Aberdeen Joint Station

[kudu]

According to Wikipedia,the LNER and LMS shared administration of Aberdeen Joint Station by each company running it for a year in turn.

Can anyone here confirm or refute this? If confirmed, did the same arrangement apply between the GNS and Caledonian?

Kudu

[65447]

There were two joint passenger stations at Aberdeen, one replacing the other, and before that separate passenger stations that at first were not connected to each other. Referencing Sir Malcolm Barclay-Harvey's history of the GNoSR, the original Joint Station, owned by the Caledonian and GNoS Railways, opened in November 1867. It was reconstructed and improved in stages, culminating in the new station and platforms being brought into use by end of July 1914. Concurrently improvements were made to the individual goods stations. Little mention is made of the management arrangements, but the description of the legal wrangling, land and route options and accompanying objections and the eventual enabling acts that led to the building of the first joint station does note that the railway and north end [of the station] would belong to the GNoS.

As far as the Railway Year Book 1922 edition is concerned it was jointly-owned by the Caledonian and Great North of Scotland Railways. The North British Railway only had running powers into it. The RCH Junction Diagrams Book labels it a Joint Passenger Station for those same two companies.

The Railway Year Book for 1927 does nothing more than note in both the LMS and LNER sections that Aberdeen is a joint station; no description of any management arrangements was made. There isn't anything in that regard in CJ Allen's history of the LNER either and I don't possess any Caledonian or LMS references to check.

[Caledonian]

The report into an accident involving a V2-hauled LNER passenger train on 7 October 1938 refers to the Denburn South box being manned by LMS signalmen which is consistent with the southern part of the station being run by the LMS as successor to the Caley.

Otherwise I have nothing, beyond the irrelevant observation that my great uncle Bill was the fireman

[kudu]

Thanks for your replies. I'm doubtful whether the arrangement I described could have been implemented. In general I believe large joint stations were geographically split. London Victoria was and is obviously two stations, and was so even when running tracks were shared (with running powers) in the earliest days.

Kudu

[Caledonian]

Arguably the same was true of the Joint Station [always referred to as such in my lifetime and I was born six years after such designations became irrelevant.

In very simple terms the station was a Y junction approached from the south and west by the Caledonian and GNoS [ex Deeside Railway] respectively. The former terminated at the station while the latter carried on through to the north via the Denburn valley and Kittybrewster. The North British exercised running rights over the Caley lines into the station but not over the GNoS.

Grouping made little if any real difference as the pattern of services remained unchanged

[Pyewipe Junction]

H C Casserley, in Britain's Joint Lines, simply describes Aberdeen as jointly-owned by the Caledonian and GNoS from 1867 when Guild Street CR station closed. The same book describes arrangements at other stations used by different companies, some of which were quite complex (ie: Carlisle Citadel). I believe London Victoria wasn't in fact a 'joint' station but in fact two stations side-by-side, as was Birmingham New Street originally. This is borne out by the difference in the frontage architecture.

The operation of a lot of joint stations was vested in a 'management committee', which seems to me like the the term that was used at the time to define the legal asset of the station and any associated trackwork and infrastructure. I assume all staff who worked at such stations normally worked for the 'committee' as it would have been horrendously difficult to have staff from different companies running around, and dangerous too, if they were following operating rules that might be slightly different. Another approach would be to allocate different roles to different companies.

[65447]

The operation of a lot of joint stations was vested in a 'management committee', which seems to me like the the term that was used at the time to define the legal asset of the station and any associated trackwork and infrastructure. I assume all staff who worked at such stations normally worked for the 'committee' as it would have been horrendously difficult to have staff from different companies running around, and dangerous too, if they were following operating rules that might be slightly different. Another approach would be to allocate different roles to different companies.

A management committee would as you first state, have oversight and control of day-to-day operations. Ownership of the legal assets would remain vested in the principal companies in agreed proportions. Those proportions would likely determine the numerical composition of a management committee, whose chairmanship might well rotate between representatives of the respective owning companies on an agreed basis.