Suffixes added to station names on grouping or nationalisation

[LNW-GW Joint]

One in my original neck of the woods in the West Midlands is Wellington (Shropshire) that was renamed Wellington Telford West at some point during the BR years.
This was on the original London Paddington - Birkenhead Woodside Great Western Railway route, and being as the ex Shrewsbury & Birmingham section had been severed between Wolverhampton and Birmingham Snow Hill, I think that this may have tied in with when the InterCity sector had extensions of the London Euston - Wolverhampton trains to Shrewsbury.

To be pedantic, Wellington wasn't ever fully "GWR".
It was originally (1847) on the Shropshire Union/LNWR line from Stafford to Shrewsbury.
When the S&B/GWR opened in 1854 it ran to Donnington Jn east of Wellington, joining the SU line there.
The Donnington Jn-Shrewsbury line became part of the LNWR/GWR joint line in the area (also in Cheshire, Chester-Birkenhead/Warrington) in the 1860s.
From 1923 it was part of the larger LMS/GWR joint lines, and then passed to BR Western in 1948 (but back to LM in 1963!).
But I agree, like Shrewsbury it had a GWR feel to it, as they formed most of the trains and latterly organised signalling and maintenance.
The LNWR-pattern signal boxes at Shrewsbury still demonstrate the joint ownership in the area.

"General" is another rather meaningless suffix that was applied mainly (but not exclusively) to GW stations.
Chester's main station was General in 1938 for instance, and Shrewsbury was also General for a time, I don't now how long.

 

[Ashley Hill]

One in my original neck of the woods in the West Midlands is Wellington (Shropshire) that was renamed Wellington Telford West at some point during the BR years.

Incidentally the totems at Wellington in Shropshire carried the suffix "Salop" as opposed to the ones at Wellington in Somerset that you thought would have had the suffix "Som" but didn't.

 

[kieron]

"Connahs Quay & Shotton" was renamed as "Shotton High Level" after nationalisation (1953, apparently). There was no need to promote it as serving Connah's Quay once it was owned by the same organisation as Connah's Quay station, but they still needed to differentiate it from the ex-LNWR Shotton station nearby.

It was later renamed as "Shotton". I don't know when (although it's definitely outside the timeframe for this thread), but it says that it had happened by 1976 here. For context, the erstwhile Low Level station closed in 1966, and reopened in 1972.

 

[Taunton]

Was there ever any systematic process to add suffixes to similarly named stations located in different parts of the country, for example Brampton in Cumberland / Cumbria, and Brampton in Suffolk or was this mostly done on an 'ad hoc' basis?

These are commonly differentiated by county in brackets, especially if they were on the same company. The GWR, which managed to have 5 separate Whitchurch stations on its system, long did so, and seemed to set the trend, although it is rather random, eg appeared in timetable index and on tickets but not on station nameboards or announcements.

 

[Journeyman]

Tyndrum Upper and Tyndrum Lower. Is this the smallest area of population to have 2 stations?

Yes, it is.