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London North Western
Railway:
Midland
Railway:
Stratford
Midland Junction Railway
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Coundon Road Station
Coundon Road was the first station on the Coventry to Nuneaton
route. The line was opened on 2nd September 1850 and was a very busy secondary
route primarily for coal trains. The Midland Railway possessed running powers
for goods traffic into Coventry over the route from Leicester and at least one
train per day in each direction passed through the station. In 1891 there were
plans to build a short branch line from the end of the platforms at Coundon
Road to the gas works in Abbotts Lane. The plans were quite well advanced but
were subsequently cancelled when the decision was made by Coventry City Council
to build a new gas works at Foleshill. Coundon Road station became the
temporary terminus on the route when the nearby Spon End Viaduct collapsed one
night in January 1857. The fault was found to be the quality of the stone used
to construct the viaduct although poor workmanship was also a factor.
Passengers from Nuneaton had to alight at Coundon and proceed to Coventry by
horse drawn bus. Reg Kimber writes, The second most momentous occasion for
the station is described below. At 2. 00 a.m. on a Sunday morning in December
1896, the signalman at Coundon Road station noticed smoke and flames emitting
from the waiting room on the down platform of the station. A locomotive was
shunting in the nearby goods yard and was hastily driven alongside the burning
building to enable the crew to endeavour to quell the fire with water from the
engine. They were unfortunately unsuccessful and the building being burnt to
the ground. However there was cause for rejoicing amongst the passengers who
used the station as they had been campaigning for improved accommodation and
now the LNWR were compelled to do something about it.
The interesting point about this story is that an engine was
shunting in the yard at two o'clock on a Sunday morning. This gives some
indication of the amount of traffic handled by the Coventry - Nuneaton line in
these days. In fact, so heavy was coal traffic on the line that the railway
company was at one stage seriously considering quadrupling the tracks on parts
of the line. Counden Road (the spelling was not changed to Coundon Road until
1894) saw its first passenger train on the 2 September 1850. A prominent local
citizen, William Andrews, recorded in his diary that so popular was the service
that one train had thirty passengers riding on top of the carriages as there
was not enough room inside. It should be remembered that until the very late
1850s most carriages had rails on their roofs to hold luggage which was another
practice carried over from the days of stage coaches. The last scheduled
passenger train to use the station called on 18th January 1965, although on the
19th August of the same year a special train chartered by Radford Social Club
called at the station. For many years a workman's train ran to and from Coundon
Road, the carriages being stabled in the goods yard opposite the signal box
during the day. Possibly the most famous person to use the station was the
Duchess of Kent in 1958 when she visited the Belgrade Theatre. The station
master's house still stands today and this must be one of the oldest surviving
railway buildings in the area. It is built from stone quarried at nearby
Rosehill, home of the Bray family for many years. The level crossing gates were
replaced in the early 1980s with automatic barriers. The wharf is now but a
shadow of its former self and it is hard to believe that until the "sixties"
shunting was carried out round the clock with the help of floodlights in later
years in order to cope with the heavy coal traffic. The wharf, which contained
11 sidings, had a capacity for about 330 wagons".
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