GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Hockley Station: gwrhd736

Components of a corrugated steel Anderson Shelter being delivered to a back garden in Birmingham by Great Western Railway Cartage services in early 1939 and an extract from Government instruction pamphlet giving ‘Erection and Sinking Directions’ issued in February 1939. The shelter came as a kit of fourteen pre-formed galvanised corrugated steel panels, which when assembled created a shelter six feet high, four foot six inches wide and six foot six inches long and could accommodate six people. The shelter was intended to be sunk four feet deep and covered with a minimum of 15 inches of soil.

According to an article in the May 1939 edition of the Great Western Railway Magazine, two thirds of the sheet steel manufacturers involved in the scheme were situated in South Wales and Monmouthshire, so the transportation to rail distribution points was predominately done by the Great Western Railway. In May 1939, the Great Western Railway had three distribution points in Birmingham located at Tyseley, Small Heath and Soho & Winson Green Stations.

Six standard open wagons were required to carry the sheet steel components for 150 shelters, but each shelter also required other sectional steelwork and a variety of assembly fastenings. These came from different manufacturers, so a weekly allocation committee was established to coordinate the manufacture, transportation, batching of components and final delivery of the individual shelters to the households, as required by each local authority. It was agreed that shelters would be delivered into the back gardens of the households, although assembly was the householders (or in some cases the local authority's) responsibility. As only a proportion of the houses had side or rear entrances, the cartage service had in many cases to take the components carefully through the property.

Robert Ferris

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