Wednesbury 1993

The freight line between Bescot/Pleck Jct and Round Oak was closed with effect from Monday 22nd March 1993, and the last trains ran on Friday 19th March. When the end came there were still three sources of traffic on the line between Bescot and Stourbridge. The steel terminal at Wednesbury had closed in late 1992, but the spoil tip was still in use right to the end. The site was subsequently used for the Midland Metro tram depot and railway spoil traffic from Bescot was re-directed to the tip at Honeybourne.

The second source of traffic was the steel terminal at Round Oak. This was operated by Round Oak Rail, a private firm. Traffic here consisted of steel, mainly in the form of coil, mostly manufactured at Llanwern (Newport) and Port Talbot (Margam) in South Wales. Round Oak remains open to this day, and still receives trains on a daily basis. Trains must now reach Round Oak from the south, but as all the current traffic comes from South Wales this isn't much of a problem.

The third traffic source was Brierley Hill, a steel terminal operated by British Rail itself. It also handled steel, but mainly in the form of wire and rod. In 1993 most of Brierley Hill's traffic emanated from the Allied Steel & Wire (ASW) plant in Cardiff docks, although traffic from other sources (including imports) was routed through Bescot. Brierley Hill survived the 1993 line closure, and remained open as a steel terminal, with traffic from the north routed via Stourbridge.

Brierley Hill was mainly operated by EWS in the post-privatisation years. It led a chequered existence in the first decade of the 21st century, being closed and re-opened on a couple of occasions. In later years anything coming from northern locations other than Bescot would often run via Camp Hill, go down the Lickey, and run-round at Worcester before reaching Brierley Hill via Stourbridge. Trains from Bescot ran via Soho and Cradley Heath, running-round at Stourbridge Jct.

For a year or so in 2004/05 Brierley Hill received roadstone from Peak Forest, in addition to steel from Scunthorpe which was the staple traffic. However the stone trains ceased early in 2005, and in September 2006 Brierley Hill closed again - the Scunthorpe traffic having been diverted to Wolverhampton. There were also a few outgoing scrap trains to Southampton and Cardiff in the mid 2000s, but these never developed into a regular flow.

The loss of the steel traffic wasn't the end though, in the second half of 2007 stone trains started running from Croft Quarry (Leicestershire). Initially operated by EWS these trains went over to Freightliner Heavy Haul for their last couple of years. Although they ran sporadically the Croft trains were still operating as late as 2011, but when this flow dried up the terminal closed yet again.

In November 2016 Freightliner ran a couple of what appeared to be road-learning trips to Brierley Hill. By this stage the remaining sidings were impassable, overgrown with saplings and other vegetation. Only the access road nearest the running lines was usable, and the locos reversed there. Whatever the purpose of these trips was they didn't result in any subsequent trains.

There were further developments in the summer of 2017. This time plans emerged to run steel trains once more from a terminal in Kent, and some site clearance work was undertaken, primarily vegetation removal. The steel would be imported through a new facility at Thamesport operated by the the Armitt Group. Paths were created for GBRf to operate trains from Grain to Brierley Hill once the new terminal was completed, but it never happened. Dudley Council indicated that planning permission would be needed for the new development, and the proposal seemed to be abandoned at that point. After these two "false starts" Brierley Hill went back to sleep. Still connected to the network in 2021, but not having seen a train for a decade.

Meanwhile back in 1993, amongst the other traffic running via Wednesbury was 6E58, a steel service originating from the ASW plant at Cardiff. During the final months this was the only train booked to take the direct Wednesbury - Walsall route rather than go into Bescot. Another regular train was the china-clay service from St Blazey (near Par) in Cornwall to Cliffe Vale in Stoke-on-Trent. This was a long-standing railfreight flow which had no special reason to use the freight line through Wednesbury, other than the fact that it was the traditional and most convenient route. When the line closed it was simply re-routed to run via Bromsgrove, the Camp Hill line, Washwood Heath, Sutton Park and Walsall.

In its final years the line was busiest during the morning, and even at the end there was a reasonable amount of traffic early in the day. Afternoons were normally quieter. As in 1989 the signal boxes were still open Monday to Friday on a two-shift pattern, but although the line was nominally open until about 21:00 the loss of the evening Speedlinks meant that the man on the afternoon turn could often get away early. As can be seen from the table 6V70 was usually the last train of the day in 1993.

It should be evident from the movements recorded below that trains from the south were unable to get into the sidings at Round Oak due to problems with the signalling and trackwork there. Consequently these trains were routed into Bescot where the locomotive would run-round the train and head back south to Round Oak. This arrangement inflated the number of trains through Dudley and Wednesbury. Look out too for the problems involved in getting the final spoil train out of Wednesbury on Friday 19th. This also increased the number of movements that took place on the last day.

