Unusual reversal near Salisbury - help identifying a station?

[Plagiomnium]

We're assuming that Forster was writing something that was prototypically accurate, and that it happened in the location in which he set his novel. I'd be more inclined to ask whether there's any symbolism in the shunting around together with where Forster might have experienced this in his life more generally.

It is a book in which trains have a lot of symbolic significance, that's true!

@Plagiomnium ; where in the book is it? My local library appears to have a copy, if they haven’t lost it, and I am going in to town tomorrow. I could read the piece of text, but I found Forster heavy going so don’t want to plough through the lot.

Thanks to @Sir Felix Pole for linking the online text - it's a brief description earlier in the same chapter, and I think this is all it says about the train:

For the Salisbury train always backed out of the station and then returned [...] Then the train stopped for the shunting, and he heard protests from minor officials who were working on the line.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Having steeled myself to read the text properly, aren't Rickie and Stephen departing Sawston (with the reversing manoeuvre) for the long journey to Wiltshire, so nowhere near Salisbury? Sawston is supposedly based on Tonbridge (and its public school) so this seems to be made up for literary effect.

 

[Gloster]

I haven’t read the whole of chapter 33, but it seems that the toing-and-froing takes place at the station for the village where he was staying with the Ansells. The train seems to shunt, possibly back out on to the mainline, before going on its way, so this is close to the station. (Shunting back out like this was not a common arrangement, but not exceptional.) Why I think it is the station for the Ansells’ (temporary or holiday?) accomodation is that Stephen has been left at their house, but now joins the train.

Where this village (?) is is not clear, but may be hinted at further back in the text. It may be quite some way away as ‘the Salisbury train’ could just mean the train that he needed for the first part of his journey to Salisbury. I can’t think of anywhere in the Salisbury area, a large area for this purpose, that is likely to fit.

My feeling is that, as with most authors in those days, particularly when they were writing about places outside London, Forster played fast and loose with geography and anything brought in from real life as it was fiction. Even worse was authors’ understanding of railways.

On a further point, it is possible that the (almost) final denouement takes place on the level-crossing at Wylye, north-west of Salisbury. Roughly there a Roman road crosses a railway.

 

[Plagiomnium]

@Gloster is correct - this journey isn't from Sawston, it's from the unnamed town where the Ansells live.

Yes, I am concluding that there is some fictionalising of geography happening here! Elsewhere in the book some of the geographical details are very exactly accurate and some are definitely fictional. It's good to have got some more information about this bit.

On a further point, it is possible that the (almost) final denouement takes place on the level-crossing at Wylye, north-west of Salisbury. Roughly there a Roman road crosses a railway.

Now, that's very interesting. I had tentatively identified the crossing as this one, where a Roman road crosses the railway near Figsbury (/Cadbury) Rings, and then been perplexed because as far as I can tell it's always been a bridge, not a level crossing. Perhaps Forster was combining the location of one crossing with other details of another one nearby?

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

@Gloster is correct - this journey isn't from Sawston, it's from the unnamed town where the Ansells live.

Ah, O.K. I've read some more - Rickie and Stephen run away to the Ansell's village from Sawston and this is where Stephen boards the train to Salisbury at the last minute. This would appear to be outside Wiltshire:-

'He observed that the country was smoother and more plastic. The woods had gone, and under a pale-blue sky long contours of earth were flowing, and merging, rising a little to bear some coronal of beeches, parting a little to disclose some green valley, where cottages stood under elms or beside translucent waters. It was Wiltshire at last. The train had entered the chalk'.

Ansell is Rickie's friend from Cambridge so his home village could be anywhere I suppose, with a through service to Salisbury!

 

[Gloster]

It says later that the train ‘proceeded towards Salisbury through the slowly modulating downs’: this sounds most likely to be from the Basingstoke direction. They also have to change at Salisbury and wait an hour: could this be to the GWR?

Also mentioned in this chapter are Cadchurch, which has the station, Cadford and Cadover. I wonder if there is a vague connection with the Codford area, further along the valley from Wylye. All this is supposition and guesswork based on a skim of the text.

 

[Pigeon]

@Gloster is correct - this journey isn't from Sawston, it's from the unnamed town where the Ansells live.

Could be that a more productive approach might be to try and work out where that is first and then relate it to the railway, rather than the other way round. Not sure how much I fancy reading the whole book though.

He calls it an "ugly little town", but I've seen that description from plenty of authors and unless they're talking about some grim northern industrial dump it never seems to be true, unless it's because of buildings added a long time after the book was written/set.

You can see right up the main street from the train while it is performing the manouevre, and the view includes a house with a "memorable" facade.

The journey to Salisbury then seems to be fairly short and without any further notable features, although it does stop at at least one intermediate station and appears to cross the border into Wiltshire.

