GWR pagoda platform shelter

The archetypal Pagoda Platform Shelter was a distinctively-shaped corrugated iron structure used by passengers waiting at railway stations in Wales and southern England.

In Britain Pagoda shelters are associated with the Great Western Railway (GWR) who introduced them in 1907 and erected a patchwork of them across their network. They were manufactured by an outside supplier and delivered in kit form. They could therefore be assembled offsite, delivered on standard well wagons and craned into position, or assembled onsite, according to circumstances.

The GWR opened its first "Haltes" on 12 October 1903, anglicising the name to "Halt" in 1905. They were prime candidates for Pagoda shelters, but the market was crowded: finance, tradition, knowledge, skills and materials to hand meant that some lines had pagodas aplenty, some one or two and others none at all. The Bala to Ffestiniog Line in upland Wales, for example, had six halts erected at remote, virgin sites between the World Wars, Teigl Halt and Llafar Halt had pagoda shelters, but Trawsfynydd Lake Halt, Bryn-Celynog Halt, Tyddyn Bridge Halt and Capel Celyn Halt had shelters with other designs.

Opening halts and standardising cheap to install and cheap to buy infrastructure in the face of competition firstly from trams, then buses and ultimately cars overlapped with other initiatives such as the railmotor.

Pagoda shelters were generally associated with branch lines, but many were erected next to regional arteries and some were erected next to main lines; Challow being an example on what was and remains a high speed route out of Paddington.

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Wikipedia