The tables below list all the movements through Wednesbury during the final week of normal service. Where the loco is shown in grey this indicates that this is the engine that should have worked the service according to the diagrams, but I wasn't able to confirm it. For the uninitiated the four-character train codes such as "6M11" are used to identify particular services. The first character identifies the type of train, the second character the destination (usually defined in very broad geographical terms) and the last two numbers are an arbitrary value to identify a particular service. The significant thing to note here is that codes starting with "0" such as 0T46 are locomotives without a train in tow - "light engines" in railway parlance. Those starting with any other number include one or more wagons behind the locomotive. On the line through Wednesbury "up" trains ran southbound (towards Stourbridge) and "down" trains ran northbound (towards Bescot and Walsall).

There was at least one other movement on the line after it had formally closed. A cable-laying train traversed the northern section later in 1993, reaching as far south as Dudley Port. It was top-and-tailed by Class 31s. Over subsequent years the line began to fall into increasing disrepair. Vegetation slowly began to take over, with mature trees eventually growing on the trackbed. For the first couple of years after closure there was evidence of vegetation clearance on the southbound track, but by the time Railtrack took control all signs of maintenance disappeared. The signalling equipment was removed shortly after closure, and the signal boxes at Wednesbury and Eagle Crossing (Great Bridge) were both subsequently destroyed by fire.

Re-opening?

Almost as soon as the line closed there was talk of re-opening in the air. For many years a Midland Metro route from Wednesbury to the shopping centre at Merry Hill (via Dudley) had been planned. This would use, or at least share, the South Staffs trackbed for much of its route.

By summer 2008 the Centro website had quietly introduced the possibility of running tram-trains on the Wednesbury - Brierley Hill route, but the most significant development in subsequent years had been the apparent loss of interest in this route - originally described as line 2 - in favour of extending the Metro a few hundred yards around Birmingham and Wolverhampton city centres.

Railfreight had been in slow decline for many years, but there was a brief period of growth and optimism towards the end of the 1990s following the takeover of most British railfreight operations by EWS (English, Welsh and Scottish Railway). This led to talk of re-opening the line for freight, in large part as a way of bypassing the congested tracks around Birmingham for freight trains running on the south-west/north-east axis.

This would make much more sense if it was to occur in conjunction with the re-opening of the Walsall - Lichfield line, which closed as a through route in 1984. However this is another aspiration which isn't going to happen for many years, if ever. In early 2005 the Strategic Rail Authority released a document entitled West Midlands Route Utilisation Strategy (bottom of page 55). This document briefly mentions the line and concludes thus: "The Route Utilisation Strategy does not propose to promote the reinstatement of the Round Oak - Bescot route but confirms the need for the route to be protected for the longer term".

Despite all the talk nothing much happened on the ground. Twenty years after closure the trees continued to grow unchecked, and the local roads got more and more congested - even outside commuting times. By 2016 the requirement for a freight line to bypass Birmingham no longer seemed relevant. The conventional route to the south-west via the Lickey incline was as busy as ever with passenger trains, and the electrification of the Lickey incline to allow electric units to reach Bromsgrove would add more trains to that part of the route. However freight traffic was in serious decline, due in part to a massive reduction in the movement of coal referred to above. The number of daytime freight trains on the Birmingham-Gloucester axis could usually be counted on the fingers of one hand. Matters improved slightly in the early 2020s, with GBRf running daytime cement trains from Avonmouth to Clitheroe and Penyfford which are routed via Camp Hill, Sutton Park and Walsall - but it doesn't change the big picture.

There seemed to be brighter news on the Metro front, with an announcement in autumn 2016 suggesting that work on the line between Wednesbury and Merry Hill would finally commence in 2017. Evidently the changes in financial arrangements resulting from local government devolution would make the funds available. However closer reading of the relevant documents revealed a slightly different story. 2017 would actually see more preparatory work rather than full-blown construction, and indeed that summer saw the trackbed cleared of vegetation and track in a number of locations.

Despite the talk of devolution a new business case still had to be submitted to central government, and the original transport and works orders would need to be re-visited given that they were now more than a decade old. In fact the proposed timetable wouldn't see the actual construction work start until 2021. All being well it would be completed in 2023, a full thirty years after the last trains ran.

July 2022 saw the opening of the Birmingham west side extension, with trams running through from Wolverhampton to Edgbaston Village. Preliminary work was also underway on the east side extension to Curzon St, effectively an HS2 project. With exquisite timing the very same month saw bad news for the Black Country though, cost inflation and lack of funds effectively ending any prospect of trams to Brierley Hill in the foreseeable future. A decision was taken to split the South Staffs/OWW route into two phases: firstly Wednesbury to Dudley, with a revised opening date of 2024; and then Dudley to Brierley Hill, with no target date this is effectively back to aspirational status.

See the Pleck Jct - Round Oak page for more pictures of how the line looked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, compared with how it looked around 2004. I had originally intended to re-visit each location about five years later, but further vegetation growth made that project pointless. In most places the views would simply have been of scrub or trees, with no trackbed or infrastructure visible at all.

See the infrastructure page for changes to the infrastructure both before and after the start of Metro construction work.