LMS Route: Nuneaton to Leamington

Kenilworth Station: lnwrk4081

An unidentified LNWR 0-6-0 17 inch Coal engine is passing the tall signal on the right circa 1908. On the left is a grand array of glasshouses with half a dozen or so furnaces to provide heating. These would almost certainly have been coke fired as coal made the glass too dirty. The locomotive in the distance approaching the tall signal with an up goods is thought to be an 18 inch LNWR 0-6-0 'Cauliflower' locomotive.

Reg Instone of the LNWR Society states the shunting engine is standing on No 1 down siding with a couple of open wagons. It seems to have 'local goods' headlamps. The wagons behind the locomotive are stabled on No 2 Siding. The approaching train is on the Up Main, of course. The bridge in the background is where Spring Lane meets Whitemoor Road, and the points connecting that end of the sidings with the Down Main were operated from a ground frame released from Kenilworth Station Signal Cabin. Note the siding connections were re-arranged between 1903 and 1923. The 1923 revision of the map is here. This connected the goods yard with No 1 siding (instead of No 2), and thus allowed access from both No 1 and No 2 to the yard and to the Up Main. So we can date the photo as being pre-1923 (and pre whatever the date of the alteration was).

Robin Leach writes, it looks as if the water tower (left distance in the trees) has its Singer Cycles advert painted on it which was applied in 1907, but I can't see any houses in Arthur Street (started in 1909 or so) but they may be out of sight behind the embankment for the bridge. The nursery was started in the 1880s so that doesn't help. The post on the left is stabilising the tall signal post on the right. It was a common method of raising the tie wire (which is just visible) above the intermediate tracks.

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