The station master (or stationmaster) was the person in charge of railway stations, in the United Kingdom and many other countries, before the modern age. He would manage the other station employees and would have responsibility for safety and the efficient running of the station. The term is still sometimes used in large stations, although it has generally been replaced by station manager.
Invariably, he would be provided with a substantial house and, in rural communities, would have significant social standing.
Notably in the Beeching cuts of the 1960s many small stations were closed and the station master's house, along with other railway property, sold off. Typically, these buildings retained their original name and in many communities the Station Master's House can still be found as a private dwelling or converted into a restaurant.
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Famous quotes containing the words station and/or master:
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)