LMS Route: Rugby to Wolverhampton

Berkswell and Balsall Common: lnwrberk1313

Looking towards Birmingham showing Berkswell with its original staggered platform configuration with the up platform opposite the signal box. John Boynton in his book 'The London & Birmingham Railway between Birmingham and Coventry' reports that a retrospective article in the Coventry Evening Telegraph (18th September 1934) stated that in the early years of the London & Birmingham Railway's history the station, as with others on the line, might have had an unofficial status.

Marston Green and Stetchford Gates together with Dockers Lane, as Berkswell was then known, initially had no wayside stations. "Passengers entered and alighted at their own convenience, without considering the danger from passing trains. There was much indifference, people jumping on and off at ease". Whilst early trains travelled at low speeds and slowed when approaching crossings and people's attitude to life was very different this practice was perhaps a little 'hairy' by today's standards.

On 27th November 1844 the LNWR board ordered that such stations should be provided with platforms and booking 'huts' so the station as seen above must have been built after this date and before 2nd March 1884 when the Berkswell to Kenilworth line was opened. The junction of this new line with Berkswell was too near to the up platform to allow stopping trains from calling and then progressing on to Kenilworth so it was re-sited towards Birmingham, opposite the down platform, a position it occupies today.

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