Stourbridge Town

[thebandit]

Hi all. Hope this is the right forum to post this enquiry. I've always had an interest in trains - but that's all it is, an interest, motorbikes and trucks, being my real passions. Anyway, I have now started to get a lot more interested in trains - even to the point of buying a train set and Senior Railcard! - and I plan to use train travel a lot more. Which brings me to the point of this thread. Back in the 1950's when I was a schoolboy train spotter in Derby, one of our regular family journeys was to an auntie in Amblecote. We had to change in Brum, of course, to catch a train from Snow Hill to Stourbridge Junction, and then another train to the Town station - though we did occasionally get a bus, I think.
Following my recent interest in trains again I was surprised to read this very short track and train service still exists in the shape of a Parry people mover. I would have thought after Beeching it would have been axed. Any info on how and why the track is still used would be most welcome as I have many memories of this journey. Also, am I right in thinking there was a massive goods yard near Stourbridge Town as I remember two gasometers near the house in Amblecote and I'm sure this yard was close by?

 

[Matt Taylor]

Hopefully this image will help:

http://matthew-taylor.fotopic.net/p64780887.html

I am not from the Birmingham area so I cannot give much in the way of local info but it's good to see the line survived the closures of the Beeching era.

 

[JKJimar53]

Not sure if this helps, its a video of the journey from Stourbridge Junction:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUao4aQt98&feature=related

 

[andyfrommk]

I would have thought after Beeching it would have been axed. Any info on how and why the track is still used

I wondered about that too. How did it survive when lines like Oxford to Bletchley got dismantled.

Here is the Stourbridge Town article on Wikipedia

Rail Around Birmingham page on Stourbridge Town

You could look on old-maps.co.uk for Stourbridge Town, they have many editions of out-of-copyright maps viewable on their website

I don't know why they kept that .8 Mile line yet Chose to close the Newport Pagnell Railway with 2 intermediate stations on its 4 mile line

 

[Waddon]

I imagine whether lines survived or not must have come down to whether the powerful/influential people in the area were pro-rail or anti-rail... some areas seemed to escape pretty well, whilst, on the other side of the coin, Dr. Beeching's home town of East Grinstead lost 3 out of its 4 lines... and to add insult to injury, one of the closed lines was turned into a bypass and the road was named 'Beeching Cut'

 

[WL113]

The Stourbridge Town Branch survived for one reason only. It was profitable. The line was worked by Class 121 units until the introduction of the Class 153 single cars in the 1990s.

This continued until 2009 when the 153s were replaced by the Parry PM Class 139 Railcars, which have been well recieved by the branch regulars as they provide a more frequent, reliable service than the 153s did.

 

[ChrisCooper]

A line like that is cheap to operate too. It just needs a single unit to provide a good frequency service, no signalling, it's low speed and light units so not much maintenance. Compare it to a longer line which would be more expensive to maintain both due to length and the need for higher speeds, probably have a number of signal boxes and crossings and either needed more trains to run a good frequency or had such a poor frequency that it wasn't worth using. The daily loading just to break even is going to be much higher.

I'm not sure how much politics came into the cuts. It's wrong to assume that the cuts were anti-rail or that Beeching was anti-rail anyway. They were trying to make the railways profitable, not destroy them. It's often forgotten that as well as proposing the cutting of unprofitable services, Beeching also gave proposals for growing the core network. Now the idea itself is controversial and not without it's flaws, but was not really anti-rail.

 

[Jonny]

A line like that is cheap to operate too. It just needs a single unit to provide a good frequency service, no signalling, it's low speed and light units so not much maintenance. Compare it to a longer line which would be more expensive to maintain both due to length and the need for higher speeds, probably have a number of signal boxes and crossings and either needed more trains to run a good frequency or had such a poor frequency that it wasn't worth using. The daily loading just to break even is going to be much higher.

I'm not sure how much politics came into the cuts. It's wrong to assume that the cuts were anti-rail or that Beeching was anti-rail anyway. They were trying to make the railways profitable, not destroy them. It's often forgotten that as well as proposing the cutting of unprofitable services, Beeching also gave proposals for growing the core network. Now the idea itself is controversial and not without it's flaws, but was not really anti-rail.

IIRC It was the Beeching report that laid the ground for the original Freightliner to come into existence.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Where did the branch run to previously? I am guessing it is the remains of a much longer through route?

 

[33056]

Where did the branch run to previously? I am guessing it is the remains of a much longer through route?

No it wasn't, though my Jowett's atlas shows the line going a short distance further to "Stourbridge Goods".

 

[jd]

Yes, the line still runs - six trains in each direction per hour, if I recally correctly, so the train departs the Junction and Town stations every 10 mins, and does a complete return journey in 10 mins. They use the platform adjacent to the Birmingham-bound platform at SBJ.

The station at Town is just a single platform right now, there is no goods yard any more - there is now a bus station beyond the buffers (which is currently being redeveloped), I *think* the goods yard used to be on the site of what is now the bus station.

 

[Crossover]

Something of interest that I found out when using the line the other month - the service is timetabled with a 20 minute gap once each hour (I think its per hour) - got a slight surprise on arriving and seeing it to be 15 mins or so until the next one.

Speaking to the guard, they do run a service every 10 minutes, including in this 20 minute gap, but the gap is there so if maintenance needs doing (probably including unit switchover), it gives a chance to do it, plus it also helps with the reliability as one service/hour can effectively not run without it denting the percentages too much.

 

[thebandit]

Thanks for all the info, chaps, much appreciated. Thought I was right about the goods yard - only about 10 at the time (1957).

 

[Peter Mugridge]

No it wasn't, though my Jowett's atlas shows the line going a short distance further to "Stourbridge Goods".

Thanks; so I'm guessing it was originally built purely to serve the goods yard then?

 

[wembleyman]

Hi Folks,
A long time ago the land now occupied by the Stourbridge Trading Estate was the sit of a 'railway' yard serving foundries and works in the immediate area. This was owned by Foster and Rastrick, and acted as an interchange for goods from the local works with road and canal transport. When the railways arrived in the 1850's the yard was connected to the main line via a rope hauled incline from the yard to where the old Amblecote railway sheds were (84F). Stourbridge was connected to the main line via the short link to the Junction. In the 1870's a second line was laid alongside the Town-Junction line, and extended past the station over Foster Street, over Birmingham Street, and down an embankment to the yard. The incline was then taken out of service. The Town station was on the opposite side to the present station. In the days of steam, 1414 used to run between the Town and Junction with one carriage attached. The new rail link to the yard also allowed delivery of coal into the newly built gas works, though most of the coke seemed to go out by road to local users.