Wigan Album

The men on the back row, the four in-between the two on either side, look like drivers, and are probably local men based at Wigan sheds. Could be a sporting achievement, maybe? I wouldn't have thought such a small station like Orrell had so many staff. You can tell drivers a mile away: gritty, normally lean, and world weary. The railways were exciting places in those long gone black and white days.

Could well concern a sporting moment as Jarvo suggests, but the object displayed by the crew doesn't offer much room for a worthwhile inscription to have been added.
It also resembles the moulding one sees on a column or façade - maybe a refurbishment or an exchange had taken place.
A colourised version of the photo may go some way to identifying if the object was made of wood or metal.

Jarvo - Re your comment on the number of men working at a small station. It always makes you realise just how much employment was available in the past especially in strcured organisations such as the railways with the stationmaster, booking clerks , porters etc and that was just at the stations. This was first brought home to me in 1979 when my wife and I were traveling by rail around Cornwall. We were catching a train at Penmer Halt on the single track branch line to Falmouth. It literally was a halt with just one platform. An old man waiting told us that he could remember when there were 10 people working there. When you think this was the smallest station (Falmouth Town and Falmouth Harbour stations would have been much bigger) and one branch line with 6 stations - and there were many more Branchlines before Beeching, it brings home the importance of such industries within their communities and what we lost.

No way this is Orrell station. I volunteer here every Sunday. The brick walls are the clue to it being somewhere else.