Warwickshire Railways: Book Review

The Alcester Branch by Stanley C Jenkins and Roger Carpenter

Softback Cover, 215mm x 275 mm, 104 pages, 86 Black and White Photographs and Illustrations

Wild Swan Publications. ISBN: 978-1-905184-05-7 Cover price £18.95

A delightful portrait of the six mile branch that connected the Midland's cross country line at Alcester with the Great Western's route to Stratford Upon Avon at Bearley. Originating in the 1860s the line wasn't built until over a decae later when the two companies at either end of the route agreed an uneasy truce to allow its operation. This was one of those minor routes that was shut down in both World Wars as an economy measure but somehow managed to survive for freight until 1951, with a couple of miles surviving into 1960 for wagon storage. Not quite as exhaustively comprehensive in its photographic coverage as some books owing to the obscurity of the subject, this book nonetheless allows more than a glimpse of a charming rural railway.

The history of this little-known GWR line has never been the subject of a full monograph before, and it is therefore the local history of a particularly attractive part of rural Warwickshire. The book is a collaborative venture between local railway enthusiast Roger Carpenter, who has spent many years assembling a large photographic archive of this, his favourite branch line, and Stanley C. Jenkins, a museum curator and social/transport historian. :

Contents are:

• Introduction
• Origins of the Alcester Branch
• Construction and Opening of the Branch
• The Line in Operation 1883-1939
• War Years
• The Line Described
• The Post War Years

Mike Musson

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