Stanmore Station

Dewi Williams

Comments/corrections to: Dewi Williams

Date/Time: These photos were among the first I took on 35mm film: September 1949

The single-track branch line which served Stanmore ran from Harrow and Wealdstone (on the West Coast Main Line) to a tiny station in Stanmore Village. It had at one time been LNWR, then LMS, then the London Midland region of British Railways.

The station itself seemed more like a one-train-per-day country station than one which served London commuters. As a boy, I was fascinated by the station. It had a little garden, and with its steeple, the building resembled a country chapel. There was a red Post Office mail-box set in the exterior wall, seen just to the left of the down-pipe from the rain gutter.

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Although there were two tracks in the station, there was only one platform, and the posters on that one platform are just visible behind the car (1938 Ford 8, licence KMK178). The main block of the building, shown in this photo, ran across the ends of the tracks.

Entering through the doorway below the clock took you into the booking office, and through the office onto a concourse shown in the next picture.

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The stationmaster's dog reinforces the country atmosphere. The wall on the left is the back of the main building. On the right of the photographer is the start of the platform. Behind the photographer are the buffers/bumpers on the end of the tracks

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The previous photo was taken from a point just in front of the wall that is straight ahead in this photo. The dog is out of sight to the right. Having an UndergrounD map posted makes sense since this branch connected with the Bakerloo line at Harrow and Wealdstone, two stations away. The platform edge is to the left.

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Going back to the previous viewpoint and slewing the camera to the right, we can see the rest of the concourse, and we see the UndergrounD map from a another angle.

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The platform was longer than the two-car auto-trains which ran in the last years of the line. I presume that when the line was first built, the engine had to run around the train using the loop shown here.

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And finally, the tiny garden that just appears in the lower right of the previous picture. For years, the stones picked out "LMS", for the London, Midland and Scottish railway. On 1948, that changed to "LMR", for the London Midland region of British Railways.

The trains have long gone (passenger traffic ceased in 1952), but the building does remain (1998) as a private residence, though greatly modified. It has lost the distinctive steeple.