Wombourne Branch Line

Wombourne Branch Line

Legend Wolverhampton High Level Wolverhampton Low Level to Stafford to Stafford Dunstall Park to Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury Tettenhall Compton Halt Penn Halt Wombourne 1913 proposed line to Bridgnorth Himley Baggeridge Colliery mineral railway Baggeridge Junction Gornal Halt Limit of remaining track Pensnett Halt Bromley Halt Brockmoor Halt Round Oak Steel Terminal; South Staffordshire line to Walsall Brettell Lane to Birmingham Snow Hill Stourbridge Junction South Staffordshire line to Kidderminster

"Meccano Bridge", a steel truss skewed bridge carrying the Wolverhampton Railway Walk (former Wombourne Branch Line) over the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal in Smestow Valley Local Nature Reserve, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England, UK.

The Wombourne Branch Line was a railway situated in Central England. The line branched from the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line at Kingswinford Junction to the north of Brettell Lane railway station and joined track at the triangular Oxley Junction on the approach to Wolverhampton Low Level.

Unusually, the line was initially constructed for goods trains only. It was not until 1925 that passenger trains started using the line. A number of halts and stations were built at locations on the line including Wombourne and Tettenhall. Passenger services were short lived and were discontinued in 1932 after just seven years.

The line between Kingswinford and Tettenhall remained open to goods trains until 24 June 1965, though the branch which served Baggeridge Colliery remained open until that facility closed on 2 March 1968.

The remaining section of the line continued to serve various industrial units in the Pensnett area until 1994. The line is now singled and heavily overgrown with vegetation and even mature trees, but most of the it is still in place and there have been many recent suggestions that this final stub of the line will re-open to serve the Pensnett Trading Estate, which was developed during the 1980s.

The section north of Pensnett closed and is now utilised as -

• The South Staffordshire Railway Walk. The former station buildings at Wombourn station are still in use as a tea-room. Other various relics of this line still exist. The railway walk was opened in 1974, just six years after the last trains used the line.[3]
• The Wolverhampton Railway Walk, which continues the walk northwards and through the Smestow Valley Local Nature Reserve.

External links

• A website of the history of the route
• South Staffs Council page for the South Staffordshire Railway Walk
• Wolverhampton City Council page for the Smestow Valley LNR