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Herefordshire & Worcestershire’s Lost Railways by Peter Dale
Herefordshire & Worcestershires Lost Railways by Peter Dale
Soft Cover Reflections from lights on some photos
48 pages
Copyright 2004
CONTENTS
Birmingham & Gloucester Loop
Gloucester to Ledbury
Golden Valley Railway
Peterchurch Station
Dorstone Station
GWR to Bewdley
Halesowen Railway
Hereford Hay & Beacon Railway
Hereford to Grange Court
Ross-on-Wye Station
Mitcheldean Road Station
Kington Branch
Pembridge Station
Kington & Eardisley Railway
Lines to Bromyard
Bromyard Station
Rowden Mill Station
Fencote Station
Steens Bridge Station
Stoke Prior Halt
Lines to Tenbury Wells
Wyre Forest Station
Midland to Malvern
Presteign Branch
Ross & Monmouth Railway
Severn Valley Railway
Stratford-upon-Avon to Cheltenham
Closed passenger stations on lines still open to passengers
GWR Worcester to Hereford
OW&WR Droitwich to Bromsgrove
GWR/LNWR Joint Shrewsbury to Hereford
INTRODUCTION
Herefordshire and Worcestershire are two counties combined for administration purposes and so it makes sense to combine them for this book. They cover an area of great diversity: the north of Worcestershire penetrates the industrial areas of the Black Country and Birmingham while west Herefordshire has the beautiful country of the Welsh borders. In railway terms the two counties were dominated by the Great Western Railway, the largest pre-Grouping company in terms of route mileage, but significant other companies were the London & North Western Railway and the Midland Railway, the second and fourth largest pre-Grouping companies respectively. Oddly the LNWR only had a short section of its own line, just 2.1 miles between Red Hill Junction on the Hereford to Abergavenny line and Rotherwas Junction on the Hereford to Gloucester line. It exercised running powers over the GWR to reach the Abergavenny to Merthyr line and owned the Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway jointly with the GWR.
Railways came early to the area: the Hay Railway opened in 1816, although this line did not carry passengers and was horse-worked. The first public railway in the two counties was the section of the London & Birmingham Railway which crossed the north-east of Worcestershire and opened in April 1838.
In the far west of the area there were some fascinating, bucolic rural lines which have all gone. In retrospect, it might be thought obvious that these areas could never support a railway, yet they were promoted with high hopes. Justifiably so, as the Kington & Eardisley line replaced the horse-worked Kington Railway which had yielded dividends as high as 31/2 per cent just hauling goods. But circumstances had changed: in earlier times the area had looked to South Wales for its links as the natural line of transport by the river and canal led that way. By the 1860s Kington was linked by rail with the rest of Herefordshire and on to London and the line from Eardisley to Swansea saw only two through passenger trains a day. Goods and services flowed in a different direction but the promoters of the K&ER had not realised that.
It is worth adding a word of explanation here about the Grouping for non-railway enthusiasts. Many of the railways in Britain were built by small companies, sometimes with the backing of a larger company. In the years leading up to 1923 there was a process of consolidation by which smaller companies amalgamated or were absorbed by larger ones, but in 1922 there were still well over 100 different companies in Britain. In 1923 all but a few minor companies were grouped into four larger concerns by Act of Parliament. These were the Great Western Railway (which continued in an enlarged form), the Southern Railway, the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS - which included the LNWR and Midland) and the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER). These four companies - often referred to as the 'Big Four' - continued until nationalisation in 1948.
Under British Railways a Modernisation Plan introduced in 1955 spelled the beginning of the end for steam on Britain's railways, while the Beeching Plan of 1963 saw the start of widespread closures of many minor, and some major, lines.
Stourbridge has a special place in railway history as the early locomotive builder Foster Rastrick & Co. was based there. Their best known locos are the 'Agenoria', built for a local line, and the 'Stourbridge Lion', which was one of the first locomotives in the USA. Both still survive.
It is hoped this book will evoke memories for older readers of the relaxed form of travelling before the advent of motorways and perhaps encourage younger ones to make the acquaintance of the preserved lines in the area - The Severn Valley Railway at Kidderminster and the Gloucester-Warwickshire Railway at Toddington.
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