You get a good view of the spire from the train approaching Salisbury. I don't know if that helps at all; it might be true of all the lines into Salisbury for all I know.

A faint possibility might be West Moors: http://maps.nls.uk/view/106009731 You'd hardly call it a town or even much of a village, but it does look like you could see right up the main street (such as it is) from the railway.

There were through trains between Bournemouth and Salisbury by the Ringwood route despite them having to reverse at both Ringwood and West Moors. Ringwood seems to have been a pretty well-equipped station, but the layout at West Moors was pretty minimal; if it was necessary to shunt the Salisbury train over to the up line before sending it down the branch instead of reversing it directly in the down platform then that might be the manouevre described.

However, I'm not at all convinced he didn't simply make the whole thing up, and just throw in an idiosyncratic manoeuvre he'd seen performed somewhere or other for a bit of extra colour.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Could be that a more productive approach might be to try and work out where that is first and then relate it to the railway, rather than the other way round. Not sure how much I fancy reading the whole book though.

He calls it an "ugly little town", but I've seen that description from plenty of authors and unless they're talking about some grim northern industrial dump it never seems to be true, unless it's because of buildings added a long time after the book was written/set.

You can see right up the main street from the train while it is performing the manouevre, and the view includes a house with a "memorable" facade.

The journey to Salisbury then seems to be fairly short and without any further notable features, although it does stop at at least one intermediate station and appears to cross the border into Wiltshire.

You get a good view of the spire from the train approaching Salisbury. I don't know if that helps at all; it might be true of all the lines into Salisbury for all I know.

A faint possibility might be West Moors: http://maps.nls.uk/view/106009731 You'd hardly call it a town or even much of a village, but it does look like you could see right up the main street (such as it is) from the railway.

There were through trains between Bournemouth and Salisbury by the Ringwood route despite them having to reverse at both Ringwood and West Moors. Ringwood seems to have been a pretty well-equipped station, but the layout at West Moors was pretty minimal; if it was necessary to shunt the Salisbury train over to the up line before sending it down the branch instead of reversing it directly in the down platform then that might be the manouevre described.

However, I'm not at all convinced he didn't simply make the whole thing up, and just throw in an idiosyncratic manoeuvre he'd seen performed somewhere or other for a bit of extra colour.

I can't see any through trains between Bournemouth and Salisbury via Ringwood in the 1896 or 1920 Bradshaw (the nearest available for free on TimetableWorld!) - they all go via Wimborne (from Bournemouth West). West Moors is an intriguing possibility, but he does write 'Wiltshire at last' which does imply it is a longer journey than the adjacent county. As you say I'm not reading the whole book - the cloying prose is hard going!

 

[Plagiomnium]

Much as I like the book, and grateful as I am for all the help with this question, I certainly don't want to oblige anyone to read more of it than they want to.

 

[Pigeon]

I can't see any through trains between Bournemouth and Salisbury via Ringwood in the 1896 or 1920 Bradshaw (the nearest available for free on TimetableWorld!) - they all go via Wimborne (from Bournemouth West). West Moors is an intriguing possibility, but he does write 'Wiltshire at last' which does imply it is a longer journey than the adjacent county. As you say I'm not reading the whole book - the cloying prose is hard going!

Ah, OK... I thought they had maintained some service by that route longer than that. Will have to remember about the availability of old Bradshaws.

 

[Bevan Price]

Not certain how relevant this is, but looking at old maps of Salisbury the GWR and LSWR had separate, but almost adjacent stations, with the only connection at that time being via sidings.

 

[Gloster]

Not certain how relevant this is, but looking at old maps of Salisbury the GWR and LSWR had separate, but almost adjacent stations, with the only connection at that time being via sidings.

There appears to have been a double-track link off the Great Western line on to the South Western from April 1903. This would presumably make it possible for through trains to run directly into the South Western station without calling at the Great Western one, not that there were many through trains.

Source: Signal Box Register: Volume 4 (Coe et al., Signalling Record Society, 2009).

 

[The exile]

This of course all presupposes that the author is basing things on anything like reality. I’ve just been listening to a radio drama in which the protagonist boards a train at Rostock bound (the train -not him) for Berlin - from which he alights at Stettin. Even allowing for diversions caused by bomb damage that’s stretching credibility to the point of destruction.

 

[Western Lord]

This of course all presupposes that the author is basing things on anything like reality. I’ve just been listening to a radio drama in which the protagonist boards a train at Rostock bound (the train -not him) for Berlin - from which he alights at Stettin. Even allowing for diversions caused by bomb damage that’s stretching credibility to the point of destruction.

I'm still waiting for the 4.50 from Paddington to "Brockhampton, Milchester, Waverton, Carvil Junction, Roxeter and stations to Chadmouth".

 

[Rescars]

Better try Dorothy L Sayers' "Five Red Herrings". As she put it "all the places are real places and all the trains are real trains".