Railways Come To Birmingham

In the first decades of the C 19th there was much opposition to steam traction, most of it ill-informed and prejudiced. Horse-drawn trains on rails were favoured, because one pulling horse could replace fifty packhorses. William James's planned horse tramway from the Avon Navigation to London was opened to Shipston-on-Stour and Moreton-in-the-Marsh a year after the S & D Railway, but went no further. It was still working up to 1881 : the rails were taken up during World War I. At Stratford the brick tollhouse and Avon bridge, and a wagon upon a stretch of rail, remind the visitor of what was probably the first railway in the Midlands. Early successors were narrow-gauge tramways from quarries at Tanworth and Wilmcote to the Stratford Canal.

Stephenson was appointed construction and rolling-stock engineer of the projected Liverpool to Manchester Railway. He solved the problems of the route by building a 'floating road' of hurdles and turf across Chat Moss and approaching the port by cutting a 1.5 mile tunnel. The line was complete by 1830. Stephenson persuaded the directors, who preferred reliable horse-traction, to hold a competition for the best locomotive. The trials were won handsomely by the 'Rocket', built by the self-taught George and his university-educated son Robert at their Newcastle engine works, and there were no rivals for steam thereafter.

The English Midlands were the most isolated parts of Britain, 90 miles from the sea and - in the case of Birmingham - 20 miles from the nearest river ports. Canals cut between 1769 and 1816 linked the town to coalfields and the four main estuaries. Telford's improvements to the Brindley Cut, reducing delays due to lockage and water shortage, were completed by 1838. One canal horse replaced 240 packhorses but was even slower. Steam traction offered fast, untiring, unhindered movement of bulk materials between cities and ports. Speeds of 20 mph were normal and there were no delays at locks.

Railways were expensive to build and maintain. Rails, banks and cuttings, bridges and tunnels - not to mention land purchase, and demolitions in towns - required heavy funding. Why then were the roads not used for steam propelled trains ? Road cars were efficient and popular : but the violent opposition of coach and canal companies, inn-keepers, and all concerned with providing horses and carriages, obliged Turnpike Trusts to raise tolls beyond reason for steam vehicles, and persuaded Parliament to pass restrictive legislation, so that every roadcar had to be preceded by a walking man with a red flag.

So, despite the cost, steam had to be given its own independent roads - and was so successful thereon that the whole coaching industry had vanished within a few decades.

The need was obvious for fast communication between London, Birmingham, and Liverpool. Two companies were floated. The Grand Junction from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at Newton-le-Willows, was engineered by Joseph Locke after George Stephenson had withdrawn. 78 miles long, it was the first long-distance line in Britain to be opened throughout its entire length at the same time. There were no great engineering problems along its fairly flat route via Warrington, Crewe, and Stafford. Avoidance of Wolverhampton and Walsall was due to opposition from the latter and the cost of taking the line into towns.

Small gradients were essential for locomotives, which had only friction contact with the smooth rails, so river valleys were much used. This could mean multiple bridgings of meandering streams. Tame was crossed six times north of Birmingham, though this was as much due to the resistance to the railway's coming by the inhabitants of Perry and Aston Halls as to construction criteria. The line curved in a cutting across Nechells and Duddeston : it terminated at Vauxhall until a 28-arch viaduct had been built beside the Rea and over Lawley Street to a terminus off Curzon Street. The G. J. was first to reach the town, in 1837. Its terminus was opened two years later. Meanwhile the London to Birmingham Railway had arrived.

The 111 miles of route, engineered by Robert Stephenson, involved huge cuttings - not least those across Yardley and Saltley - and months of delay while an entire hill had to be pumped dry to that Kilsby Tunnel could be completed. Though trains ran to and from both ends of the tunnel, with coaches to link them, early in 1838, through services were not possible until later that year. At Euston the terminus was graced by Hardwick's Doric arch : on Curzon Street he built a stone-faced station with a noble Ionic-pillared portico : above the door were carved the arms of London and Birmingham.

The terminal sites had been chosen for ease of construction not for passengers' convenience : they were a mile from the town centre and a hundred feet lower. Narrow crooked lanes leading to them were eventually replaced by a new road, Albert Street, but before it was completed new central stations had been opened. Meanwhile, for passengers wishing to stay overnight rather than transfer directly from 'Grand Junction' to 'London to Birmingham' trains, the Queens Hotel was built alongside the latter's station.

In '39 the Birmingham & Derby Junction Company opened its line from Derby via Burton to a junction with the L to B at Hampton-in-Arden, which lines and facilities it used into Birmingham. But heavy tolls and delay to its trains induced the B & D J to extend its own line from Whitacre westward, by way of multiple Tame crossings into the Rea valley. 'Derby Station' was opened on Lawley Street in '42. It was 40 feet below the G J and L to B lines on either side : wagon transfer was made possible by a slow and inefficient hoist until in '51 a spur was made from Landor Street Junction to the London line. Meanwhile the L to B and G J had amalgamated to become the London & North-Western Co. (1846).

The Birmingham & Gloucester Company's line had to climb the ramparts of the Birmingham Plateau by way of the Lickey Incline, for which extra locomotives were provided at Bromsgrove. A temporary terminus was made at Camp Hill in 1840, and the following year the line joined the London into Curzon Street. A narrow cutting through the Moseley ridge, leading to a tunnel, was later extended : sand and gravel was trained away for use on embankments, and the wider bed bore sidings.

By '46 the Derby and Gloucester companies had joined the Midland Co. Strangely enough the two lines, although indirectly linked by the L to B, had no direct link until '64 : when the half-mile spur across Landor Street was opened, there was direct railway access to and from the four estuaries, with or without stops at Birmingham central stations. Of these there should only have been one.

