Special Call Sign GB1MWS will be on the air 26th & 27th September to celebrate the anniversary of the first railway passenger service from Darlington to Stockton 27th September 1825.
QTH is from the garden of one of the railway cottages adjacent to what remains of Murrow West Station on the Great Northern & Great Eastern Railway line that ran from the Fenland town of March in Cambridgeshire to Spalding in Lincolnshire.
GB1MWS is run by members of M1PRC the Peterborough And District Amateur Radio Club. GB1MWS is managed by M7TTU.
Railways On The Air is coordinated by Bishop Auckland Amateur Radio Club.
A Potted History of Murrow West Station.
- The line was opened by the GNR in April 1867. The GNR morphed into the GN & GE Railway in 1879.
- Murrow, a small scarcely populated Fenland village about 8 miles west of Wisbech boasted 2 railway stations namely Murrow East and Murrow West. Murrow East was on the M&GN Line that ran from Peterborough to Wisbech and had opened a year earlier in 1866.
- These 2 railway companies had joint diamond crossing where the 2 lines crossed on the level. There were only 2 places in England where this occurred – Here at Murrow and (still in existence today) at Newark.
- Murrow West Station closed as a goods station in 1947 and closed to passenger services in July 1953. (Murrow East remained open until 1959 after which the line to Wisbech was lifted).
- The line remained in use right up until 1982 when due to high maintenance, was closed by British Rail and the track was lifted.
- Despite the station closing in 1953, many of the station buildings still survive. The goods shed, the signal box (now converted into a private dwelling), a line side hut and the foreman’s office.
- The cottage we are working from once belonged to the family of the railway yard foreman. The aforementioned foreman’s office sits in a derelict state at the bottom of the garden. The last of his family left here in 1986.
- The railway yard is now used as a builders yard selling salvaged building materials.
- In November 1925 2 trains collided on the crossing due to frost freezing a signal (it still get very frosty on that corner in the winter today).
- A second accident on the crossing occurred in November 1941 where 2 freight trains collided, this demolished the original signal box and a temporary box was built. This was replaced by a new ‘bomb proof’ design flat roofed signal box in 1949 and positioned on the opposite side of the track. This has now been extended and turned into a Private dwelling.
- A small part of the M&GN railway was kept after closure of the line from Peterborough to Wisbech in 1959 and was curved around the signal box and connected to the line to March to maintain goods traffic from the brickworks at Eye Green just outside of Peterborough. This remained until 1966.
Pictures and other infromation.
Enthusiast Roy Harrision (G3VPR) made a video of the line just before it closed in 1982. I have linked it where the train passes through Murrow on it’s way to Spalding. The goods shed – at this time used by a pallet repair company – can be clearly seen on the left as well as the signal box.