There are several examples of this to be seen in Steventon. The ‘U’ shape shows that it was once part of a Great Western Railway track piece, known as a ‘bridge rail’. When the GWR line was converted from Broad to Standard Gauge many of the rails would have been ‘up-cycled’ to new uses, such as fenceposts.

At 5pm Friday 20th May 1892 the last broad-gauge train left Paddington for Penzance; the returning night mail train reached Paddington at 5.50 the next day. As the train passed each station the stationmaster had to certify that there was no broad-gauge stock at his station. This allowed the line engineer to start the conversion work on that stretch of the line. 

More than 4000 tracklayers had been placed along the line and the work was completed in time for the next mail train to leave Penzance at 4.40am on Monday 23rd May. 

177 miles of track re-laid over the course of a weekend – one wonders how many months of ‘bus replacement services’ would be needed if the job was done today.