The Birmingham & Oxford Railway Co. was taken over by the Great Western before its completion. As far north as Bordesley it was a broad-gauge (7 feet) track like the G. W. lines. Therefrom it was to be a narrow-gauge (Stephenson's 4 ft. 8.5 ins.) track : a great blue-brick viaduct carrying it across the Rea was nearing completion in '50. It should have joined the L & N-W's London line, but that company did not want to give the G. W. access to its proposed new central station, so refused to sell the small piece of land needed for the junction east of Curzon Street. The viaduct was abandoned, and the G. W. obtained and Act permitting it to build its own station. This was to be on the north side of the town, reached by a tunnel : it was opened in '52, completed and named 'Snow Hill' in '58.

The Oxford Extension from Bordesley to Snow Hill gave Birmingham its most spectacular railway structure, the 58 blue-brick arched viaduct across the Rea valley. Between Temple Row and the terminus there was a cutting, roofed over in '76 to create the Great Western Arcade. Of the original viaduct from Bordesley some arches and piers remain : spans across streets have been demolished.

Canal and railway companies were often in cut-throat competition with each other, but hereabout they co-operated. The many Black Country cuts serving mines, quarries and factories were well-suited for short hauls, as were the rail routes for fast bulk carriage : cargoes could be trans-shipped at convenient wharves. So the Birmingham Canal Navigations Co. signed an agreement with the L and N W which allowed the latter to build the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley line alongside the Telford Cut : this was in use from '52 between Wolverhampton High Level and a temporary terminus at the west end of what became New Street Station. The original name was Grand Central Station, later changed to Navigation Street Station. It was completed and officially opened in 1858 with the Queen's Hotel alongside. The old terminus was thereafter called Curzon Street, being still used for passenger traffic until 1893, and the G W R station became Snow Hill.

'Stour Valley' has always been a misnomer for the L and N W line to Wolverhampton, because the intended branch down the valley was never built. This was because the West Midlands Co. got powers to build its Stourbridge Extension, from the B W & D line at Handsworth to Kidderminster, completed in 1867. The West Midlands Co. was vested in the G W three years later. The Birmingham, Wolverhampton & Dudley lines, mixed gauge, was opened by the G W R in '54 : it ran roughly parallel to the L & N W line, from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level. The Shrewsbury & Birmingham Railway had reached W'h High Level in '49 and used the Stour Valley line to New Street from early '54. But as soon as the Low Level Station was opened later that year, the S & B having just been taken over by the G W, Shrewsbury trains were diverted thither.

A Birmingham to Lichfield line was approved in an Act of '46 but not then built. The L & N W completed a line to Sutton Coldfield only in '62 : in its five miles it had as many stations. This was the first of three suburban lines around Birmingham. Early lines were intended for long-distance freight haulage and had few stops : but speedy rail travel became so popular, despite its original discomforts that more stations were opened, passenger facilities were improved, and new commuter lines were built.

Meanwhile, other Midlands towns were acquiring rail links. The Trent Valley of '47, Leicester to Stafford via Tamworth, and in the same year Birmingham to Walsall, and Walsall to Lichfield. Wolverhampton and Worcester were linked in '52, and the former to Walsall twenty years later. Both the L & N W and the G W constructed loops and spurs across the Black Country. The Midland extended its Wolverhampton to Walsall line to the Derby line near Castle Bromwich in '79, the route cutting through Sutton Park.

The independent Harborne Railway, with four stations in 2.5 miles, was opened in '74. It joined the S V north of Monument Lane, and was intended to go on to Halesowen but didn't. Two years later the West Suburban line was opened by the Midland from the Gloucester line at Lifford to Granville Street with four stations en route. Extension to New Street had obvious advantages and this was completed by '85 to a new Midland Station south of New Street. Although the line was made parallel to the moribund Worcester Canal, so that little demolition was required, there were three tunnels south of Five Ways and the cuttings and tunnels beyond were major works.

The expense was justified, because the W S line provided not only a more direct way into New Street but permitted circular services : a curve at Lifford linked it more conveniently to the Gloucester line (1892), whose five (later six) stations were to have frequent stopping trains coming from or going to the W S line. A north circular service was provided when the loop line from Perry Barr on the G J to the S V at Soho was opened in '87 : this also served as a useful bypass of New Street, like the Aston to Stechford loop of 1880.

The last local line was the North Warwickshire, which linked Stratford to the G W Oxford line at Tyseley. When opened in 1907 its town terminus was Snow Hill, but two years later it was able to use the new Moor Street Station, approached by viaduct from the Oxford viaduct at Meriden Street. The goods yard at Moor Street was completed in '14, by which time the 1871 station at Snow Hill (replacing the original wooden structure) had been completely rebuilt in glazed brick and terra-cotta. The sharp bend on the Derby line at Whitacre was bypassed in 1909 by a loop from Kingsbury to Water Orton. The Kingswinford Branch G W from Pensnett to near Wolverhampton was the last new line in the Midlands, 1925. Thereafter a steady decline in services, closure of stations and lines, and reduction of huge areas of sidings and yards, took place : exhaustion of local coal and iron, improved tram and later 'bus services, and increasing use of road transport for goods and people, were responsible.

That decline is outside this essay, but there has been a recent development which is against the trend. In 1978 the Rapid Rail Transit Route was inaugurated by British Rail with financial support from West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. This a frequent service of trains between Longbridge and Four Oaks, using Gloucester, West Suburban, Grand Junction, and Sutton Coldfield lines. Its success gives some hope that a similar northwest-southeast service may be provided.