Box People and Places
Latest Issue 26 Winter 2019-20 
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    • Free Heritage Trail
    • Central Box Residents
    • Genevieve Brunt
    • Smith Family around Box
    • Margaret Little
    • Webster Family
    • Railway Station Commemorated
    • Head and Chandler Families
    • Graham Brayshaw
    • Coach Trips 1950s
    • Village in 1950s
    • Springfield
    • The Wilderness
    • Humphries Brewer
    • Operation XX and Me
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  • Georgian
    • Napoleon versus Box
    • Revolutionary Times
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    • Agricultral Census 1803
    • Tithe Apportionment
    • Slavery Families
    • Mullins Family, Schoolmasters
    • Box Churchyard
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    • Tree of Life at Middlehill
    • Box's Highwayman
    • 1752: Very Odd Year
    • Witches, Quakers and Chapels
    • The New Road, 1761
    • Vulgarity in Box
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    • Speke Family
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    • Issue 25 - Slave Owners
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    • Issue 22 - War Memorial
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      • Issue 19 - Outbreak WW2
      • Issue 18 - Building Bargates
      • Issue 17 - Railway Changes
      • Issue 16 - Quarries
      • Issue 15 - Rail & Quarry
      • Issue 14 - Civil War
      • Issue 13: Box Revels
      • Issue 12 - Where You Live
      • Issue 11 - Tudor & Stuart
      • Issue 10 - End of Era 1912
      • Issue 9 - Health & Leisure
      • Issue 8 - Farming & Rural
      • Issue 7 - Manufacturing
      • Issue 6 - Celebrations
      • Issue 5 - Victorian Centre
      • Issue 4 - Slump after WW1
      • Issue 3 - Great War 1914-18
      • Issue 2 - 1950s & 1960s
      • Issue 1 - 1920s
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Trainspotting at Box Railway Station        Eddie Weeks         May 2018      
Picture
Reproduced from John Froud's definitive article about Box Station, British Railway Journal, Special GWR Edition 2
Three of my friends and I used to be trainspotters at Box Railway Station in the mid to late 1940s. The staff at this time consisted of the Station Master, Wilf Clothier; Porters, Mr Farnfield and Sam Cannings; Goods Porters, Jack Dancey and Bill Robbins; and three Signalmen only one of whom I can remember, Mr Cannings, whom I believe was the uncle of the porter Sam. There was also a Ganger who looked after the permanent way and whose accommodation was a small hut near the water tower.

Mr Clothier did not approve of spotters on his platforms so we had to position ourselves on the approach road or at my father's stone yard. However when the Station Master went home and if Sam was on duty we had the free run of the station. We used to help him serve tickets, stick labels on parcels, load parcels onto the trolleys and light the gas lamps on the platforms. The route through Box was a good one for spotters as three trains a day were usually headed by locomotives ex works from Swindon.
It was a sad day when following the Beeching axe in the 60's all traces of the station were eradicated although I believe the coal office in the goods yard remains and is now part of the Northey Hotel.
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