Talk:Twickenham railway station

Platform numbers

The up platform of the old station (on the west of the road bridge) became an island with a face (#3) for the branch line. Work relating to the Southern Railway's plan for a new five-platform station on the present site had got as far as rebuilding the road bridge with arches matching the proposed track alignments, replacing the east ends of the old platforms in wood to take the alignments, some track-work and the signal box at the new site. Of the new station just the platform edge walls were erected.

The outbreak of WWII in 1939 stopped all work. Post-war austerity controls forbade a restart. The plan had been for a down island, an up island and a bay for Rugby traffic. By the early 1950s the "new" platform walls had been filled to platform level (with no superstructures) for use by Rugby crowds with their trains signalled through by hand flags. When construction did recommence financial constraints left the present inconvenient bodged situation with the up platforms on different islands.

The platforms from north to south are:
#1 = unusable bay with track disconnected,
#2 = a bay because its planned western rail exit is blocked by the Rugby-days-only path to the car park, its track arch in the new bridge became a road to the Post Office sorting office, #2 is now mainly fenced off and stables occasional maintenance stock. #2 would have formed an island with
#3 = "Slow" Up.
#4 = "Fast" Up shares an island with
#5 = Down.

A sign of the abandoned 1930s plan can be seen at the west end of platform #4 where the canopy edge curves to one arch as originally planned while the platform and track were built to align on another.

That is a count showing that the platform in the photo is not #4 but #5. Between the SR reinforced concrete advertising boards seen in the picture and #5 once lay the track from a coal yard.--SilasW 21:16, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Platforms and Sources

Both Southern Electric 1908-1969 by G.T.Moody (4th ed 1968) and Volume 3 of A Regional History of Railways of Great Britain state that Twickenham platforms 1 and 2 were to be bays. That seems contradicted by what can be seen at the station. Both now have buffer stops at the pedestrian causeway connecting the car park to the island of #2 and #3. The track, now disconnected, of #1 is straight, projected beyond the causeway it runs to heaped up earth. The face of #2, as seen from the "Rugby" footbridge and from the steps to the regular footbridge, runs beyond the causeway with a slight curve aligning on an unused arch of the road bridge, that end of #2 has a typical platform end ramp at whose foot has later been added at an angle a concrete track for carrying mail under the road bridge between trains and the Post Office sorting office. It strikes me now that SR might rather have intended #1 also to be a through line as the flow of empty specials would have been easier without reversals--SilasW 18:51, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Edit of 18 June 2008

I removed this image [[Image:Twickenham Platforms.jpg|300px]] not because it was in any way bad but because using the previous image ("Platform 5") made the start of the text and the top of the infobox about level and lost the huge blank space above the text. Those who know how to are invited to get the same effect by other means.--SilasW (talk) 16:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've had a go, hope you find it better now. The amount of whitespace will depend on the resolution of your browser - but a bit more text in the article will soon fill that up! DrFrench (talk) 19:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That's better. Looks as though a try at tidying caused it.--SilasW (talk) 21:32, 18 June 2008 (UTC)