Ltd, but today services are run by a subsidiary of Dart Valley Railway plc, which also owns and operates the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway.
■ St Pancras Station & Midland Grand Hotel detailing: No programme about railway architecture could leave out either the station, or its accompanying hotel. We all gaze up like the Betjeman statue at Barlow’s great roof, but next time you have a chance, take in the finer details around. Historian Royden Stock pointed out features I’d missed on my dozens of visits: Midland Railway Wyvern creatures above the entrance arches, motifs of engineers and telegraph operators high up (and carved wooden flora of the Midlands lower down) on booking office walls – and the crests of cities served by the Midland Railway above the former taxi rank entrance. Oh, and the empty plinths across Gilbert Scott’s hotel frontage still awaiting carvings that the company could never quite afford.
■ Clifton Rocks Railway (1893): Little true architecture exists here aside from façades at either end and a grand pump room, but it was an engineering triumph in tricky conditions. The 450ft tunnel – built to accommodate four funicular tracks – was part of newspaper proprietor and publisher George Newnes’ plan to further develop Clifton as a spa resort, but it was not a financial success. The line closed in 1908, but it was not until 1941 that a potential new tenant, the BBC, managed to release covenants on the site, which had precluded the tunnel from being used for anything but railway purposes! They used part of the tunnel as a wartime radio transmitter base; another part became an air raid shelter. More recently, Clifton Rocks Railway Trust volunteers have begun to open it up on an occasional basis, and it is very much worth a visit.
■ Wolferton Royal station (1876-1898): What is possibly one of Britain’s best-restored stations still manages to make a very comfortable home in 2020. To provide (appropriately) for royal traffic the Great Eastern enlarged the earliest station on the site, then again in 1898. Much of the main ‘Up’ building is constructed from Carstone, a soft stone peculiar to the area, and while it is a joy to work with, it requires on-going replacement. A treasure, and the grounds are open to the public.
■ Shrewsbury Severn Bridge Junction signalbox (1903): It might be a fairly standard LNWR ‘box pattern, but it is an extruded example: there is none so large in Britain. Indeed this holds the title of the world’s largest operating mechanical signalbox - it pips Melbourne, Australia, as that has relatively recently ceased to work. Sitting as it does within a triangular junction, it demonstrates the importance of a glasswalled cabin for ‘bobbies’ to see all from. Of its levers, there are many painted white, but a majority are still in operation: Network Rail
expects this outpost of semaphore signalling and mechanical interlocking machinery to last quite a while yet.
So – there are 10 stories from our research for The Architecture The Railways Built – a programme that tells some of the stories of structures that many of us know so very well.
I hope it encourages more people to look up, look down, and look for clues of how railways, landscape and people interact.
And for the rest of us, serve as a reminder to look even harder. ■