Water Orton railway station
railway station in Warwickshire, England, UK
Water Orton railway station serves the village of Water Orton in Warwickshire, England. It is owned by Network Rail, and managed by West Midlands Railway. However, no West Midlands Trains stop there; it is only served by CrossCountry services.
History
It was first opened in 1842 by the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway on its line into Birmingham Lawley Street from Whitacre Junction.
However the Midland Railway built a cutoff line from slightly further west to a junction at Kingsbury between 1908 and 1909. The station was resited in August 1908. Although the distance saved was only a mile-and-a-quarter, the junctions at Water Orton and Kingsbury could be taken at a much higher speed than the original one at Whitacre. The line from Whitacre to Kingsbury is used by only a few trains a week.
Facilities
The station is unstaffed and has no ticketing facilities, so passengers requiring a ticket must purchase one in advance or from the conductor on the train.
Platform layout
The station is known to be a bottleneck for many CrossCountry services, with stopping Leicester to Birmingham, all Birmingham to Leicester and services from the North east to Birmingham all using one platform.
“Water Orton railway station” enters the record as railway station in Warwickshire, England, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Water, Orton and railway can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Water Orton railway station” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Water, Orton and railway provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2674112. Authority coordinates are 52.519, -1.744. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1842, 1908 and 1909.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Water Orton railway station”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Water Orton railway station primary sources, Water Orton railway station archive and Water research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Water Orton railway station”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Water Orton railway station” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.